Racism was a primitive totalitarianism; it was naked, obvious, malignant
and crude. It possessed none of the technical efficiency of our current
polices. The discussion of race in America highlights and obscures a fatal
flaw in our country’s character – the Syllogism of the Satisfied.
DuBois coined the term some time ago as a way of explaining the institutional
denial of causality and consequence that our way of life is based on. Our
SUVs are clean and safe, our diapers miraculously vanish and have no impact
on the ecology, the rain forest were not that important and aqua net has
nothing to do with skin cancer. These are explanations that can only be
formulated through the logic of denial and superiority rooted in American
exceptionalism. Now the Chicago Sun Times has used Charles Murray’s
article to loose the logic of the Syllogism on our children.

It is true that many social and economic problems are
disproportionately found among people with little education, but the culprit
for their educational deficit is often low intelligence.

Refusing to come to
grips with that reality has produced policies that have been ineffectual at
best and damaging at worst. link

When I read the version of Murray’s article in the Sunday Chicago
Sun Times (March 18, 2007 page 3b – not available online) I was
furious. The article was redacted to suggest, not so subtlety, that a goodly
portion of the population was beyond hope. That, the eugenicist arguments of
native intelligence were, in fact, true; sad and lamentable but, true. They
implied that the reasons our schools are failing and our children are being
mis-educated have nothing to do with the fact that No Child Left
Behind (NCLB) is an unfunded mandate (technically
it isn’t – operationally it is). There is
no mention of the stranglehold
NCLB has on American education; no mention that NCLB effectively siphons
off educational funds and redistributes them to the major publishing houses.

Murray’s actual article says that the structure of educational
policy is artificially swelling the ranks of colleges by denying the simple
fact that college is not for everyone. While I don’t agree with
Murray’s research, I can’t blame him for this abominable
misrepresentation of his work by the Chicago Sun Times. It is a gross
misrepresentation of research and a dangerous one at that. It is yet another
example of the sensationalist propaganda that passes for news and an eerie
harbinger of the direction society is being steered. Full