Letter to the Fairfax County School Board

By Ian Jobling • 4/15/08

In response to yesterday’s action alert on efforts by Fairfax County School Board members to reject a report that revealed racial disparities in behavior, one of my readers sent a powerful original letter to the school board, which I reprint in slightly edited form below.

I was dismayed to learn of the School Board’s ideologically motivated refusal to accept the factual results of a recent study of moral character, simply because the results fail to be precisely mathematically equal across racial groups and in fact follow a very predictable pattern. Does anyone worry about males consistently being shown, overall and on average, to be more violent than females? There’s precious little hand-wringing about “pernicious stereotypes,” biased justice/educational systems, and what not, because we allow ourselves to acknowledge the common sense, real-world reality of genetically influenced differences in behavior, owing to many factors, such as far higher testosterone levels among males. Similarly, few worry about young people being considered, overall and on average, more impulsive, unreliable, and, again, violent than the elderly. The mountain of evidence about psychology, brain function, and hormones is accepted in this case as well. If we can calmly and rationally accept reality about sex and age, [why not race](http://whiteamerica.us/index.php/articles/articles/the_reality_of_racial_differences/)? If we can understand that, in the case of age and sex, a generalization is not a universalization, and, unlike a universalization, is not disproved by relatively rare exceptions, why can’t we do so for race? We all know that aggressive, violent females, or impatient thoughtless older people certainly do exist, but we also know that they do not erase the reality of greater average male aggression or youthful impulsiveness. Why wouldn’t groups of humans existing in genetic isolation from each other for tens of thousands of years, in [environments with wildly different climates](http://whiteamerica.us/index.php/articles/articles/ice_people_and_sun_people/), disease profiles, food availability levels, and degrees of reward for social cooperation, end up not only with different physical structures, but also tendencies toward different behavior patterns? When school boards exert so much energy to defend evolution, and especially human evolution, from creationist attacks, it’s bizarre to see a crippling fear, a pervasive, superstitious taboo that homo sapiens is the sole species, or the human brain the sole organ, that is somehow magically immune to natural selection, stoutly resisting all pressures to adapt to its environment. Apparently, humans in areas with freezing winters would never, after tens of thousands of years, be more likely to save and plan ahead for the future, defer gratification, and cooperate socially than people in the lush tropics, where food is available year round and shelter arrangements are less necessary for survival. In any event, regardless of whether the extremely unsurprising racial differences revealed by the study are influenced by genes or not, it is still important to respect the importance of facts instead of lashing out at the bearers of “bad” news. Even the Communist dictator Deng Xiaoping broke with his more radical predecessor Mao Tse-tung, by saying that one should “seek truth from facts” instead of egalitarian dogma—surely the Fairfax County School Board can do no less. It would all be amusing if it weren’t for the human consequences. Many people in my family are teachers, and it is outrageous to see teachers being blamed and used as scapegoats to explain away ideologically inconvenient realities that dare intrude upon egalitarian myths. Males and young people have not been emotionally crippled by the widespread recognition that they belong to groups that are, on average, more violent than females and the elderly. Maybe blacks and Hispanics can handle the truth, too. Treating blacks and Hispanics with kid gloves and telling them that only a monstrous hateful conspiracy or its endlessly lingering after-effects could explain racial differences in intelligence and behavior is not only condescending, but it corrodes our integrity, scientific standards, racial harmony, and your educational mission.