Inevitable Differences: An Inquiry into Human Variation, John E.R. Staddon, Academica Press, 2026, pp. 174, $99.95 hardcover.
Inevitable Differences: An Inquiry into Human Variation, by John E.R. Staddon, a Professor Emeritus of Psychology at Duke University, is essential reading for those who wish to understand the logical fallacies of the current social justice movement, which include critical race theory; stratification economics; diversity, equity, and inclusion; and, the use of Implicit Association Tests.
In his twelve chapters, Staddon sets out to deconstruct—or rather tear down—the scholarship of some of the social justice fields’ biggest stars. For example, in chapter five Staddon writes about Ibrahim X. Kendi’s How to be an Anti-Racist and notes that Kendi is not interested in explaining why races differ in economic, educational, or social success. Rather, to Kendi, “racism is the cause of all black-white disparities.” (57) Staddon goes on to explain that “Kendi’s claim that all individuals, hence all groups, are equal in these characteristics is absurd.” (58) This “obvious falsehood” is used, according to Staddon, to introduce a “crypto-Marxist agenda that would otherwise be rejected as both destructive and unjust.” (58)
In regards to Robin DiAngelo’s White Fragility, Staddon notes that DiAngelo’s training sessions paint whiteness as evil—not just the skin color, but science and logic too. Staddon bluntly states that DiAngelo’s work is “nonsense.” He writes:
White people (“whiteness”) are slandered without evidence. It turns out that some white people are upset, which just proves their fragility, says DiAngelo. What a great strategy! First you slander people, then when they get upset you tell them that it proves you were right! This trick is the essence of White Fragility. (66)
Throughout this book Staddon holds nothing back. Most often these hits are directed at social justice scholars. Sometimes he comes out with very controversial statements, such as speculating that blacks in the U.S. may have been less intelligent than the Africans who enslaved them and then sold them to Europeans. It has been my understanding that blacks in the U.S. are actually some of the highest IQ blacks in the world, perhaps from gene flow. Also, I suspect that working as an enslaver is more about ruthless personality and tribalism, or a tendency to see humans as less than human, especially when they come from other tribes, than it is about intelligence.
For critical race theory, Staddon calls out Kimberlé Crenshaw, who wrote the 2002 article “The First Decade: Critical Reflections, or A Foot in the Closing Door” for the UCLA Law Review, for “blam[ing] racial disparities partly on intrinsically inadequate civil rights law and not at all on endogenous racial differences.” (103) Staddon notes that critical race theorists such as Crenshaw actually claim that “facially race-neutral laws, laws that make no mention of race or even assert racial neutrality—i.e. are color-blind—are in fact racist.” (103) This is a movement against color-blind law, and the Martin Luther King Jr. “dream” where a person is judged by their character, rather than the color of his skin. One suspects that Martin Luther King Jr. would be turning in his grave at the inherent racism of critical race theory.
Chapter eleven discusses the many problems with the Implicit Association Test, which was created by Harvard chair of psychology Mahzarin Banaji and University of Washington researcher Anthony Greenwald. For example, within a single test taker, results vary widely—this is known as intra-observer error and is evidence that the measure is not valid. Staddon notes that authors from both the left and the right have criticized this test, yet the test is still absurdly popular in the business world. The reason that the test is so popular, Staddon points out, is because, “Black disadvantage” exists and there isn’t enough ‘explicit bias’ to explain it. Endogenous differences are off the table, but ‘unconscious bias’ can come to the rescue and prop up failing exogenous accounts.” (136)
Throughout the book, Staddon deftly dissects the faulty logic and internal contradictions of the social justice movement. Yet the assumption that racism is ubiquitous—that everyone is racist, and that this alone explains disparities between blacks and whites—extends far beyond social justice scholarship. Staddon shows how these ideas have migrated into the broader intellectual mainstream, influencing prominent figures such as Holden Thorp, editor-in-chief of the journal Science. Social justice activists have also gained influence at the highest levels of academia. Among them is Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, former president of the American Sociological Association and Distinguished Professor of Sociology at Duke University. A leading theorist of “color-blind racism,” Bonilla-Silva is the author of Racism without Racists.
Instead of looking for racists in every corner, eugenicists in every social science department, and evil in every color-blind law, Staddon puts forth that the cause of the black-white differences are best explained by endogenous characteristics—not exogenous causes. Explaining the difference between these two, Staddon writes:
Exogenous causes are societal helps and hindrances, e.g., racism in its various mutating forms, and favoritism and privilege. Endogenous factors are the behavioral capacities of the individuals involved, e.g., their interests and abilities. Are they smart or not? Well-educated? Well-motivated? (120)
When endogenous causes are removed from explaining differences between the races, then exogenous causes, and most specifically racism, are left. However, there is too little overt racism or prejudiced people to explain the disparate outcomes between blacks and whites in the U.S.
Thus, in the social justice movement, rather than investigating and addressing this important issue, new types of racism have to be created. These are often implicit biases, color-blind racism, and attacks on variables that measure the differences, such as merit-based grades and IQ tests.
The discussion on the heritability of IQ was placed in an appendix; but it is well worth reading. It covers some of the evidence of the validity of IQ tests, along with some of the problems with them. Staddon also does a good job explaining heritability in this appendix.
Staddon also reviews research on twins, adoption studies, and genome-wide associations to summarize the evidence for the heritability of IQ. Because readers are more likely to skip appendices, this material would have been more effectively presented as a full chapter rather than relegated to the back of the book.
Those who point to the black–white gap and suggest that it may reflect endogenous factors often face severe professional consequences. Perhaps no case illustrates this more clearly than the dismissal of Amy Wax from the University of Pennsylvania, after she raised the issue of racial differences in academic performance among law students.
Inevitable Differences effectively makes the case for the endogenous causes explanation for racial disparities. Staddon points out that some of the endogenous traits are related just to luck—did you win the genetic lottery and inherit a natural talent for sports or music? The distribution of these talents may not be equal across the races, but this hardly makes them unjust. Unfortunately, social justice scholars, such as Harvard’s Michael Sandel, attack meritocracy and talent. Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers, which was a best-selling pop science book, falsely states that “persistent hard work”—the “10,000-hour rule”—will propel anyone to success, implying that natural talent is a falsehood. Yet, anyone who loves to dance, for example, as I do, has seen those who have taken thousands of hours of dance class and still just can’t get the rhythm. Yes, this is a personal anecdote, but it references a wider truth. Staddon realizes that “this denial of natural talent is false, even absurd; natural talent, of many kinds, exists—as does its opposite. “There are both geniuses and fools.” (31) To tell people that this is not the case will lead them to believe that they are being discriminated against when they fail to succeed. Sometimes, in a zero-discrimination environment, despite extreme effort, people (of any color!) simply won’t make the grade.
Staddon ends with a call to accept different outcomes, and the need to realize that even though inequalities may increase when people are allowed to achieve greatness, they raise the entire community. “[T]he only way to make equalitarianism come true is to reduce everyone to the same low level.” (147)
I wish Staddon had covered more of the research on endogenous differences, some of which is sometimes called “race realism,” including those on sports (such as Jon Entine’s Taboo: Why Black Athletes Dominate Sports and Why We are Afraid to Talk); behavior and evolution (such as J. Philippe Rushton’s Race, Evolution, and Behavior); and articles on race differences posted on the website Aporia (https://www.aporiamagazine.com/). That being said, reading Inevitable Differences gave me an arsenal of useful information to utilize against those who believe the current social justice explanations on race differences.
Elizabeth Weiss is Professor Emeritus, San José State University and a National Association of Scholars Board Member. She last appeared in AQ with her review of the “Stanford Academic Freedom Conference” (Winter 2023).
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