The Equality Bomb

By Hugh McInnish and James M Jackson

Bombs destroy a city; an equality bomb destroys a people.

The Equality Bomb, like rent control, is manufactured by well-intentioned rulers who don't understand what they are doing. They, just as advocates of rent control, see disparities among groups in the popul

• Language: English
• Publisher: The Chunneggee Press
• Release date: Jul 21, 2020
• ISBN: 9781087900018

Hugh McInnish

HUGH MCINNISH WAS BORN IN 1934 in Union Springs, Alabama. He worked as an engineer for the US Army in the Star Wars and other defense programs. Hugh wrote a weekly column for the old Huntsville News from which came his book An American in Exile, written under the pen name, Thomas Franklin. Hugh's wife, Martha, is a graduate of Judson College and is a teacher and school counselor. Together they have four children and six grandchildren.

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Praise for The Equality Bomb

The authors, patriotic Southerners, pointedly describe themselves as a docile octogenarian and a fiery nonagenarian protected by retirement from the Politically Correct vigilantes who now dominate Mainstream debate. They have therefore dared to rethink a history they themselves lived through, producing this devastating critique of the judicial imperialism and fake social science behind the post-World War II egalitarian revolution in public policy, backed up with case studies of its destructive impact on key school systems. To adapt Robert E. Lee, they are citizens who have taken up arms for their country.

Peter Brimelow

Founder & Editor of VDARE

Hugh McInnish and Jim Jackson write in a marvelously accessible style and argue for political positions in which I find myself totally in agreement. One would never confuse this boldly confrontational work with the evasion of sensitive questions that have become characteristic of our media elites. One may hope that its teachings will not go unnoticed.

Paul Gottfried

Raffensperger Professor Emeritus of Humanities

"Having written an accurate portrayal of the injustice perpetrated by the USA Justice Department against my father in his book An American in Exile (written under his pen name Thomas Franklin), I can vouch that Hugh has meticulously researched, made a scholarly investigation, and has truthfully presented the facts. No inequality or intellectual shortcomings by this author. Ever."

Marianne Rudolph

Daughter of Arthur Rudolph, late German

American NASA Scientist

"For over twenty-five years, I have been a publisher of such brilliant writers as Samuel Francis and Joseph Sobran. So I know a good book when I see one, and the book you are holding is one. The Equality Bomb takes on taboo topics just as Francis and Sobran did with scintillating mastery. McInnish and Jackson are fearless in exposing the failure of the public school system in America. They unravel in exquisite prose the reasons why the equality bomb is hindering rather than helping students in inner city schools to flourish. I highly recommend this masterful, refreshing, and deeply researched book."

Fran Griffin

Publisher, editor, and publicist and President Fitzgerald Griffin Foundation

"McInnish, Jackson, and I are comrades in arms. No, we’re not shooting at anybody, at least not with guns. But we are fighting a war that, however it turns out, may well be seen by history as more consequential than any of the shooting wars of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. In fact, what is at stake in this war of ideas is the survival of Western Civilization and all those things we Americans value so highly. The authors attack devastatingly the redoubt of those holding the politically correct nonsense that one person is equal in all respects to everybody else, and that, therefore, any differences in education, income, or social status are due to the evils of society. Reading this book will resupply you with the ammunition you need to defeat the enemy.

Mike Parsons

Colonel, USAF Retired

Former Fighter

Squadron Commander

The Equality Bomb

Copyright © 2020 by Hugh McInnish and James M. Jackson

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means—whether electronic, digital, mechanical, or otherwise—without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

ISBN: 978-1-7346385-5-4

Printed in the United States of America

To

Martha McInnish

and

The Late Mary Jackson

Contents

Preface

Introduction

Part I

1The Venue

2The Bell Curve

Part II

3Brown vs. Board

4Brown vs. Board Redux

5The Dark Side of Brown

6Missouri vs. Jenkins

Part III

7Intelligence Testing

8The Myth of Equality

Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Equality

A Commonsense View of Ability

The Experiential View of Ability

The Scientific View of Ability

9The Taboo of Group Differences

The Story of Larry Summers

The Story of James Watson

The Story of Galileo Galilei

10Four Hundred Years after Galileo

The Ability of Black Athletes

11What Was Really Worrying James Watson?

The Bell Curve

Part IV

12Class Size

13Miracle Schools

The Texas Miracle

Joe Clark’s School

The Heritage Foundation Study

14The Alabama Reading Initiative

Another Cold Fusion Experiment?

Moscovitch Evaluation of the ARI

Auburn University Evaluation of the ARI

UAB Evaluation of the ARI

The Alabama Reading First Initiative (ARFI)

A Brief Review

The Authors’ Analysis

Conclusion

Part V

15Train Wreck in Atlanta

Part VI

16What Can Be Done?

Part VII

17Summary

Part VIII

Appendix A: Listing of Cases

Appendix B: List of 21 Schools

Appendix C: Analysis of 21 Schools

About the Authors

Notes

Index

Preface

This book has not come into being in the usual way. It does not develop in the typical smooth way from introduction, to recitation, to conclusion in a constant flow of energy from beginning to end but more in a way analogous to the quantum theory of physics: a packet of energy followed by a gap of quiescence, then another packet of energy at some unpredictable later time.

For liberal arts majors, we will put it this way: This book is the product of two good friends’ readings and conversations over an extended period and a series of disjointed essays that record those musings. We say disjointed, but that is not altogether accurate. There is a serendipitous advantage to this structure. Each chapter can generally be read independently, without a strict requirement to treat the preceding chapters as prerequisites. In fact, each essay is related to the theme of the book: that the hopeless demand for equality is destructive of the schools, either directly, indirectly, or by implication.

The subjects covered in this book, such as topics on matters of national policy and things that are inherently controversial, tend to be dry and turgid to many readers. We know this and we have done our best to make the book a pleasure to read, even injecting a wisp of humor here and there without, we hope, obscuring the deadly seriousness of the subject.

Finally, a suggestion to the reader: Don’t feel constrained to begin this book at the beginning. Maybe start it in the middle. Turn to page 73 and read The Dark Side of Brown first. It is a horror story of chicanery in the highest councils of our government that will be impossible for you to forget.

In any event, please wade in and see what you think!

Introduction

Now, there are two excellent ways to destroy a city and learned scholars agree on this. Famed Swedish economist Assar Lindbeck, professor of economics at Stockholm University, stated that In many cases rent control appears to be the most efficient technique presently known to destroy a city—except bombing. ¹ It’s obvious that bombs can destroy a city, but how can rent control do it? American Austrian School economist and anarchocapitalist theorist Walter Block explains:

Economists have shown that rent control diverts new investment, which would otherwise have gone to rental housing, toward other, greener pastures—greener in terms of financial reward, but not in terms of consumer need.

And Block adds some pertinent details:

Existing rental units fare poorly under rent control. Even with the best will in the world, the landlord cannot afford to pay his escalating fuel, labor, and materials bills, to say nothing of refinancing his mortgage, out of the rent increase he can legally charge. And under rent controls he lacks the best will; the incentive he had under free-market conditions to supply tenant services is severely reduced.

The sitting tenant is protected by rent control but, in many cases, receives no real rental bargain because of improper maintenance, poor repairs and painting, and grudging provision of services.²

Now Block Reaches the dismal bottom line:

Rent control has destroyed entire sections of sound housing in New York’s South Bronx. It has led to decay and abandonment throughout the five boroughs of the city. (Emphasis added.) Although hard statistics on abandonments are not available, William Tucker reports estimates (sic) that about thirty thousand New York apartments were abandoned annually from 1972 to 1982, a loss of almost a third of a million units in this eleven-year period.³

But there is a third way not mentioned by Lindbeck that can also wreak great destruction. That would be by exploding an equality bomb at ground level right in the middle of the target city.

Admittedly, the word bomb is a bit of a misnomer since it has neither the suddenness nor the horrifying sound of a high explosive. Rather it has the subtleness and insidiousness of rent control but is at least as destructive.

And the equality bomb, like rent control, is manufactured by well-intentioned rulers who don’t understand what they are doing. They, just as advocates of rent control, see disparities among groups in the population, are pained by them, and seek to do good by eradicating them. They operate from a deep, fundamental belief that all persons are born with equal potential, and that the differences they see among them result from the unfair circumstances thrust upon them by society. It follows, then, that if everything is fair there will be equality among all.

And that is what charges the equality bomb with its terrible destructive power. In efforts aimed at achieving equality, our politicians take from the earners and give to the non-earners, force young children to endure long bus rides to place them in schools far from their homes, give preferential treatment to certain groups in hiring, degrade the workforce through forced hiring of unqualified people—and, of particular interest to the present authors, lowers the standards of our schools.

And inevitably, as the schools go so goes the city. When school standards and achievement decline, flight begins: first white flight followed a little later by black flight. And over time sections of the city assume the character of a ghost town.

At this point the equality bomb has done its wicked work, and what remains is the dreaded inner city.

An inner city, as we think of it, is one in which most of the white population has moved away from the older, central part and have been replaced by black people and other minorities. The school facilities may be new, but they have abysmal academic records. In this portion of the city incomes are significantly below average, homes and other buildings are in poor repair, many stores are empty and boarded up, the crime rate is higher than average, the dismal streets are windblown with trash and are unsafe at night.

Is our city, like so many others, being destroyed by the equality bomb? Is this to be our ultimate fate? Alas, we fear so. Understanding how far we may have gone down the path to an inner city, what are the factors propelling us, and what might be done, if anything, to halt the progress in that direction is what we are about here.

But frankly we are not 100 percent certain that we should be writing this book at all. To write, or not to write, that has been the question, and we debated it long and repetitiously before we finally decided to do it. But even the final decision to proceed gave no relief to our anxiety, and our internal debate continued, so strong were the forces urging caution, pointing out that not even angels had crossed the threshold we were contemplating.

Because of the thing you hold in your hand you know how our indecision, despite residual doubts, was resolved. And we hope from what we have just said, that though you may think us foolish, you will understand that we are not fools rushing in. We know what we are doing. We are familiar with the minefield metaphor and the dangers of trans-navigating it.

This particular minefield is laden with some of the most explosive things that frighten us all today, and their fuses are super sensitive: Failing schools! Discrimination! Bigotry! Intellectual ability! The Bell Curve! Money for schools! Teacher qualifications! And the two most explosive topics of all: The racial gap! And finally, Equality!

Who could blame anyone, who could blame us, if we declined to step into this frightful field guarded by taboo giants more menacing than Gog and Magog?

But for too long we who suppose ourselves to be responsible citizens have stood silently aside and allowed the debate on the important subjects we address here to be left to the experts, that is, to the educators, the media, and the politicians. Walter Lippmann, the late liberal commentator, is said to have warned us never to leave important matters to the experts. And, far to the other end of the political spectrum, the late conservative William Buckley expressed the same thought. I should sooner live in a society governed by the first two thousand names in the Boston telephone directory than in a society governed by the two thousand faculty members of Harvard University, he said.⁴

If being a non-expert is the criterion, then we make the grade. We are neither scholars, educators, nor inhabitants of a think tank but mere un-credentialed citizens striving to be responsible. We can, however, claim at least two advantages. Both of us are retired, making us invulnerable to the kind of financial intimidation so frequently used against others by those who wish them ill. And we do have a store of information and data related to schools and education, which, out of interest as parents and citizens, we have collected over time, and which we believe we can put to good use here.

So, it’s just that simple, or is it? Of course it’s not at all simple, and we cannot guarantee just how successful we might be in undertaking this most difficult task. But we can promise to do our best, and we make that promise now.

Very well, then. With our flak jackets snugged up tight, here we go!

Part I

Setting the Benchmark

1

The Venue

This story is written, not from the Washington office of a high-powered think tank, nor from any hall of ivy but from a spare room in one case and a pool house in the other, each located at the home of one of the authors in his middle-class neighborhood. Our story will admittedly be flavored by the culture of our hometown, Huntsville, Alabama, as well as be influenced by experiences in our own school system. Since this is predictably terra incognita to some readers, a short sketch of the place might be helpful.

The city is beautifully located in the Tennessee Valley on the River of the same name, and at the tail end of the Appalachian chain. Although Huntsville is geographically in Alabama, it does not have an unalloyed Alabama culture. It is sometimes said that Huntsville is in Alabama but not of Alabama. Indeed, the city is home to a varied population from other states and from foreign countries, and a native-born Huntsvillian is hard to find in the city’s wide collection of people. If a conversation is opened with a random stranger, it always comes as a surprise if he is found to have been born in the city.

It has not always been so. Before World War II Huntsville was just another county seat in the rural, cotton-raising South some twenty miles below the Tennessee border. But when the war came the government established the Redstone Arsenal on what had been sprawling farmland, and shells and other munitions were produced there. When the war ended the arsenal became largely dormant, but the government retained the land and it came in handy later.

At the end of the war our forces had captured the famed Wernher von Braun and his team of rocket scientists in Bavaria. Von Braun was the developer of the German’s V-2 Rocket. He and his team were far too valuable to allow them to fall into Russian hands, so they were secretly shipped to Fort Bliss, Texas, and after an interim of a few years they came to Redstone Arsenal in 1950.

Arthur Rudolph was a member of this team. He had been in charge of V-2 production in the underground facility below the Hartz mountains known as the Mittlewerk, and his experience there made him an invaluable rocket scientist. He was recruited as a top manager of Army programs. Urged forward by the shock of Sputnik, NASA was formed, and Rudolph transferred to this new agency. There he occupied the pivotal position of manager of the development of the Saturn V, the giant booster rocket atop which Neil Armstrong and crew lifted off from Cape Canaveral on their epochal voyage, Apollo 11, to the moon.

But these momentous achievements of NASA lay far in the future when the von Braun team arrived. Then there was nothing stunning about the town. It was just a typical cotton town of some sixteen thousand inhabitants, with a few stores clustered around the old Greek Revival courthouse and a marble Confederate soldier dutifully standing guard from his pedestal. On my first visit to Huntsville we were driven to the square, Rudolph recalled.

As I stepped off the bus, I saw to my amazement on the south side of the square in large letters Great Is the Power of Cash, and that in the land where everybody buys everything on credit! Other things that surprised me were the lay preachers, the gospel preachers, preaching on the lawn around the old courthouse, and the segregation of blacks and whites.¹

They were smart people, these Germans, and the town felt their presence immediately. There is a story that says they headed to the library to get their library cards before they had their water turned on. The Germans soon were a big influence in the intellectual, cultural, and religious life of the town. They were the leaders in founding a symphony orchestra, and in founding what became the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH). It was unthinkable to the German scientists that they would have no place to teach, and here they were in a small Southern town where no such place existed. So they created one.

Their creation began as an extension of the main campus of the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa. It was a bit odd. It had no large columned buildings with ivy climbing up the exterior walls but met at night in the vacant rooms of a high school. And, most unusual of all for an infant college, the part-time faculty, comprised mainly of our erstwhile enemies, taught only graduate courses. But the teaching seeped progressively downward into the undergraduate years, and it spread broadly across a spectrum of curricula, with a rigorous emphasis on science and technology. Today UAH is a bustling campus with some thirty buildings and eight thousand students. It has dormitories and sorority and fraternity houses. It has everything expected of a major university (except, in Alabama, a championship football team).

Nor is this the only institution of higher learning in town.

Alabama A&M University opened in 1875 under the leadership of William Council, an ex-slave. It had an appropriation of one thousand dollars and began with sixty-one students and two teachers. Today it has some forty-seven hundred students, 90 percent of whom are black. These students can choose from a wide range of academic subjects to study, including Agriculture, Business, Education, and Engineering.

In a contest for the most beautiful campus Oakwood University would have to get the award. Its campus is in a beautiful natural setting occupying eleven hundred acres just outside the city, and its architectural and landscaping features are exceptionally well done. Oakwood is a Seventh-Day Adventist institution, and it legally gives preference in hiring and student admission to those of that faith. The university has an enrollment of eighteen hundred and a faculty of one hundred. Degrees are offered in biology, chemistry, mathematics, education, religion, and a number of other disciplines.

But regarding the immigrants from abroad, there was understandably at least a penumbra of disquiet that hung over this new German-American relationship. Some of the old townsmen were clearly ambivalent concerning the new arrivals. From the view of the chamber of commerce, however, they were certain to spur the local economy, and the world-famous Wernher von Braun and his team would surely bring instant fame to their small town. But despite any initial misgivings both sides leaned forward to bridge the cultural differences. Special effort was needed to close the language gap, and some of the efforts were amusing.

Once a German couple were downtown shopping. They completed their transactions in a small store just off the square and prepared to leave. The proprietors and their two customers were taking particular care to observe all the amenities:

Thank you very much, folks.

"Ja, ja, danke schön.

It was good to see you. Thank you so much

Oh, yes. Ja, ja—ja, ja, ja, bitte schön.

The couple turned and started for the door. As they left, the proprietor,