I want to talk about a bad comment that was left on the article I published yesterday, because these types of things are happening more and more as I dig into these issues of inequality.

The commenter posted a classic dog whistle, starting off by asking a question “is local wealth driving educational quality, or are local concentrations of highly capably parents driving both education and wealth disparities?”

The post went on to talk about lot about the role of genetics - there was a lot of discussion of Jewish and Chinese families - and the “intrinsic capabilities” that certain types of children have. The commenter talked about good students vs. disruptive students. He talked about how “IQ and other personality factors have reasonably high heritabilities.” 

Several other readers jumped in on this comment to explain that this was both inaccurate and offensive, spurring other hurtful commenters to say that not only are some students  unable to do well in school, but that “mass migration and neglectful parents culture leads to classrooms full of disruptive kids who often turn violent.” Another poster called on me directly to be “open minded enough to call out the real reasons and ideologies behind this failing educational system.” 

Comments on the internet are a dangerous place and I get that - and when positing about issues of inequality it is going to raise several dilemmas and I’m open to hearing other people out. But this type of language and dog whistling (and even way louder than a whistle in many cases) has no place here. I also no that comments on articles are perhaps the worst place to go about beginning to change people’s minds, but I do want to say that I’m grateful for those who join in on these conversation to help stop hate and correct those who threaten the good name of others. 

I will continue to publish articles that use data to clearly show the state of the world and to make sure that the narratives of opportunity are louder than the ones of hate.