Quote:
| “Equality is not the empirical claim that all groups of humans are interchangeable; it is the moral principle that individuals should not be judged or constrained by the average properties of their group.”* |
...no matter how those "average properties" arise.
When I was in college, Arthur Jensen did a speaking tour of campuses in Australia. When I say "speaking tour", that was an overstatement--a rowdy group of protesters hired a bus to follow him from place to place and disrupt his lectures, which they did successfully in all places but one. I studied at the university where he was able to speak; Jensen took a plane and the protesor's bus was left behind. The crowd was still pretty hostile, though.
In all, what he said was unremarkable. There are differences in all kinds of measures amongst genders and races. He refrained from political comment.
What he
didn't say at the time was what Murray so sensibly points out in his article. The differences within groups outweigh the differences between them. So we need to be careful to allow opportunities for the best to rise, no matter where they come from.
That said, for whatever reason, the elites may never represent the true mix of the population. So what?
We spend far too much time in America focussed on the elites and not enough time tending to our own backyards.
Which is more important--more women in the Harvard math faculty, or equal pay for equal work? The stats show we don't have either, and I don't think reforming the Harvard math faculty helps, say, a black female manager in a supermarket get the same opportunity as a white male to run the store.
On the shop floor, any modest difference in the natural abilities of either gender are far overshadowed by other factors. Like hard work, diligence, wisdom. Things which ARE affected by the environment in which you live and grow up. So let's fix
that.
Bell curves show us this. Differences at the extreme are proportionally the greatest. Differences between averages are proportionally the smallest. As civilised nations, let's start acting like the average is more important than the extreme. And let it drive public policy.
