Legal Commentary

Bell Curve Sully

By Big Tent Democrat

Ta-Nehisi Coates writes:

[H]ad a writer for The New Republic, in the midst of asserting that blacks should not enjoy constitutional protection, argued that "Black life is cheap, particularly to blacks," and then doubled down on the assertion, I don't think we'd be having this debate--emphasis on "think."

How about a former TNR writer and current Atlantic writer? Stephen Metcalfe on Bell Curve Sully:

I now point readers to an Aug. 26 post by Andrew Sullivan on his blog, which is worth quoting at length -- "One of my proudest moments in journalism was publishing an expanded extract of a chapter from "The Bell Curve" in the New Republic before anyone else dared touch it. [. . . T]he book held up, and still holds up as one of the most insightful and careful of the last decade. The fact of human inequality and the subtle and complex differences between various manifestations of being human - gay, straight, male, female, black, Asian - is a subject worth exploring, period. [. . .] I'm proud of those with the courage to speak truth to power, as Murray and Herrnstein so painstakingly did.

(Emphasis supplied.) Metcalfe wrote that Sullivan helped "white supremacist ideas slip into semirespectability via The Bell Curve. And yet it is we 'liberals' who deserve suspicion for wondering: Could this sordid history possibly be apposite to the contemporary "race realists'" single-minded obsession with demonstrating the intellectual deficiency of blacks? [. . .] So sorry. Have I ceased to be a liberal "in the classical sense"? I forgot the rules of the game. To Andrew Sullivan, then, you speaker of truth to power: game, set, match! Yours is the highest honesty, the greatest moral courage!" I think Coates thinks wrong (though let me tip my hat to Coates for writing "With regard to Andrew, I just want to be clear that I have no problem holding him accountable for the Bell Curve piece." That's not easy to do when you work with someone. Good on him.)

Speaking for me only

Full post as published by TalkLeft on September 20, 2010 (boomark / email).