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It's debatable whether or not this is an honest presentation of facts, but just assuming it as true for the sake of argument: liberals have been promising to do the same for other populations since time immemorial. American blacks are still not integrated, and Africa is still a basket case. How much longer until you accept you were wrong, ans who will be held accountable for it?
American culture and entertainment are on life support.
In a certain sense, I don't think we can be 100 percent sure until we have computers that can simulate the physics of our biological processes to a high degree of accuracy, because until that point all we will be able to do is genome-wide association studies and find genetic correlations with life outcomes but not explanations for why those correlations exist or whether they are causal. (Though I grant that we could in principle get a physical explanation earlier than that, the same way we figured out that the genetic disorder Phenylketonuria leads to low IQ if one eats a high protein diet due to their body not producing phenylalanine hydroxylase, and thus discovering that with a strict diet people with PKU can have normal IQ's. Genetics is weird sometimes, and interacts with the environment in odd ways.)
I'm perfectly open to the idea that black people might genetically be predisposed to low IQ and personality traits that lead to higher criminality, but I think this is far from proven. It would actually be great news if it was all genetic, because that means we could probably do voluntary eugenics or gene therapies with the right framing and marketing, and be rid of the problem without much issue. If it's cultural, that's much harder to deal with.
I think we're highly biased by our novelty-focused culture, but I would wager that America is producing excellent cultural and entertainment products at least as consistently as Ancient Greece or Rome did.
How often did the ancient world produce a Virgil or a Homer? How often did they coast for a few centuries on the insights of a Galen or an Aristotle?
If you want to enjoy human artistic excellence in the United States, you can find it in virtually every large American city. You like opera? We've got opera. Ballet? Classical music? You could disengage from American pop culture, and probably fly to a different city every week and enjoy great Western art and performances that are probably at least as good as the average of what you could have experienced 500 years ago, or 1000 years ago, or 2000 years ago. Maybe we can't compare to the Gaussian tail artists of those eras, the virtuosos like Beethoven or Chopin, but you probably wouldn't have to look hard to find artists and performers in the top 20% of all of human history all over the United States today, which I think is nothing to sneeze at.
And if you're not rich, there's always the wealth of recordings we have, which give even the common man access to the great performances of the past. For a mere pittance, you could buy the Harvard Classics and immerse yourself in the greatest thoughts of Western thinkers of the last 2500 years.
Maybe it is true that many Americans choose to engage with the new and the now, and ignore the mountain of gold they're born into. But I'm grateful that I've had access to the public domain books on Project Gutenburg since I was in middle school, and got to enjoy works from 1001 Arabian Nights to Plato's Republic for free. I think it is possible, even with brain rot and the nightmare of the algorithm that more people today are engaging with the thought stream of Western civilization than ever before. And let's be honest, most of the servants of Ancient Greece and Rome probably weren't deeply immersing themselves in the art and literature of the era (even if there are notable exceptions like Epictetus and Cleanthes.)
The evidence is so overwhelming that a scientific study is not even necessary. It's like observing that men are genetically predisposed to being taller than women.
This strikes me as an isolated demand for rigor. Would you apply the same standards to the claim that smoking cigarettes causes lung cancer?
No, because the consequences of getting it wrong are very different.
If a society believes that smoking causes cancer, and they are wrong, some people don't get to enjoy setting fire to foul-smelling leaves and covering their walls and furniture with discusting gunk.
If a society believes that Black people are less intelligent and more criminal, and they are wrong, millions of innocent people go through their lives with a boot stamping on their faces.
Are you able to be a little more specific about how public policy would necessarily look if society believed that "[b]lack people are less intelligent and more criminal"?
To put it another way, what exactly do you mean by "millions of innocent people go through their lives with a boot stamping on their faces"? What exactly would happen to these people which is equivalent to having a boot [stomping] on their faces"?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Crow_laws
Ok, so in your view, societal recognition that blacks are less intelligent and more criminal would necessarily lead to the reinstatement of racial segregation in the South.
Do I understand you correctly?
No. It would not necessarily lead to such; however, defenders of Jim Crow often cited the alleged mental deficits and supposed inherent criminal tendencies of the Black population; thus, it is not as far from possibility as I would prefer.
Ok, I think I understand your position now. I disagree for a couple of reasons.
First, in my view, societal recognition of truth should not depend on the likelihood of harm resulting from that recognition. Either something is true or it isn't and the standard for truth seeking is logically irrelevant to the consequences of such truth.
Moreover, if there is a principle in place that the possibility of harm is ground to reject something which would otherwise be accepted as true, it opens the door to the worst kind of abuses.
Second, even if there were such a principle in place, truths should not be rejected on the mere possibility of harm. Rather, for much the same reason, a compelling case needs to be made of a strong likelihood of harm.
Here, there are plenty of laws and Supreme Court decisions in place guaranteeing equality. Thus, it is pretty unlikely that recognition of the truth about blacks would change this.
Indeed, it is worth drawing a distinction between (1) lower black intelligence and higher criminality; and (2) the genetic cause of the same. There is no serious dispute that on average, blacks have lower IQs than non blacks and are more likely to commit crime. And yet this hasn't resulted in reenactment of Jim Crow laws. Given that, it's difficult to see how recognition of a genetic component in this discrepancy would bring about a return of Jim Crow laws.
It is also worth distinguishing between (1) the level of proof necessary for societal acceptance of some truth; and (2) the level of proof necessary for laws to be enacted on the basis of the same.
We already have laws and policies in place which were enacted on the assumption that black underperformance is the result of past discrimination. I'm perfectly fine with a principle which says that until there is super-duper proof that this assumption is correct, then such laws and policies are unacceptable.
In other words, if -- for purposes of policymaking -- we are going to have a super high standard before concluding that black underperformance is a result of genetics, in whole or in part -- it follows logically we should have a super high standard before concluding that black underperformance is a result of past discrimination.
If the resulting logic is "we just don't know why blacks score lower on intelligence tests and commit more crime, and until that is known definitively, we won't have Jim Crow laws; we wont' have affirmative action; all races will be treated equally; etc." that's fine with me. To put it another way, if the conclusion that black underperformance is in part the result of genetics is possibly harmful to blacks, then we should also consider that the reverse conclusion is harmful to non-blacks.
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