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Whatever you think Klein is doing, it's not censorship, and you should just admit you got that one wrong. As Adder says, Klein is not trying to shut anyone up, he's saying that if you are going to give credence to someone who is arguing that blacks are genetically inferior, you should acknowledge the context instead of pretending it doesn't exist.
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My reply to Adder covers this.
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Far from being censored, Murray has no problem spreading his views, far out of proportion to their merits. There are a lot of people who really want to hear what he is saying, and who want to pretend it's good science, or at least good enough to be taken seriously.
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Murray's haunted the race issue for decades now because there's never been a straightforward dismantling of his theories in a public forum (a Joseph Welch moment, if you will, rather than some dense critique from a fellow academic in some obscure journal). You realize that as long as this man can assert that he's being censored, the question of whether his "science" holds water remains unresolved. I only play a scientician on television, but I've read enough on this issue to conclude that we could entirely dismiss the notion that certain groups genetically have higher IQs than others with lots of comprehensive, clinical, empirical data. We don't need to get into soft-headed discussions of the "socio-political realities" to refute Murray's prime argument. It should be addressed directly, on the science. Which Harris would, could and hopefully will do.
On a personal note, my pet theory, shared with Harris, is the sooner we can stop focusing on background (race, ethnicity, etc.), the better. None of this bigotry ends until the notion someone is alien to us based on unscientific, tribal, "cultural" bases, the sooner we'll have a truly functioning and enlightened society. I understand that's pie in the sky, that it'll never happen in our lifetimes. But I'd hope that maybe, 200 years down the road, people would stop categorizing each other. It's a rotten fetish long past its sell by date. And it's fucking dumb. The only proper assessment of a person - clinically, scientifically, logically - is based on consideration of that exact person. Not his race or his ethnicity.
You wouldn't invest in a person's business based on loose facts about his background. You'd invest based on meeting him, assessing his intelligence and business model one-on-one. You'd want the greatest amount of detail you could get on him. That same rigor should be applied to judgments about people in everyday life. Identity politics is understandable, but it's inherently generalization-based, and generalizations are dangerous.
And with that, I leave the soapbox.
