> If we hadn’t discussed race, “The Bell Curve” would have been dismissed on grounds that “Herrnstein and Murray refuse to confront the reality that IQ tests are invalid for blacks, which makes their whole analysis meaningless.” We had to establish that in fact IQ tests measure the same thing in blacks as in whites, and doing so required us to discuss the elephant in the corner, the mean difference in test scores between whites and blacks.

This argument rests on the assumption that IQ tests are good at measuring anything. Which, given recent understanding of intelligence and IQ, is very highly questionable. Establishing a single metric for intelligence is close to impossible. We know so little about how the brain works. To think that we can dilute intelligence down to a single number is IMO absurd.

If anything the mean difference between whites and blacks in IQ tests is the proof that IQ tests are essentially meaningless. Either we assume a definition of intelligence where the mean of blacks vs the mean of whites is more or less equal, or we assume IQ actually measures intelligence. We can't have both.

To me, it seems much more plausible that some quantitative metric is biased, than to assume that two groups of people have different levels of intelligence. Given that a) social science has a history of developing biased metrics, b) white people have a history of justifying racism with scientific models, c) racial distinctions are largely arbitrary. Anyone remember phrenology?