Saletan Cracks On Race And IQ

This (Will Saletan, "Stop Talking About Race And IQ") is painful to read. The tl;dr--despite his impassioned denial--is:

(Please?) stop acknowledging that our current best evidence strongly suggests that race and IQ are pretty likely to be genetically linked

Well, I've said it before: I'm as unhappy about the evidential trajectory as anyone. I think it's a real test of one's commitment to reason in general and science in particular. Saletan, sadly, couldn't hack it, and has gone from being right about this to being wrong about it. I'd guess that he cracked from the pressure. He doesn't want to believe that there's a link (who does?), and he's likely tired of being called a racist. Pseudo-moral social pressure is a powerful thing. It wears people down. Also: if you admit that there's likely a link and turn out to be wrong, you'll be held up as an example of early-21st-century racism for a looong time into the future. If you deny that there's a link, there's no social cost and lots of social benefits. (This is one of the most dangerous and irrational aspects of political correctness: its deeply anti-rational / anti-scientific orientation, and its vicious and relentless use of social pressure to enforce its edicts.)
   This is, of course, also what's driving the race nominalism of the academy--denying that race is ("biologically") real is a very effective way to defusing the race/IQ debate. No race, no problem.
   Oh, but wait...the orthodox view is that there is race...races are real!...don't forget that!...but...uh...social. Political correctness is multi-layered on this point. The whole confused apparatus of "social constructionism" is deployed so that race can be just what the academic left wants / needs it to be: semi-fictional...but real enough that they can continue to make it the centerpiece (along with "gender") of, like 117% of their research.
   Many of Saletan's arguments in that piece are downright painful to read. But everybody screws up sometimes. I don't think anyone can deny Saletan's intellectual honesty. He's clearly displayed it over and over. But this issue taxes even the most intellectually virtuous. It's the scientific equivalent of admitting to your small-town neighbors that you don't believe in the divinity of Jesus; you'll never be looked at the same again.
  And, hell, maybe buried down in details that I don't understand are better arguments than I think. There seems to be enough vagueness in play that it's permissible to hope that we're on the wrong track. As I've said many times, though: I don't think your IQ affects your moral worth, and I'd rather see us fix that important idea firmly in place than see us commit ourselves to to a policy of tactical intellectual dishonesty.