Re: ASA on Transaction and Rushton

I think Carl Jorgensen makes a lot of good points and has made an
important contribution by making a strong effort to find out what
Transaction and Rushton actually did.  I urge others  to help us
bring out the full facts behind the distribution of Rushton's book.

To add a couple points:  First, regardless of how the mailing list was 
obtained and how the abridged edition was distributed, the abridged 
edition is a Transaction publication, and this is certainly made 
explicit in the abridged edition.  The abridged edition could not 
have been mass produced without their complicity.

Second, Transaction published the original edition of this work.  
There is absolutely no justification for or defense of that decision. 
No one can legitimately claim that Rushton's manuscript makes any 
contribution to human knowledge or is based on any scientific 
knowledge.  Every racist ideological assertion Rushton makes has been 
scientifically refuted in great detail numerous times.  There is no 
legitimate debate over whether black people are an inferior race.  
There is no legitimate scientific debate over whether there are 
superior and inferior races.  These are not open scientific questions 
that requires further research.

Lest anyone accuse me of being dogmatic on this issue, I would like 
to point out that there are two kinds of dogmatism in science.  One 
kind occurs when you make an assertion based on insufficient 
evidence.  The other kind occurs when you refuse to accept an 
assertion that is based on conclusive evidence.  Those who think that 
there are biological races and that these races are unequal are 
guilty of the second kind of dogmatism.  (I credit sociologist Peter 
Knapp at Villanova for making this point in his fine book "Crisis and 
Change."

Under these circumstances, even though Transaction has published 
useful books, and even though it may turn out that they were at least 
in part deceived, they should still be held accountable for the 
distribution of what some have justifiable called academic 
pornographic hate mail.

When one of us submits something for publication that is rejected 
because it is deemed lacking in scientific rigor, we are unable to 
override that consideration and get the piece published anyway.  Why 
are the most extreme racists able to do that and more?  Why are they 
able to obtain generous grants, be named fellows, be set up to devote 
full time to writing racist trash, to get lavish uncritical media 
attention?

They sure do have "free" speech.  The capitalists of this country 
freely spend a lot of money to spread this fascist filth.  In 
contrast, never have thorough radical refutations of these racist 
ideologies been freely spread through mass channels in this society.  
The discourse on racism is as controlled and censored as was the Gulf 
War in 1991, in both cases in the interests of the capitalist ruling 
class.

Capitalists need the ideology peddled by Rushton to justify the 
increasingly fascist terror aimed at black workers and youth in this 
society.  They need it to build white support for that terror and to 
increase racist divisions in the population.  That is why, no matter 
how many times scientists refute this racist garbage, the garbage is 
recycled over and over again.  That will happen as long as capitalism 
endures, for capitalists cannot maximize their profits and power 
without racism.  In the world today, as US profits and power are 
increasingly challenged by European and Asian capitalist competitors, 
sectors of the US ruling class are driven by self-interest to 
increase racism in every form and on every front.

That is why we must get more and more people to oppose racism in 
every form and on every front.

Steve Rosenthal