I said that Lincoln was a racist, and it is well-known that he favored colonization. He even told a delegation of black leaders that he did not think it was likely that blacks and whites could live together in peace. I think he and the other separatists or segregationists or apartheid supporters were actually correct. It is unlikely, a priori, that a race of former slaves will live peacefully with a race of their former masters. I don't know where such emancipation has resulted in a easy mingling of the races.
The possible consequences of freeing the slaves on social disorder is simply irrelevant to the question of freeing the slaves. This great evil had to be ended, and if it were to be ended by uprooting the slaves and sending them to Africa, and if the slaves approved, that would be enough. It was never necessary that the slaves be elevated above their masters, or that they be seated on golden thrones.
Lincoln at least was concerned with what happened to the slaves after they were freed. He wanted them trained and educated, but, as it was, millions of people were thrown on their own, possessing nothing, having no way to eat, no place to sleep, no jobs, no skills, no nothing. That they survived is a miracle, and it was relief work by the Federal government and some church agencies that made a real difference.
Regardless of his separatism, Lincoln was strongly in favor of ending slavery. He would have taken time (he was willing to permit the newly recaught southern states to take until 1900 to free the last slaves.
His ideas, like the ideas of the South, were overtaken by history. I believe he would have accepted, reluctantly, radical reconstruction and social equality for newly freed blacks if had lived to preside over reconstruction. He had no intention of leading such a radical reconstruction.
There is no agreement on why it is that African Americans have not attained social equality and equivalent success with whites. If 136 years is not enough time for a group of people with the same basic intelligence to bring themselves to equality, how long will it take? Is it even possible?
I have read an enormous amount of the literature on race and intelligence. Much of it is raw empiricism -- scores on many different tests of intelligence. Since almost everyone is of mixed race and from Africa originally, it is impossible to draw any conclusions about
"blacks" or "whites" from these papers. If race and inheritance determine IQ, then mulattoes ought to be half way between whites and blacks. Is Colin Powell halfway between Condoleezza Rice and George W. Bush? If we cannot draw inferences about individuals, of whom we know a great deal, how can we draw inferences about entire races, about the individual of which we know almost nothing except, perhaps, their test scores.
The problem of "black failure" is that it is statistically overdetermined. Almost every black person has more than enough reasons for him to fail (and so do most white people). The miracle, of course, is that any black person overcomes his or her obstacles and succeeds intellectually in a big way. Good luck or strong personal application are not sufficient reasons to predict success. I remember a young black economist (who had just been fired at University of Pennsylvania despite his authorship of two well-received books), who was visiting at Berkeley. He said when he graduated from high school in Louisiana that his parent took all of their cash (I am reporting what he said) looked in the Statistical Abstract and sent him to Washington State (where there were very few black people) to go to college. It was their theory that their very bright son would be able to get along better where there were not many blacks to confuse the whites about his performance. While he did not get a job at Berkeley, he later became U.S. Assistant Secretary of Commerce and a member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System.
Well, some make it, and some don't. If they have skills and intelligence, they make it as long as they are not imprisoned first. Anyone who wishes can prove that some individuals make it regardless of the obstacles in their paths, and that others stumble and don't make it.
For myself, based on having had hundreds of black students, including two successful Ph.D. candidates), I concluded long ago that almost all of them were intelligent enough to complete the programs they were enrolled in. But then I have never seen any student who could speak English flunk out because of inadequate intelligence. The academically stupid (84IQ<100) probably have a lot of trouble with Plato, and physics, and mathematics. But then they seldom take these courses. The academically talented (IQ > 116) learn a lot of complicated drivel and can answer many multiple choice questions in an acceptable way, but most of them never master the upper reaches of science, and very few ever contribute anything to knowledge.
Working with my Ph.D. students I never found that intelligence was a limiting factor in their work. A 120 IQ student might have to run through a proof several times before he could reproduce it on an exam paper, but hard work and memorization often produced more reliable results than the flashy intuitive grasping that the 150 IQ student was capable of. I am just not sure that high IQ really matters in vocational preparation, outside of a few academic specialties. I feel sure that at least 10 per cent of blacks are capable or becoming doctors, lawyers, and professionals. If we had more sensible educational programs, I think that eventually a very large proportion of blacks could enter professional work successfully. I am confident that within 20 years, or so, with or without affirmative action, that there will be plenty of black professionals. If we want to achieve this objective, the way to do it in my opinion is to provide more scholarships tenable at any university, rather than affirmative action in admissions and scholarships at the most selective schools. The "best" schools have the advantage that no one ever flunks out for academic failure. Once in, you have your degree. IMO competition is much fiercer at selective public universities than at private universities and colleges, but the students are a little dumber on the average. The smartest and most ambitious students aim for the big time and can either afford it or are given a free ride by the university. At subsidized selective public universities, students are too often treated as an awkward nuisance. There are too many of them. They demand special treatment (which is taken for granted at the $24,000 a year college) and they don't get it.
It might be hard for a marginal overplaced student at a Harvard to do well at Berkeley. If pressure to abolish affirmative actions pushes underqualified students out of the Ivy League into the Berkeleys and Michigans of the world (where they might belong on the basis of "merit") some are likely to fail who would have succeeded at Harvard or Princeton. |
