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Richard Hanania writes we need to shut up about HBD.
https://www.richardhanania.com/p/shut-up-about-race-and-iq
He defines HBD as believing:
Populations have genetic differences in things like personality and intelligence. (group differences)
Groups are often in zero-sum competition with one another, and this is a useful way to understand the world. (zero sum)
People to a very strong degree naturally prefer their own ingroup over others. (descriptive tribalism)
Individuals should favor their own ingroup, whether that is their race or their co-nationals. (normative tribalism)
And he goes on to criticize 2-4. I tend to agree with those criticisms, but I think it’s fairly common in these kinds of circles to believe a version of 2 focused on ideological competition, not between racial groups, where the social justice left and its preferred policies to rectify group differences can only be defeated by using the facts to explain group differences that won’t be rectified through policy.
While I accept Hanania’s point that the facts frequently don’t matter in which political ideas rise to the top, I still feel like Cofnas has a point (whom Hanania is responding to).
I’m quite philosemetic, for example. The best argument against antisemitism based on observing Jewish overperformance and concluding it’s due to some kind of plot is explaining that intelligence matters and the Ashkenazim underwent a particular history and we now observe them having very high average test scores.
Hanania himself wrote not so long ago about how Jewish personality traits might be needed to fully explain their political interest and influence, beyond just intelligence.
Using biology to explain overperformance but not underperformance seems like a strange compromise.
In much of today’s polite society, if one points out the achievement gap among groups, you’re a racist.
But if one doesn’t acknowledge the achievement gap between groups to justify affirmative action, you’re a racist.
And that’s without even mentioning biology! Watching lefties like Kathryn Paige Harden and Freddie deBoer try to (admirably) describe these kinds of issues while trying to remain in the good graces of polite society is enlightening.
Now, if you could guarantee me a return to a more race-blind culture and legal system if we shut up about genetics then I would take that. But we are on a path towards learning the murky details of (and being able to influence) genetics of both groups and individuals. I don’t think the elephant in the room will stay quiet.
It’s a bit remarkable to read Hanania write:
I think he means, “talk about something publicly” as opposed to at all, but actually I’ll easily bite those bullets and say we ought to understand the disadvantages short men face due to female preferences and that we ought to know just how much we expend society’s resources on the severely handicapped.
Social desirability bias is incredibly powerful and one should choose one’s battles. Polite society in the West went from being quite racist, in ways that didn’t always align with the facts, to correcting hard (thanks, Hitler) to race is only skin deep, which also doesn’t align. And then we got the influence of Kendiism.
Even ignoring immigration (where he doesn’t cover the Garret Jones stance), a lot of US politics comes down to this issue, and HBD was mostly in a quietist tradition the last few decades with little influence for being outside the Overton Window.
I know Trace doesn’t like HBD much, but wow is that like the whole story of his FAA traffic controller storyline. If you listen to the Blocked and Reported episode, he and Jesse aren’t shy about pointing out it was an insane policy to completely jettison meritocracy, but they dance around the general point that if you set a fairly high intellectual bar for a job, it’s going to look like the racists are right. If you allow self-selection, you also very well might make it look like the sexists are right.
The elephant in the room is only growing larger for anyone following the facts. Conceding the present Overton Window is unassailable is I think conceding defeat to the social justice left.
A rare miss from Hanania. Much of the piece is just railing against people he doesn't like using group differences for their own political projects. Obviously this happens, but these people are incredibly fringe and have no power (although you'd be almost forgiven for believing otherwise if you spend a lot of time on twitter). Hanania seems to pretty much acknowledge he believes HBD is true in the essay, so I won't even get into that argument in this post.
The reason talking about HBD is important is that so much policy is based on the false premise that not-HBD. How can you even begin to attempt to fix education without addressing the inevitable racial gaps in ability grouping and standardized testing? Hanania's example about the politician slickly changing the subject is very stupid imo. Cofnas is right that smart people and the elite opinion-makers that have an out-sized influence on politics and policy will not be convinced by these cheap tricks. If you want to eliminate the injustice and (worse) inefficiency of policies based on blank slatism then you need to convince the intelligentsia. These people will not be convinced by changing the subject. I think popularizing HBD is much more likely than western elites saying "liberty is so great that it's worth racial inequality". That tradeoff has already been rejected. What might work is the knowledge that correcting disparities via school lunches or iPads for schools or preferential admissions/hiring will not work.
I do have some sympathy for the argument that the marketplace of ideas doesn't really work and political movements aren't based on good arguments. Even the environmentalist position, as long as it acknowledges the achievement gap which is pretty much impossible to deny, entails blacks in the US being underrepresented in any meritocracy. Of course, progressive environmentalists will never say that "obviously affirmative action means less-qualified applicants are hired, but those applicants are less qualified because of lead/food deserts/redlining/racism so it's good and right to balance those disadvantages out" even though that's the logical consequence of acknowledging the achievement gap and being pro-AA. The coherent position is rarely the one stated or defended, but Hanania's argument that we should therefore not talk about HBD doesn't follow. Arguments are soldiers, but forcing progressives to twist themselves into knots trying to explain why non-blacks so struggle to run 100m in under 10 seconds is a good rhetorical tactic. There is an enormous corpus of literature that's essentially blank-slatist racial cope, identifying environmental causes for black underachievement which can only conceivably be remedied by the types of policies Hanania has spent the last few years fighting. I don't see any rhetorically viable response to this corpus from an opponent of DEI or whatever the race-communism buzzword is these days other than HBD. Basically, I agree with Cofnas and don't think Hanania really refutes him.
It's also very strange to cede the idea that truth has value in political discussions. Falsity has costs. Propagating the truth about Lysenkoism wouldn't have destroyed the USSR or communism as an ideology but it may have saved many lives. Talking about HBD is likewise not a silver bullet, but if it's true then there's a lot of alpha in acknowledging it, if only to reduce the inefficiency of policy based on false premises. Also, Humans are irrational but that doesn't mean there's no advantage in making arguments based on true rather than false premises.
I'm not sure if Hanania is really trying to distance himself from his Hoste days, if he's making some attempt to increase his mainstream palatability, or if he just genuinely has a bad opinion. Whichever it is, not talking about race differences is how you get SCOTUS opinions saying that "in 25 years, affirmative action will not be necessary". That quote from the Grutter case upholding affirmative action is a direct link between the false premises Hanania doesn't want to correct and the laws that he wants to change.
For those reading this who are unsure of the facts but have noticed that many proponents of HBD are obnoxious and/or have politics you find objectionable, let me just say that autism is a superpower and the truth of a statement is completely orthogonal to how it's used in political discourse. In general, you can have whatever moral or aesthetic preferences you want, but you should be interested in having as accurate a view of the world as possible, if only to implement your preferences effectively. There's room for progressives who want racial preferences in embryo screening or genetic engineering to close the achievement gap! Effective politics may be possible without concern for the truth but effective policy is not.
I don't consider it much of a "rare" miss. I find Hanania's writings increasingly incoherent across the board, and I think he is generally searching for an odd niche to try and maintain relevance now that his actual big splash in has waned. Trying to balance takes in the anti-woke sphere to ensure you are "respectable" tends to put you into a land of comments that are either uninteresting, or fallacious, and thats where this one, and a lot of them recently, have landed.
He's not trying to be respectable, he genuinely believes most things he says, and just likes being inflammatory in all directions, I'm pretty sure.
I usually like his writing.
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If he were really trying to ensure that he was "respectable", he would not mention HBD at all. Instead, what he is doing is almost systematically pissing off both the left and the right at the same time, burning bridges on both sides. I respect him for that, it takes courage. Plus I think that both the left and the right should be mocked, so I enjoy that he riles them up.
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He's become utterly unbearable on X (it's the same joke ad nauseum. Wegeddit, the IDF are the good guys) , but I wrote that off as Twitter basically becoming an engagement farm for him while substantive posts go on Substack. You can actually maintain these positions - Bryan Caplan both accepts HBD and is for immigration - but Hanania specifically comes across as a troll looking for an audience.
Reading his response to comments here... Maybe I'm crazy, but I can't see how he isn't playing dumb (right down to standard tactics like "there's no taboo on talking about this")
It's hard to disagree with the commenter's charge that he's refusing to answer "well, why not open borders but no Muslims?" because it'll either reduce to an "unPC" take from our supposed contrarian or force him to bite the bullet on accepting Muslims, which he also doesn't want to do for obvious reasons.
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I think he’s putting out a lot of good information and content at what seems like a rapid click to me.
But in finding his overall voice he seems incoherent to me.
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