WPC1_II er, perhaps the
majority, of mainstream scholars [until recently]
believed that racial differences are very slight and that
the individual human being's capabilities and
potentialities are not predictable from his or her race;
that race differences only appear influential on a
statistical basis for large groups: for instance, a
slightly higher average "intelligence quotient" for
whites as against blacks.
This belief was consistent with militant opposition to
racial discrimination. But it was not much better than
classical racism when applied to questions of social
evolution and comparison between European and
non-European history. This is so because the historical
arguments did not need to postulate large racial
differences. If whites, on the average, held a tiny
advantage over nonwhites in, let us say, inventiveness,
that tiny advantage, working out its influence over the
centuries and millennia, would produce the result that
whites built high civilization and nonwhites did not. In
a sense, this very moderate racism was a more serious
problem than ordinary racism, because it allowed scholars
to take liberal positions in opposition to overt racial
discrimination yet continue to believe that whites are
superior genetically to nonwhites within the
subject-matter scope of their own fields...
-__e or cultural evolution."
*The Colonizer's Model of the World: Geographical
Diffusionism and Eurocentric History, p. 65.