SOURCE: "Demography Is Destiny," in The Village Voice, Vol. XXXIX, No. 48, November 29, 1994, pp. 95-6.

[In the following excerpt from a review of The Bell Curve and Robert T. Michael's Sex in America, Ross contends that the authors of the former have deliberately ignited racial controversies and questions their assessment of the relationship between genetics and intelligence.]

The recent elections provided a brief respite from the platitude that politics are stage-managed entirely by cyborg pollsters and media spin surgeons. Left and right seem to be persuaded that an electoral swing of such proportions cannot be attributed wholly to the PR industry's numbers game, and that it must be related somehow to "values." This may be a faulty assumption. Not because the industry does dominate politics—a self-serving claim by industry professionals—but because values are themselves intimately related to the numbers game. When Mr. Gingrich vents off about the...