ABSTRACT
Social science today condones and perpetuates a great falsehood— one that undergirds much current social policy. This falsehood, or "egalitarian fiction", holds that racial-ethnic groups never differ in average developed intelligence. This chapter discusses three facts regarding the group differences: Racial-ethnic differences in intelligence are real, regardless of how we choose to construe them, differences in intelligence are of great practical importance, and group disparities in intelligence are stubborn. Enforcement of the egalitarian fiction has tragic consequences, especially for blacks. An overwhelming majority believes that individual genetic inheritance contributes to variations in IQ within the white community, and a smaller majority expresses the same view about the black-white and SES [socioeconomic] differences in IQ. Enforcement of the egalitarian fiction is not a moral or scientific imperative; it is merely political. It is terribly short-sighted, for it corrupts both science and society.
