Times review of Rushton's book

I have been lurking on the list for a month or so and finding the discourse 
very informative and enlightening.  As an anthropologist, I am not quite as 
up to snuff on many of the theoretical issues that seem to pervade the part 
of sociology revealed on this list. So my reluctance to involvement thus 
far.

With regard specifically to Boris Stremlin's recent discussion of Rushton's 
work and the past criticisms of the underlying racism of the Bell Curve, 
the American Anthropological Association has  released a statement from the 
discipline on definitions of race and repeated that the concept of race in 
humans has no biological validity .  The idea, in the most crude sense, 
that there is any biological connection between melanin and intellect is 
preposterous. Additionally, there was protracted discussion of  race in the 
Anthropology Newsletter for the better part of last year's issues. The 
conclusion is that, outside of some (problematic) utility of the race 
concept in forensic anthropology, race has only cultural relevance. For 
anthropologists, race is culturally defined, and is decidedly not a 
biologically relevant construct.

After anthropology's own racist science in the early part of this century 
(see, for example, Stephen J. Gould's The Mismeasures of Man) that sought 
to place "races" in categories representing earlier "stages" of humanity 
through which Europeans had already passed, the research findings continue 
to demonstrate that in any categorization of humanity, there is ALWAYS more 
genetic diversity within any given category that there is between 
categories.  As well and largely (as I understand it) in response to the 
conclusions of the Bell Curve, significant research among psychologists 
increasingly demonstrates that there are types of intelligence. This 
includes athletic, artistic, musical, literary, emotional and mathematical 
intelligence. The disproportionate influence of environment versus nature 
in regards to the development of these forms of intelligence has never, 
after a century of attempts to isolate deterministic influence, been 
conclusive.  As various forms of scholars of humanity, we are then left to 
marvel equally over the genius of Picasso, or Marx, or Mozart, or ........ 
Barry Sanders.

Best regards,
Charlie Stevens