But, in fact, there is no reason to "adjust" SAT scores for either race or privilege. Colleges use the SAT in making admissions decisions for good reason. The SAT does correlate with college performance more strongly than any other measure available.
If the SAT were biased, we would expect it to underpredict Black and Latino performance. In study after study, however, the SAT has been shown to, if anything, overpredict minority performance.
The real consequence of affirmative action is the aggravation of racial tensions.
Instead of demanding more affirmative action, Murray and Herrnstein take a step back and consider the underlying assumption that, as groups, whites and Blacks are fundamentally equal in ability.
What they find is what scholars in the field of psychology have known for the last 30 years: there is a significant difference (on the order of one standard deviation, or 15 points) between the average I.Q.s of whites and Blacks.
While there is a debate over what I.Q. really means, there is little question that whatever I.Q. measures has a lot to do with what is involved in becoming a doctor or a lawyer or a professor.
If the average I.Q. of a white is higher than the average I.Q. of a Black, then we ought not expect there to be, absent discrimination, a proportional representation of whites and Blacks at each level of society. Therefore, a disproportionate number of whites in the academic profession does not necessarily mean, as our legal system presently claims, that there is anti-Black discrimination in the university.
Liberals ask about the effect environment has on I.Q. As the nature versus nurture argument has played out so far, Murray's and Herrnstein's critics have continually missed the point.
Murray and Herrnstein have never said that intelligence is solely a genetic attribute. With intelligence, there is clearly an interplay between genes and environment. The bone of contention is not the environmental element, but the existence of a genetic component at all.
Murray and Herrnstein, based on the overwhelming evidence collected over the last century, believe that genes do explain a part of the difference between Blacks and whites. Even to the extent that better socioeconomic conditions correspond to higher I.Q.'s, they correspond to higher I.Q.'s both for Blacks and whites.
In fact, the gap between upper-class whites and upper-class Blacks (although the I.Q.'s of each group are higher) is actually wider than the gap between lower-class whites and lower-class Blacks. This fact, borne out by decades of scholarship, strongly suggests a genetic component. But even if intelligence were in some significant or concrete way the product of environment, Murray and Herrnstein argue persuasively in the most recent New Republic that the burden of proof is on their critics to point to a "single educational, preschool, day care or prenatal program that is not already being tried" that could be shown to enhance one's I.Q.
In this light, the authors of The Bell Curve appropriately advocate a reduction in centralized government and the return of control to communities and of rights to individuals.
It is extremely ironic that the outcry over The Bell Curve has emanated mostly from liberal circles, since it is precisely the liberal ideology of group rights and governmental social engineering which could make the facts which Murray and Herrnstein point out so terribly dangerous.
This brings us back to the quotation with which this editorial began. It is taken not from The Bell Curve or from any of its sources, but from Margaret Sanger's Pivot of Civilization, published in 1922. Margaret Sanger, as many readers may know, is the celebrated founder of Planned Parenthood, and an unrepentant eugenicist.
Another editor of The Crimson, Brad Edward White, ended a review of The Bell Curve by asking "thinking conservatives" to reconsider their "urge to dismantle government." It seems ironic that Mr. White would consider strengthening the likes of Hitler, Stalin, and Sanger's favorite tool: a powerful central government meant to administer a program of eugenics.
But, then again, without the federal government, we wouldn't have Planned Parenthood. And without Planned Parenthood, we wouldn't have two Black babies dead for every three that are born.