I'm sure that Richard Moore is not a racist. But all of us have internalized
racist beliefs -- this is a racist society! -- and we try our best to get rid of
them, sometimes needing a bit of help from our friends.
A racist BELIEF is a factual proposition or theory that states some inferiority
of one racial group over another and is FALSE.
We now know that the belief that some populations of human beings (races, etc.)
have innate mental capacities that are inferior to those of other populations is
scientifically false. This includes inventiveness, innovativeness, creativity,
mathematical ability, artistic ability, scientific ability, etc., etc., etc.
Individuals differ in some of these ways, but large aggregate populations do
not. "IQ" does not measure intelligence -- a quality that nobody has been able
to define, much less elicit -- but, rather, it differentiates only among
individuals within a group of people, of whatever age, who have had essentially
the same life-experiences and opportunities. Even within a group like "white
males" an IQ score mainly tells you what the family income is. In California, IQ
tests have been banned -- thanks to an anti-racist campaign and successful
lawsuit -- in schools as a (false) measure from which the school system had been
deciding where to place (and "track") a child. In Boston, around 1970, Latino
6-yrear-olds who spoke no English were tested and -- guess what? -- found to be
"retarded." Boston didn't have enough places for them in "special schools" so
about 30,000 young Latino children at one time didn't go to school at all
because they were falsely declared to be retarded! At my univeristy, Latino
appliucants were being rejected on the basis of test scores (ACT/SAT) although
we had proven statistically that these tests did not predict anything about
Latino students' success in school -- in fact there was a slight (and
insignificant) negative correlation between ACT score and probabilty of later
success (graduation rate).
Those who keep telling us that the above is not true sometimes are just
misinformed, not having seen the reasoning and evidence. Sometimes they are
plain racists. Murray is and Herrnstein was a plain racist. Their supposed
evidence is in part fabricated, in part discredited, and in part slyly --
because this is deliberate racism -- twisted to seem to say something racist.
Their book, *The Bell Curve* was promoted to the skies...by racists, and by
those who found it useful to spread the belief that African-Americans and other
minorities in the US should be stomped on, by withdrawing programs that equalize
educational and employment oppportunity, that provide life support for people
who are unable to find work, or are disabled, or whatever. (That is the US of A
today -- I am writing this, appropriately, on the Fourth of July, Independence
Day.)
I posted the snippet on "very moderate racism" (from my book) in order to make a
specific point. Richard Moore had asserted, in essence, that intellectual
abilities of the different races are only SLIGHTLY different, and therefore they
provide no basis for judging individuals. Richard does not know tbat this
precise argument has been used over and over in the social sciences to convey
the belief that you can continue to build theories about the historical
inferiority of non-whites and about the inferiority of contemporary non-white
groups in a society, and still think of yourself as unprejudiced. This is a very
serious obstacle to building a non-Eurocentric social science.
Is race a proper subject for discussion on this list? World-system theorists
have argued that some of the differentiation among parts of the world-system are
phenotypic designations, typically, races. Wallerstein discussed the way
different races get slotted into different regional and social segments of the
work force -- in slavery days and still today. Moreover, reduction of causality
to psychological qualities -- that is, neglecting social forces -- is, broadly
speaqking, an opposing argument form world-system and Marxist positions.
Sometimes -- not always -- the postulated psychological differences are claimed
to be race-based. Racism is the worst form of psychological reductionism. (This
is why I asked dlj whether his postuled tendency-toward-violence of Europeans
was "in the genes." Happily, he said no.)
And nobody should hide behind the notion that races are not real but
"constructed." Yes, you can call them constructed if you allow the process to
have taken hundreds of years. But postmodernists are trying to tell us
(sometimes) that racism is kind of silly and easily gootten rid of because races
are just "constructed," not real. Bullshit.
Jim Blaut