To protest or not to protest

Several people on both of these lists have expressed concern that a
full-scale attack against the Rushton book will give it extra publicity.  Of
course, it could be bait to create more publicity, but I would argue that
the protests against Jensen-Shockley-Herrnstein 25 years ago and against the
Bell Curve 4 years ago may have added to the publicity, but that overall,
when the dust had settled, the protests had the effect of strengthening the
anti-racist opposition more than the racist viewpoint.

We should not be afraid that we will lose the debates and that more people
will be won to that position. The most dangerous thing is that people in the
"center" who hear "something" about the book will think that it is a
respectable work, even if they don't agree with all of it.  A MASSIVE
counter-attack will discredit the book and prevent that. As Andy Austin
pointed out, it has ALREADY been reviewed in the "Very prestigious, liberal,
Eastern Establisment New York Times" and received a quite FAVORABLE review.
So what are we worried about--that it might get publicized in the NY Times?
(Read, by the way, by a lot of school teachers and others who can do great
damage if they accept any part of these racist ideas....)

Nor should we be afraid of being called "intolerant leftists."  We should be
proud of being intolerant! Are you intolerant of child abuse? I hope so!
What about genocide? Or rape? Well, what the hell is racism? I don't just
mean, here, an incidental racially biased comment made out of ignorance by a
basically well-meaning person. I mean the kind of proud, overt racism that
boldly declares that on average, black people are sub-human!  Whenever we
communicate, we always communicate at least TWO things. The first thing is
the facts & interpretation of those facts. The second is the weight, the
urgency, the importance we attach to those facts. Making a factually and
analytically MASTERFUL critique of racism, but doing it in a very flat way
conveys the inaccurate notion that "there are no serious problems attached
to these erroneous ideas other than those of intellectual fact."   But in
fact, there are some very serious problems attached to those "erroneous"
ideas, and expressing that urgency IS PART OF THE FACTS AND ANALYSIS. Being
tolerant of conscious, gutter racism is supporting the intolerance towards
black people. There's no way to be on everyone's side or to have everyone
"like" you, anyhow.

Suppose we are quiet and this STILL ends up in TIME and NEWSWEEK? Then we
are that much further behind and look like a bunch of whiners. Better to
come out swinging now. It doesn't matter whether we win over the
right-wingers. What matters is what the hundreds of thousands of students
and faculty who witness these struggles will learn from it.

In any case, at a minimum, we should certainly support Steve Rosenthal's
suggestion that the publisher be banned from future sociological meetings.
This isn't a question of censoring someone whose philosophy is not
"perfect". It is more like denying a booth to a group that publicly supports
the theory that sexual abuse actually has a good impact on society.  Am I
being to extreme again?   Isn't the history and current practice of racism
an extreme form of misery?

Alan Spector