I would love to watch Adam and Jamie work through some of these scenarios on Mythbusters. Me thinks the ratings would be through the roof.
The Andrew Sullivan vs. Ta-Nehisi Coates race-science-intelligence debate has found its truce. The fight over the Bell Curve was good sport because an effort to resuscitate the Bell Curve's corpse by Sullivan (and others), brought all of the eugenics, polite white supremacists, race scientists out of the woodwork. As witnessed here and elsewhere, we are no closer to ending the debate over the relationship between such a spurious concept as "race," and an even more nebulous one known as "intelligence."
To boot: all parties involved seem even farther apart on the assumption that I.Q. tests measure human brain capacity, and are at all predictive of outcomes that cannot be captured by class, income, wealth, or SES, more broadly defined. Yet, and in all, the fracas was good fun.
In the interest of transparency, I will confess a love of stereotypes. They are great heuristics. To borrow Walter Lippman's genius insight, stereotypes are neat and convenient ways of making sense of a world through the narrow lens of mediated experiences. I also revel in how researchers try to make empirical claims in support of stereotypes, that either 1) overreach in an effort to support "commonsense" understandings of the world or that 2) use the language of "rigor" and "positivism" to advance piss poor b.s. that hides behind math, overly dense language, and questionable modeling.
In the 21st century, the con of the race scientist hustlers has remained the same; the game ain't changed much over the centuries. The race science hustle remains great fun for those who see the slight of hand at work, and are confident enough to call it out.
"Bell Curve (Redux)" (what I am calling this most recent turn back to eugenics and phrenology-lite), is a chance to work through some other stereotypes about race and science.
And I can never resist a teachable moment.