Up North Progressive

“I like Charles Murray books…which means I’m a total nerd.” — @JebBush #NRISummit15

— National Review (@NRO) April 30, 2015

Yesterday at the National Review forum former governor of Florida and GOP presidential hopeful Jeb Bush mentioned his views on poverty were shaped by author Charles Murray. If you’re not sure who he is, he is the co-author of The Bell Curve, a book many consider to be outright racism disguised as research. What many people still don’t realize is it’s important to look at the people who paid Murray to write this book and their agenda for having books like this written.

The people responsible for paying Murray to write this book is the Bradley Foundation. A conservative foundation based out of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, The Bradley Foundation funds many conservative causes and politicians. Naturally,they are supporters of ed reform, vouchers and charter schools. A group they fund with the Walton Foundation among other donors is the Black Alliance for Educational Options, a front group promoting “school choice” cleverly disguised as school segregation.

Murray writes in The Bell Curve:

“The professional consensus is that the United States has experienced dysgenic pressures throughout either most of the century (the optimists) or all of the century (the pessimists). Women of all races and ethnic groups follow this pattern in similar fashion. There is some evidence that blacks and Latinos are experiencing even more severe dysgenic pressures than whites, which could lead to further divergence between whites and other groups in future generations.”

In other words, minorities are genetically inferior to whites, and all women are genetically inferior to men. Murray’s sources and research are flawed eugenics theory, but this didn’t stop the Bradley Foundation from using the book they paid for to shape policy and fund organizations like BAEO. That Jeb Bush admires Murray and thinks this white nationalist is correct in his opinions on poverty and race in America shouldn’t be surprising to anyone. It doesn’t surprise Bush’s fellow conservatives. In fact, many of the politicians shaping Congressional budget policy and changing how the country deals with poverty in Washington D.C. have ties to the Bradley Foundation.

Jeb Bush supports school vouchers, for-profit charter schools and Common Core because the financial backers of school ed reform – DeVos, Bradley, Gates, Walton – all support racially segregated schools. It’s the whole basis for the education reform movement in the United States. If you’re still wondering where Rick Snyder gets his motivation for corporate-based education reform in Detroit and Michigan, look no further.