Does The Ability To Curl One's Tongue Determine Intelligence?

I have thus far resisted the urge to blog about the Harvard email scandal.  It has not been easy to resist.  But I've managed.

Today, though, I was chatting about the issue with an old friend, and he said something quite bloggable.

What the Harvard 3L wrote to her "friends" was this:  

I absolutely do not rule out the possibility that African Americans are, on average, genetically predisposed to be less intelligent. I could also obviously be convinced that by controlling for the right variables, we would see that they are, in fact, as intelligent as white people under the same circumstances. The fact is, some things are genetic. African Americans tend to have darker skin. Irish people are more likely to have red hair. (Now on to the more controversial:) Women tend to perform less well in math due at least in part to prenatal levels of testosterone, which also account for variations in mathematics performance within genders. This suggests to me that some part of intelligence is genetic, just like identical twins raised apart tend to have very similar IQs and just like I think my babies will be geniuses and beautiful individuals whether I raise them or give them to an orphanage in Nigeria. I don't think it is that controversial of an opinion to say I think it is at least possible that African Americans are less intelligent on a genetic level, and I didn't mean to shy away from that opinion at dinner.

The debate, it seems, is whether this young woman's "openess to the possibility" that  genes make black people less intelligent than white people is racist.

How could it not be? 

To be sure, there's nothing racist about wondering whether genes determine intelligence.

But what, besides racist assumptions, could lead a person to wonder specifically whether it is the genes for skin color that determine intelligence?  Why were these Harvard law students not mooting the question of whether intelligence correlates with a receding hairline, or the ability to curl one's tongue, or double-jointedness, or a predisposition to migraine, or ... any of the thousands of other human features that are genetically encoded?

What, other than the students' own belief (or their own awareness of a societal belief) that race determines intelligence, could have led them to debate the question they were debating?

(hat tip:  my old buddy Nick Netchvolodoff)

UPDATE:  I've had some really interesting discussions with my daughter Abby about this last night and this morning.  While not disputing that the email is racist, she maintains -- and I think she's correct -- that the email does not specifically argue that the gene for skin pigmentation also expresses intelligence.  Rather, the email might be read to assert that at least theoretical possibility that in conditions of geographic and reproductive isolation, differing environments could naturally select simultaneously for both skin pigmentation and what we are calling "intelligence."

I think Abby's right about this.  But this doesn't (and she agrees here) change the larger point about the email.  There are many human biological features in addition to skin pigment that are presumably a consequence of geographic and reproductive separation/isolation over much of human history -- yet one does not hear much debate about, or many calls for study of, the possible connection between blonde or red hair and intelligence (no "dumb blonde" jokes, please) or between lactose intolerance and intelligence or between the predisposition to Tay-Sachs and intelligence.

There's a different point about this blogospheric debate I am wanting to make -- one that relates to, but is a bit different from, Orin Kerr's wise early contribution about the perils of mooting arguments with a racist past.  I've been trying to formulate it in my head for several days now.  So far I haven't found the words for it.  Maybe later today.

Comments

[annonnie]

Abby's right, as are the many commenters, that no one can read the email as asserting that the skin color controlled intelligence. Once we realize that, the "point" of the email, such as it was, disappears entirely.

Second, I don't know how you can say that there is no discussion of connections between Tay-Sachs and intelligence, because it's a brute fact that there is a lot of discussion on precisely that point.

I've read a lot of bad interpretations of that particular email, but this post stands alone!

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