Title & Author: Facing Reality: Two Truths About Race in America by Charles Murray
Genre: Nonfiction--Political Science
My Rating: 5.0
Summed Up:
America was founded on a unique special creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.” This creed ensured liberty, equality, justice, and for opportunity for everyone, regardless of their station in life, sex, race, religion, or any other personal trait. Murray, however, points out that “the twenty-first century saw the growth of a new ideology that repudiated the American creed altogether. It began in academia as intersectionality and critical race theory conjoined with a bastardized version of socialism.” (4) This new poison can simply be called “identity politics,” the core premise of which “is that individuals are inescapably defined by the groups into which they were born.”(5)
Identity politics has been the default political dogma for the past fifty years. In Murray’s words, the government acts like “it is appropriate for the government to play racial favorites, to dispense favors and penalties according to the group to which individuals belong.” He continues, “My view is that this position has proved to be toxic. It is based on the premise that all groups are equal in ways that shape economic, social, and political outcomes for groups and that therefore all differences in group outcomes are artificial and indefensible. That premise is factually wrong.” (6) So, what does Murray hope for? Simply put, he “want[s] America to return to the ideal of treating people as individuals.”
Murray then goes on to explore racial group differences in intelligence and criminality. He lays out the data that these are real, enduring, and largely genetic and their reality is important so that the trope of racism being to blame for unequal outcomes can finally be dispensed with. Murray says, “My message...is that the existence of differences in test scores and the existence of differences in crime rates are facts that we do not have the option of denying. The existence of these differences has certain built-in effects on socioeconomic reality that we do not have the option of denying.” (14)
Over the course of a few chapters, Murray lays out the evidence for these differences with plentiful data.
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