The Last Taboo

As the Lawrence Summer's brouhaha earlier this year demonstrated, the idea that group differences can sometimes make a difference is still met - outside small scientific circles - with outright hostility. Ideas can be powerful, and the fear that such discussions may be used to justify inequitable policy arrangements is understandable; but the refusal of the cloistered academy to even discuss the possibility of group differences has a stultifying effect on debate, and may, in the long run, render such vital discussions taboo. As Charles Murray argues in The Inequality Taboo (his first discussion of the subject since The Bell Curve), the idea that biological and genetic differences may play a role in a whole host of group differences need not alter our fundamental intuitions about political and social institutions. After all, the outcome of such a frank and open discussion may be cast either way - it could be used to justify (or critique) policy on either side of the political spectrum. In fact, it may be far more dangerous to refuse to engage the debate and to allow ill-conceived conceptions to guide social policy. Read the whole thing.