Ignorance is Strength (?) The normally reasonable Steve Sailer has recently made an argument that I find indefensible in his review of Connerly's Racial Privacy Initiative. To wit:

As a stat geek, I'd love to be able to download all the Census data sorted by religion. But as an American, I'm glad I can't. There are some huge disparities among the followers of the various religions in America, but we think about these differences much less than we think about differences among categories about which the government collects statistics. And that's good for American unity.

This endorsement of intentional ignorance seems positively Orwellian, and I was very surprised to see Sailer voice this in VDare, of all places. I disagree with VDare on many issues, but I do give them credit for openly discussing the taboo topic of race. Sailer and VDare have long recognized that ignoring race differences or shoving them under the table will not make them go away, which makes this recent reversal all the more puzzling. Perhaps Sailer is inclined to give Connerly the benefit of the doubt for his adroit advocacy of Prop. 209, a piece of legislation that employed similarly "color-blind" language as a Trojan Horse for anti-affirmative action legislation. At that time (as now), open discussion of the academic inadequacy of "underrepresented minorities" was taboo. In fact, it was (and is) considered "immoral" to even broach the idea that the races were not equal in their abilities. Thus, merciless meritocrats like myself had no recourse but to invoke the nonsensical "color-blindness" principle to give a "moral" sheen to the proposition. This act of rhetorical jujitsu turned the flawed "equality" axiom of the multiculturalist left into a convenient truncheon with which to bludgeon the identity politicians at the polls. Connerly's political masterstroke earned him respect from the Roger Clegg/Jonah Goldberg school of neoconservatives who believe in the "equality" axiom. It also earned him the undying hatred of the academic left. The problem now is that Connerly has started to swallow his own propaganda. Perhaps he believed it all along - the difference is immaterial. Like a snake turning on its handler, the axiom of "equality" which evolutionary conservatives used to mask our true positions has turned around to bite us. Now we must make common cause with the multiculturalist left to defeat the RPI. It will be an uphill battle - so why fight it? The reason is because the RPI and Prop. 209 are DIFFERENT. The distinction lies in the fact that Prop. 209 is beneficial for society and the RPI is harmful to society. Had universities actually followed the spirit of Prop. 209, we would be less likely to give engineering degrees to those who will endanger the public through their shoddy grasp of mathematics and physics. In practice the adherence to Prop. 209 has been demonstrably inconsistent. The RPI, on the other hand, would severely damage the availability of the data necessary to conduct a rational discussion on race. The only way to have a reasonable discussion about racial matters is to justify hypotheses with quantitative arguments. Such arguments require the sorts of large data sets that only the government can collect with even a semblance of impartiality. Eliminating the most reliable source of data means that more partisan organizations will step into the statistical vacuum. It is already hard enough to find people who agree that the FBI has no interest in framing thousands of black criminals and letting thousands of white criminals go free. Imagine how much harder it will be when organizations like Fairtest and Stormfront have an incentive to produce "data" of their own, while more moderate organizations are considered "immoral" for doing so. In Conclusion: The Racial Privacy Initiative is as idiotic as "anti-profiling" legislation because it intentionally avoids the truth that there are real and significant biological and behavioral differences between races.