BAEO’s funder paid for racist book

Reprinted from the NJEA Reporter, May 2004

The Milwaukee-based Bradley Foundation – a major benefactor to far-right think tanks and causes since its formation in the 1980s – has spent millions supporting the Black Alliance for Educational Options (BAEO).

Much of the Bradley money has gone into BAEO’s advertising campaign, using African American students to make the case for taxpayer-funded vouchers. But what most people don’t know is that BAEO’s primary benefactor is known for opposing affirmative action and civil rights, and that it paid controversial author Charles Murray $1 million to write one of the most avowedly racist books in American history.

Murray’s 1994 book, The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life, claimed that blacks are genetically inferior to whites, and incapable of learning at high levels. Murray possessed no credentials for writing about genetics and IQ; his education is in political science. The book was roundly criticized by established researchers, and its analysis was generally viewed as seriously flawed.

But that didn’t stop then-Bradley Foundation President Michael Joyce from saying: “Charles Murray is someone who this foundation has been associated with from the very beginning…. Charles Murray, in my opinion, is one of the foremost social thinkers in the country.”

Both the Bradley Foundation and the Walton Family Foundation (fueled by profits from the Wal-Mart retail chain) are major players in the national voucher movement, and major funders of BAEO. But given Bradley’s endorsement of Murray’s “research” – and both Bradley and Walton’s support for anti-affirmative action initiatives and groups – their professed concern for the educational futures of African American children should be given careful scrutiny.