[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 11 (Thursday, January 19, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1133-S1136]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




              OPPORTUNITY, PROMISE, AND ``THE BELL CURVE''

  Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, during a too short ministry among us of 
Martin Luther King, Jr., he spoke very eloquently, with great insight 
and I believe with profound wisdom, on many aspects of American life. 
He taught us about the promise of equality and about the meaning of 
community and about the greatness of our human potential. But of all 
the many things that Dr. King taught us--and we just memorialized his 
birthday the beginning of this week--of all the things he taught us, 
one in particular has held much meaning for me, particularly in recent 
months. And that is the standard he set for human behavior and the 
qualities he identified as being the true measure of humanity.
  Dr. King challenged us, in his words, to ``rise above the narrow 
confines of our individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all 
humanity.''
  He reminded us that one of the true standards of success is ``the 
quality of our service and relationship to humanity,'' not, as he put 
it, ``the index of our salaries or the size of our automobiles.'' Dr. 
King's standard for humankind, set by him, was a very high one. To take 
responsibility not only for ourselves but for others as well, to take 
our guide--more as our guide a moral and rich vision of ourselves and 
the community of man. In this way he challenged us to become the 
guardians of our most precious American legacy, and that is the promise 
that each of us deserves: an opportunity to fulfill our potential, 
whatever that potential may be.
  And that is what I would like to speak to this morning, and about why 
I am concerned that this Nation, and some of our leadership, is turning 
away from that promise.
  The richness of Martin Luther King's vision has long inspired many 
Americans but today I find I need, and I believe our country needs, his 
inspiration even more. For today we hear increasingly from those who 
speak of human potential, not with hope but with hopelessness; whose 
voices do not celebrate the strength of community, but echo the fear of 
diversity; and who would abandon the fundamental American principle of 
equal opportunity to the long discredited notions of superiority and 
inferiority.
  Today we hear from those who confuse the lack of opportunity with the 
inability to achieve.
  Let me say that again. I think today we are hearing from too many 
people who confuse the lack of opportunity a person has with the 
inability of that person to achieve.
  Today, we have a new chorus of voices whose sense of community 
extends no further than those just like themselves and who dismiss the 
potential of others who are different from themselves. Today those 
voices are drawing support from a book called ``The Bell Curve,'' the 
new intellectual sophistry, engaged in, as it has been over the past 
two centuries in this country, to justify an agenda that is abhorrent, 
in my view, to American principles.
  This book attempts to persuade us with the language of science to 
forget about hope, to forget opportunity, to [[Page S1134]] forget the 
power of new challenges and the promise of an inspired mind; to forget, 
indeed, the very principles on which this Nation was forged. ``The Bell 
Curve'' tells us that our genes guide us toward a life of fulfillment 
or condemn us to a life of emptiness, and that we can do nothing to 
change our destiny. This book, written by the conservative social 
critic Charles Murray, and the late Harvard psychologist, Richard 
Herrnstein, essentially asserts three propositions. And I acknowledge 
in the brevity of time I will not do full justice to the propositions.
  The first of those propositions asserted is that intelligence can be 
captured by a single quantitative measure, expressed as an IQ score. 
That is the basic premise. That we can determine the intelligence of a 
person by an IQ score test.
  Second, that intelligence is genetically based and effectively 
unchangeable.
  And third, that intelligence, more than any other factor, determines 
job performance, dependency on welfare, rates of birth and 
illegitimacy, crime, and other social behavior.
  They are the three basic assertions in this book, among others. In 
other words, these modern day Social Darwinists posit that differences 
in what various races achieve result from genetic makeup alone, not 
from environmental factors, and that they cannot be changed.
  Think about the consequences for this country if we adopt that 
proposition.
  So the authors argue society should stop trying to help anybody who 
is not a member of their so-called intellectual or cognitive elite--
that is the phrase they use: the intellectual and cognitive elite.
  The science of ``The Bell Curve,'' I believe, and I will at a later 
date speak to this, has been widely and convincingly attacked on many 
levels by other experts, intellectuals, psychologists, and 
psychiatrists. First, many scientists have pointed out that it is 
widely disputed whether there is such a thing as intelligence quotient, 
IQ, a single figure that can quantify intellectual capacity, let alone 
measure creativity or originality or other productive talents.
  Second, critics of ``The Bell Curve,'' the scientific critics, have 
pointed to all of the existing evidence that IQ scores can be improved, 
that they are not fixed, that they are not immutable. I ask the parents 
who may be listening, go look at the IQ test your children took when 
they entered first grade or second grade. Then, if they have had a good 
education, look at the IQ test they take as they enter high school. You 
will find a difference. It is changeable as a consequence of 
opportunity and exposure and education.
  Indeed, even ``The Bell Curve'' authors acknowledge that improved 
nutrition--improved nutrition, not education--raises IQ: Nutrition.
  Finally, scientists have rebutted the notion that IQ scores are a 
predictive of a life of accomplishment. They have identified ``The Bell 
Curve'' psychometrics as the latest incarnation of the discredited 
pseudoscience of eugenics. Remember back in the 1920's? I remember 
studying this when I was in undergraduate school. There was a school 
that talked about whether or not--all you had to do was measure the 
circumference of the skull and you could determine whether or not 
someone had an intellectual capacity that was inferior or superior. 
While these so-called researchers measured the circumference of a skull 
in a similarly perverse effort to justify racial discrimination in the 
1920's, we now have those who have a different way of doing the same 
thing. That is, just measure the IQ and you have a determinative of 
everything that is going to happen to that young child.
  You young pages here, if we measure your IQ and you have a high IQ 
and cognitive ability--and I am sure you all do--then in fact you are 
marked for success. If you have an average IQ or lower IQ, you are in 
trouble according to the authors of ``The Bell Curve.''
  But it seems to me that exposing the weakness of the authors' 
science, which I have not done fully and I will over a period of the 
next 6 months, while necessary, is not sufficient. It seems to me that 
Dr. King taught us that what is wrong with the conclusions of the 
authors of ``The Bell Curve'' goes far beyond the errors of their 
scholarship or the weakness of their science.
  It seems to me that the basic premise of what we all celebrated in 
Dr. King's birthday this week is that Dr. King teaches us that the view 
of humanity purveyed by those who speak the language of ``The Bell 
Curve'' is bankrupt because they ignore the very characteristics that 
Dr. King knew mark the true measure of humanity.
  The definition of human value was richer by far than mere IQ, or even 
of intelligence more broadly conceived and measured. Dr. King told us 
that:

       Everybody can be great. Because anybody can serve.
       You don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't 
     have to make your subject and your verb agree to serve. You 
     don't have to know about Plato and Aristotle to serve.
       You don't have to know Einstein's theory of relativity to 
     serve. You don't have to know the second theory of 
     thermodynamics in physics to serve.
       You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by 
     love.

  Dr. King's words teach us to think more broadly of human achievement:
  To think about those achievements that depend on generosity, on 
thoughtfulness, on sacrifice, on respect for others;
  To think about those that depend on creativity and originality: the 
most inspired painting, the most soothing melody, the most piercing 
wit, the most graceful dance, the most insightful social commentary, 
the most unexpected athletic achievement.
  In other words, we must be guided by the very things that make life 
most worth living, when we seek to measure human achievement.
  Is not the acknowledged reality of achievement more important than 
the mere abstraction of I.Q., particularly when we recognize that 
statistical abstraction--by its very nature--lends itself all too 
readily to misconstruction in the service of narrow-minded mischief.
  Of course, achievement built on talent, discipline and a sense of 
moral obligation can not be weighed and measured on an arithmetical 
scale.
  Indeed, as each generation finds new ways to outperform the last, we 
learn how futile it is to place limits on human accomplishment, and how 
foolish we would be to forget that our potential is as great as our 
imagination.
  In this way, Dr. King spoke to the first fallacy of ``The Bell 
Curve''--

       The notion that human intelligence, much less human worth, 
     is so narrow and pinched as to mean only what can be measured 
     by an I.Q. score.

  Even more importantly, Dr. King warned us that ``intelligence is not 
enough''; rather, he said, we must strive for what he called 
``intelligence plus character.''
  Because, as he reminded us, ``the most dangerous criminal may be the 
man gifted with reason but with no morals.''
  King saw that intelligence divorced from morality is worth little.
  As an undergraduate at Morehouse College, he wrote that the 
segregationist former Georgia Governor, Eugene Talmadge,

     possessed one of the better minds of Georgia, or even America 
     * * * he wore the Phi Beta Kappa key.
       By all measuring rods, Mr. Talmadge could think critically 
     and intensively; yet he contended that I am an inferior being 
     * * *.

  ``What did he use all that precious knowledge for?''--King asked. 
``To accomplish what?''
  ``To accomplish what?''
  Thus, Dr. King spoke to the second fallacy of ``The Bell Curve.''

       The notion that intelligence uninformed by morality can 
     create a worthy woman or man.

  Only an immoral person, no matter how intelligent, could ever think 
it acceptable to judge another on the basis of his or her membership in 
a group.
  King taught us that no one has the right to say that another's fate 
should be--or can be--enslaved by the color of his or her skin, or by 
the nature of his or her religious beliefs, or by the origins of his or 
her ancestors, or by the wealth of his or her family.
  Dr. King understood that there are real differences among 
individuals.
  But for him, those differences reflected the richness of the human 
condition, they were an accepted part of the greater community of man--
not a [[Page S1135]] reason for division, and never an excuse for 
relegating whole groups of people to a permanent underclass.
  He urged each of us, whatever our talents, to accept responsibility 
for ourselves and to strive for excellence. He said:

       If it falls to your lot to be a street sweeper, sweep 
     streets like Michelangelo painted pictures, like Shakespeare 
     wrote poetry, like Beethoven composed music;
       Sweep streets so well that all the host of heaven and earth 
     will have to pause and say, ``here lived a great street 
     sweeper, who swept his job well.

  Of course, he also know what artificial barriers could do to limit 
individual achievement.
  He knew that the street sweeper was dealt his hand not solely by the 
configuration of his DNA, but was the product of a complex tangle of 
forces shaped by families, by communities, by social and economic 
systems--and by government.
  Dr. King's great struggle, first for civil rights and later for 
economic justice, was itself a testament to his conviction that people 
of all races, colors, creeds, and religions deserve an equal chance to 
achieve their potential--an equal chance, a level playing field.
  And so we come to the third fallacy of ``The Bell Curve'': that all 
people stand today on a level playing field, free to reach their 
potential, because implicit in the book and those who are espousing its 
principles is that there is already a level playing field.

  The reality, of course, is that we have not yet achieved a society 
where all people enjoy equal opportunity.
  Instead we remain a society where too many minds are stifled by 
poverty, paralyzed by violence, stunted by poor education, starved by 
poor nutrition, and diseased by unsanitary housing.
  We need only look around us to see how much such deprivation costs us 
as a society, and we need only listen to Martin Luther King to 
understand that we can not--indeed, we must not--promise anyone an easy 
way out.
  Dr. King never promised to make it easier on anyone--he sought equal 
opportunity for all people, but he knew it was up to each individual to 
seize the challenge.
  By assuming personal responsibility, by preparing for the hard work 
opportunity demands, by striving for excellence in every endeavor, and 
by dedicating achievement always to moral ends.
  Martin Luther King was by no means an easy taskmaster--but he 
challenged our society as a whole as much as he challenged each of us 
as individuals.
  He knew--and this is the crux of his teaching--that personal 
responsibility and the drive for excellence can develop and succeed 
only in the context of equal opportunity.
  Ask yourselves: if your personal achievement was limited or blocked 
by prejudice or by policy.
  Would you push as hard as you could to get ahead? Would you be able 
even to imagine your potential achievement?
  Maybe the people on this floor can answer yes to that question. But I 
ask it another way. How many of you know people you grew up with, if 
you did not grow up in affluent circumstances, who are still behind, 
the exception being a person who makes it here or its comparable place 
in our society when they come from limited means? Why are there so few? 
Is it because we are so special, or is it because the human condition 
is impacted upon and one's potential is impacted upon by what is 
expected of them and what they are exposed to?
  When individuals are stereotyped by personal prejudice or by 
prejudicial statistics, bleak expectations become a sober reality. And 
the natural talents we all possess in some measure rarely blossom in 
the shadows of such a circumstance. Do not think for a moment that 
``The Bell Curve'' is merely an idle academic debate. The authors do 
not hesitate to convert their conclusions into policy recommendations, 
and there are many today eager to act on that advice. Indeed, their 
recommendations sound all too familiar to anyone listening to the 
current debate on education, on aid to pregnant women and children, and 
on efforts to respond to job discrimination, among other issues.
  In short, ``the authors of the Bell Curve'' view all programs 
designed to level the playing field as doomed to fail, because 
intelligence--or more precisely, i.q.--is the only thing that matters, 
and it can not be changed, according to them.
  Government--or private organizations, for that matter--are simply 
incapable of making a difference and shouldn't even try.
  Now, I believe that a number of Federal programs originally intended 
to level. The playing field are in need of reform.
  For 22 years here, I have tried to get rid of some, voted against 
others, and am prepared to jettison still others that I thought had a 
chance but have shown not to work.
  Some have had unintended, detrimental consequences; all would benefit 
by a sharp look at what is working and can be maintained or expanded, 
and at what is not working and should be jettisoned.
  But that is beside the point to the authors of ``The Bell Curve,'' 
because their attack is aimed at the very concept that Government 
should try to ensure equal opportunity to all our citizens. The authors 
argue that we should end, not reform, but end such efforts by 
Government.
  The authors say their recommendations are intended to prevent what 
they see as the inevitable end of the road we are on, a ``custodial'' 
state, something like a ``high-technology Indian reservation,'' where 
the permanent underclass is minimally fed and housed.
  To their credit, the authors say they want to avoid this nightmare 
vision, but what they recommend is obviously insufficient on a 
practical level and entirely unacceptable on a moral one.
  First, the authors suggest that we abandon our efforts to create the 
equality of condition among all people that our Founding Fathers 
believed was a self-evident human heritage.
  Indeed, they suggest we return to ``an older intellectual 
tradition,'' unburdened by our historic American belief that ``all men 
are created equal.''
  Instead of trying to ensure equal opportunity so that every person 
has a fair chance of success, they say we should simply focus on 
improving the fabric of family and community.
  They suggest that we return a wide range of social functions to 
neighborhoods or municipalities, to improve our sense of community.
  They propose that we should simplify Government regulations that make 
it more complicated for people to function--rules governing education, 
taxes, Government assistance, to name a few.
  They recommend reforming the criminal justice system to make it 
simpler to know what is a criminal offense and what is the sanction for 
it.
  And they suggest reemphasizing the unique legal status of marriage, 
as the only relationship with legal benefits, as well as legal 
obligations. I do not necessarily quarrel with these practical 
recommendations; it seems to me that some of them may well be worth 
pursuing.
  What I do quarrel with--and vehemently so--is the idea that we, as a 
society, should give up what has been a bedrock principle of our 
Nation: that all men are created equal, and thereby abandon any idea 
that Government has a role in seeing that no one is denied an equal 
opportunity to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
  Government cannot manipulate people's heredity, and it should not 
attempt to do so, but I believe a moral government can--and must--
pursue policies that treat every person as a resource.
  If low IQ's are the problem, why not try to raise them, through 
better nutrition, which the authors of ``The Bell Curve'' acknowledge 
does make a difference?
  If the fabric of families is torn, why not focus on programs that 
enable them to mend themselves--
  Programs that keep children from going hungry, that help young people 
get off and stay off drugs;
  That keep the streets safe so local businesses can flourish and 
families can get to and from work and school;
  Programs that help new factories open and train and retrain our 
workers for new jobs.
  As we consider this challenge, we should remember what Martin Luther 
King never forgot--that opportunity is not a substitute for personal 
responsibility.
[[Page S1136]]
  New ideas are being proposed that build on the twin pillars of 
opportunity and responsibility, and new programs are being tested in 
communities across the Nation, such as housing and transportation 
programs that help minorities move out of ghettos and buy their own 
homes.
  If the positive effects of Head Start fade out several years after 
children leave the program, why eliminate Head Start rather than 
improve the rest of the education system to extend its success?
  If answers tried in the past have failed, it means we should try new 
answers, not give up on the problem. As a government--and as a 
society--our policies must have a moral dimension:
  They must respect the value of each individual, and never dismiss 
anyone or any group of people as unworthy of a fair chance.
  Shredding the social safety net will not avert a crisis; in my view, 
it only propels us ever faster toward crisis.
  It will swell the divisions between rich and poor; it will lead to 
more racial animosity and ethnic hatred; it will sacrifice the dream--
the very American dream of Martin Luther King, who foresaw a day when 
his four children would, in his words,

       Live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color 
     of their skin, but by the content of their character.

  He spoke of a ``beloved community,'' his vision of an America living 
in racial harmony, where individuals judge each other on individual 
merit and achievement; where values triumph over charts, graphs, and 
stereotypes; where all people are nourished and expected to succeed.
  This is a vision of a moral society--the kind of society our 
forefathers saw as their bequest to the Nation--and it stands in stark 
contrast to the custodial state envisioned in ``The Bell Curve.''
  Fulfilling Dr. King's vision of a beloved community, founded on both 
individual responsibility and equal opportunity--a community that 
rewards achievement and places barriers before no one--has always been 
and remains today the foremost challenge for American society.
  Martin Luther King understood that better, perhaps, than any other 
American of this century, and we can offer him no greater memorial 
today--we can offer ourselves no greater assurance of maintaining our 
American heritage--than by rejecting both the arguments and the 
conclusions of ``The Bell Curve'' in favor of that ``beloved 
community'' for which Martin Luther King, Jr., lived and died.
  Mr. ASHCROFT. Mr. President, I yield the distinguished Senator from 
Tennessee 7\1/2\ minutes of my time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The Senator from Tennessee is recognized.
  (The remarks of Mr. Thompson, Mr. Ashcroft, and Mr. Bond, pertaining 
to the introduction of Senate Joint Resolution 21 are located in 
today's Record under ``Statements on Introduced Bills and Joint 
Resolutions.'')

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