by Thomas Sowell
A hundred years ago, the fact that people from different racial backgrounds
had very different rates of success in education, in the economy and in other
endeavors, was taken as proof that some races were genetically superior to
others.
Some races were considered to be so genetically inferior that eugenics was
proposed to reduce their reproduction, and Francis Galton urged "the gradual
extinction of an inferior race."
It was not a bunch of fringe cranks who said things like this. Many held
Ph.D.s from the leading universities, taught at the leading universities and
were internationally renowned.
[...]
This was not a left-right issue. The leading crusaders for theories of
genetic superiority and inferiority were iconic figures on the left, on both
sides of the Atlantic.
John Maynard Keynes helped create the Cambridge Eugenics Society. Fabian
socialist intellectuals H.G. Wells and George Bernard Shaw were among many other
leftist supporters of eugenics.
It was much the same story on this side of the Atlantic. President Woodrow
Wilson, like many other Progressives, was solidly behind notions of racial
superiority and inferiority. He showed the movie "Birth of a Nation," glorifying
the Ku Klux Klan, at the White House, and invited various dignitaries to view it
with him.
Such views dominated the first two decades of the 20th century. Now fast
forward to the last few decades of the 20th century. The political left of this
era was now on the opposite end of the spectrum on racial issues. Yet they too
regarded differences in outcomes among racial and ethnic groups as something
unusual, calling for some single, sweeping explanation
Now, instead of genes being the overriding reason for differences in
outcomes, racism became the one-size-fits-all explanation. But the dogmatism was
the same. Those who dared to disagree, or even to question the prevailing dogma
in either era were dismissed — as "sentimentalists" in the Progressive era and
as "racists" in the multicultural era.
Both the Progressives at the beginning of the 20th century and the liberals
at the end started from the same false premise — namely, that there is something
unusual about different racial and ethnic groups having different
achievements.
Yet some racial or ethnic minorities have owned or directed more than half of
whole industries in many nations. These have included the Chinese in Malaysia,
Lebanese in West Africa, Greeks in the Ottoman Empire, Britons in Argentina,
Indians in Fiji, Jews in Poland, and Spaniards in Chile — among many others.
Not only different racial and ethnic groups, but whole nations and
civilizations, have had very different achievements for centuries. China in the
15th century was more advanced than any country in Europe. Eventually Europeans
overtook the Chinese — and there is no evidence of changes in the genes of
either of them.
[...]
Yet the idea that differences in outcomes are odd, if not sinister, has been
repeated mindlessly from street corner demagogues to the august chambers of the
Supreme Court.
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Intellectuals and Race
