Harvard Law Student Kicks Up Racial Ruckus

Third-year Harvard law student, and Law Review editor, Stephanie Grace, has caused a poop-storm of controversy by putting in writing her views that state, “I absolutely do not rule out the possibility that African Americans are, on average, genetically predisposed to be less intelligent”.

It seems that she spoke out six months ago in an email follow-up to a private dinner conversation. One of the email recipients - Yelena Shagall - recently decided, for yet known reasons, to ‘out’ Ms. Grace. In any event, there’s a whole lot of damage control going on from all sides, including the law school Dean, Martha Minow, who is under consideration by Obama for the high court.

It is not so much what Ms. Grace said, but rather that she was so evidently having a conversation that is not allowed. To correct her, what is absolute is that we are not allowed to talk, in any forum, about the possible origins of an intelligence gap that seems to influence/explain the performance gap we experience, between White and Black.

The fact that Blacks score, on average, one standard deviation below Whites on IQ test and under perform on a myriad of standard empirical measures, across all education levels, establishes a basis, however incomplete, for Ms. Grace’s statement. This incomplete basis stands, and will remain as the ‘best case’ line of reasoning in the censored mouths of all, until the point which it is openly and critically debated. For this debate to happen, people like Ms. Grace must not be crucified.

Factors of intelligence are genetic, indeed, but not in the negative manner implied by this layman banter of terms. Good science to-date provides that nothing about having black skin genetically predisposes anyone to less intelligence. However, the correlation of black skin and lower measured intelligence does indicate that normal human distributions of intelligence could reasonably pre-date ethnicity, in expression. That these differences may be expediently visible through today's lens of race, while having other origins, is the missing piece of the puzzle, blocked by not encouraging open scientific dialog.

Differences of race, at and beneath the surface, have occurred in concert with other key events in recent human evolution (last 10,000 years). The proper assignment of cause and effect demand a critical analysis of event time lines, particular with respect to evolving homo sapien brain physiology, and including what evidence we have of recent brain mutations (genetic disorders) that might explain the pronounced disparities we see, or errantly think we see.

James C. Collier

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