I should no longer be shocked at the intellectual dishonesty of Charles Murray, but I am. On Tuesday Murray made a brief reply to his critics, most notably Paul Krugman, who have accused Murray of racism for much of his work, but especially his 1994 book, “The Bell Curve.” Murray rejoined the news cycle last week, when Rep. Paul Ryan cited him as an expert on poverty and the troubles of “inner city” men, who, in Ryan’s words, are “not even thinking about working or learning the value and the culture of work.”
Krugman – and I and Josh Marshall and lots of other people – explained why citing Murray got Ryan accused of racism. The New York Times columnist stated flatly that Murray is “most famous for arguing that blacks are genetically inferior to whites.”
Josh and I and others spent a lot more time and energy explaining Murray’s pernicious race and class biases, but of course Murray replied only to Krugman. And to do so, he cherry-picked a few sentences from “The Bell Curve” in which he and his late co-author Richard Herrnstein acknowledged there remains debate over whether the lower IQ scores of blacks and Latinos are genetic or environmental .... http://www.alternet.org
