ACCIDENTAL CRT:

If highlighting crime differentials were Murray's only aim, he would not achieve much. Plenty of left-leaning criminologists going back to W.E.B. DuBois have been perfectly willing to admit that some Black communities struggle with violence. But Murray intends to go further, for he cannot endorse DuBois's contention that different rates of violent crime are the product of oppression and concentrated deprivation. Instead, Murray hopes that his readers will connect his work on crime to his broader hereditarian project. It is not just that some Black communities struggle with high levels of crime, Murray insinuates, but that elevated levels of violent crime are the product of inalterable genetic factors. Lest there be any uncertainty about whether Murray believes that crime differentials are the product of genetic inheritance, he made it clear on Twitter that he thinks violent crime will be a problem anywhere "sub-Saharan African populations" are found.

The claim that some races are biologically more violent than others is obviously controversial, which is why Murray leaves it up to his readers to draw the unpleasant conclusions. But in failing to offer any evidence regarding the source or cause of crime differentials, he also provides the few liberal readers sympathetic to his project no good reason to look to population genetics. If anything, what little he says about crime in Facing Reality supports the position he wishes to avoid at all costs: that elevated levels of violent crime really are the product of past injustices and present systems that continue to perpetuate inequalities.

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