In his May 14 syndicated column, Pat Buchanan wrote that former Heritage Foundation researcher Jason Richwine “scandalized the Potomac priesthood” with his doctoral dissertation arguing that Hispanic immigrants may never “reach IQ parity with whites.” Buchanan then bolstered Richwine's work by citing examples of what he called “underclass behavior” by Hispanics:

The 2009 Programme for International Student Assessment, PISA, which measures the academic ability of 15-year-olds worldwide, found the U.S.A. falling to 17th in reading, 23rd in science, 31st in math.

Yet, Spain aside, not one Hispanic nation, from which a plurality of our immigrants come, was among the top 40 in reading, science or math.

But these folks are going to come here and make us No. 1 again?

Is there greater “underclass behavior” among Hispanics?

The crime rate among Hispanics is about three times that of white Americans, while the Asian crime rate is about a third that of whites.

Among white folks, the recent illegitimacy rate was 28 percent; among Hispanics, 53 percent. According to one study a few years back, Hispanics were 19 times as likely as whites to join gangs.

[...]

If our huge bloc of Hispanics, already America's largest minority at 53 million, is fed by constant new immigration, but fails for a couple of generations to reach the middle-class status that Irish, Germans, Jews, Italians and Poles attained after two generations, what becomes of our “indivisible” nation?

Rather than face this question, better to purge and silence the Harvard extremist who dared to raise it.

As Media Matters senior adviser Ari Rabin-Havt explained, Buchanan and Richwine represent an ideology that remains perfectly acceptable inside the conservative movement and the right-wing media.