The Bell Curve: Living with Inequality

RICHARD HERRNSTEIN and Charles Murray might not feel at home with Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Lani Guinier, but they should. However vast the differences between Mr. Moynihan’s ill-fated report on the black family, Miss Guinier’s remarkable attempt to resurrect Calhoun’s concurrent majority, and the message of The Bell Curve, they have all been brave attempts to force a national debate on urgent matters that will not go away. And they have met the same fate. Once again academia and the mass media are straining every muscle to suppress debate. That the liberal and radical Left is doing so in the name of multicultural diversity merely proves that, contrary to the ignorant complaints of right-wingers, the Left does have a sense of humor—of sorts.

The New York Times has led the way. The editors, apparently appalled that their usually PC Sunday Book Review treated The Bell Curve fairly, immediately launched a day-by-day campaign on their op-ed page, in their letters-to-the-editor column, and in their own editorial space—a campaign marked not so much by gross distortion, puerile reasoning, and “McCarthyite” slander as by flagrant lying about the contents of the book.

EG

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Eugene Genovese

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RICHARD HERRNSTEIN and Charles Murray might not feel at home with Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Lani Guinier, but they should. However vast the differences between Mr. Moynihan’s ill-fated report on the black family, Miss Guinier’s remarkable attempt to resurrect Calhoun’s concurrent majority, and the message of The Bell Curve, they have all been brave attempts to force a national debate on urgent matters that will not go away. And they have met the same fate. Once again academia and the mass media are straining every muscle to suppress debate. That the liberal and radical Left is doing so in the name of multicultural diversity merely proves that, contrary to the ignorant complaints of right-wingers, the Left does have a sense of humor—of sorts.

The New York Times has led the way. The editors, apparently appalled that their usually PC Sunday Book Review treated The Bell Curve fairly, immediately launched a day-by-day campaign on their op-ed page, in their letters-to-the-editor column, and in their own editorial space—a campaign marked not so much by gross distortion, puerile reasoning, and “McCarthyite” slander as by flagrant lying about the contents of the book.