they considered unjustified discrimination, they set purposefully
to the task of showing they were just as good as the native stocks
(as, indeed, in many ways they were), and they tried to do this by
proving that _all_ races were equal in their adaptability to our white
civilization. Important chairs in several of our leading universities
were taken over by these men, and two generations of American youth
came under their influence, aided by others whose hearts were softer
than their heads were clear. The result was the exploitation of the
Boas theories in anthropology, and related doctrines in the field of
sociology.
It was only a step to apply these theories to integration. In my
opinion, however, they are being applied more to entrench the theories
than to help the Negro. Consider the following perhaps unconscious
confession on the part of Professor Melville J. Herskovits, an
anthropologist who is a member of Boas’ own minority group: “Let
us suppose it could be shown that the Negro is a man with a past
and a reputable past; that in time the concept could be spread that
the civilizations of Africa, like those of Europe, have contributed
to American culture as we know it today; and that this idea might
eventually be taken over into the canons of general thought. Would
this not, as a practical measure, tend to undermine the assumptions
that bolster racial prejudice?” Professor Herskovits is a man with a
self-serving mission. His objectivity as a scientist may be judged
accordingly.
There would be something amusing about the works of these men if the
gullibility of so many of their readers were not so complete. In
addition to their almost incredible prolixity, we find over and over
a transparent technique of attempting to destroy truth by ridicule.
This technique consists of quoting the older authorities in a context
of sneers, with many assertions of their falseness and scientific
obsoleteness, and with repeated promises of supporting proof, followed
by a change of subject and a failure ever to return to the proof. We
might reduce the method to its simplest terms as follows:
“It was the fashion before 1930 to suppose that two plus two equals
four. One may be amazed, in the light of modern research, that this
belief could have been seriously entertained, but such was the case.
Mr. Blank, for example, actually states that two plus two equals four
in several of his books, but the dates of these books suffice to
discredit him. About 1930, and with increasing frequency ever since,
science began to discover that two plus two equals six. Now-a-days, of
course, no reputable scientist would suggest anything else. For further
discussion of this question, see Chapters 23, 47, and 250.”
Upon turning to these chapters we find many wordy paragraphs, but the
promised proof recedes before us like a mirage on a desert. The facts
are as I have presented them in my letter to the Attorney General and
in my answer on pages 44-45. The equalitarians have no defense other
than Boas’ historical accident and isolation arguments, and these
cannot be sustained.
What seems unfortunate is that these white minority groups, to advance
what they conceive to be the interests of their special stocks, should
promote theories and policies which are bound to weaken the white race
as a whole. Like Samson they would pull down the pillars of the temple
upon our very heads.
On the other hand, no injustice could be greater than to suppose that
all members of the new immigration shared the views, or promoted the
policies, of these groups. Many came to America because they understood
the native American spirit and desired, not to change it, but to
participate in its life. Some of our greatest gains as a nation have
come through such individuals.
I will add that membership in a _race_ by no means determines
membership in a _group_. Among those I hold in bonds of close personal
affection I number members of races wholly out of sympathy with the
activities in this field of their “minority groups”.
* * * * *
_The NAACP asserts that there is virtual unanimity among scientists on
the biological equality of the Negro. Is this true?_
It is not. There is a strong northern clique of equalitarian social
anthropologists under the hypnosis of the Boas school which, as I have
said in my answer to the preceding question, has captured important
chairs in many leading northern and western universities. This clique,
aided by equalitarians in government, the press, entertainment, and
other fields, has dominated public opinion in these areas and has made
it almost impossible for those who disagree with it to hold jobs.
The economic weapon brandished over the head of one’s opponent is a
common technique of the equalitarian. The non-equalitarian scientists
have been forced largely into the universities of the South where
they are biding their time. My files provide ample proof of this. One
letter from a prominent Northern psychiatrist goes even further, “Where
in the U.S. could a psychologist, sociologist or anthropologist find
employment if he openly and unreservedly espoused the theory of the
racial inequality of man?”[6]
It is folly to talk of freedom, either of the press or of any other
kind, when such a situation exists. Probably never in the history of
the United States have we seen such a strangle-hold by the national
press and other mass media of communication in suppressing the
viewpoint of a great section of the country. The extent to which
certain of the more authoritative and influential newspapers and
magazines, such as the New York _Times_ and the _Time-Life_ group,
are using their columns for sheer propaganda has become laughable.
In a moral sense we are confronted with what might almost be called
a trilogy of conspiracy, fraud and intimidation: conspiracy to gain
control of important citadels of learning and news dissemination,
fraud in the teaching of false racial doctrines, and intimidation in
suppressing those who would preach the truth. To speak of academic
freedom in the United States today is to make a mockery of the term.
This is particularly dangerous in the medical field where suppression
of data on sickle-cell anemia and other aspects of Negro biology
is common. For those interested in problems of blood transfusion I
recommend a reading of “Sensitising Antigens as Factors in Blood
Transfusions” by John Scudder, _et al_, in _The Mankind Quarterly_
for October 1960. This article has been viciously attacked by
equalitarians. I suggest the reader compare the qualifications of the
protagonists.
Besides intimidation there has, of course, been a false indoctrination
of our younger scientists, although some hope on this score may be
found in the following statement in a letter to me from a distinguished
scientist younger than I am, a scientist not a Southerner, who is a
recognized international authority on the subject we are considering:
“About 25 years ago it seemed to be proved beyond a doubt that man is a
cultural animal, solely a creature of the environment, and that there
is no inheritance of instinct, intelligence or any other capacity.
Everything had to be learned and the man or race that had the best
opportunity for learning made the best record. The tide is turning.
Heredity is coming back, not primarily through anthropologists but
through the zoologists. It is the zoologists, the animal behavior men,
who are doing it, and the anthropologists are beginning to learn from
them. It will take time, but the pendulum will swing.”
We may well be amazed, scientists and laymen alike, as we awake from
our sleep, at the depth of the hypnosis to which we have been subject.
It is true that science has proved that things are not always what they
appear, but seldom has a mock science been so successful in making it
appear that things are not what they obviously are. I said in my letter
to the President that any man with two eyes in his head could make
certain observations. How loud does the obvious have to shout before a
sensible man will listen?
What I call upon every fair-minded Northerner to do is this: Let him
read Boas for himself. Let him read Herskovits and Kluckhohn[7] for
himself. These men stand refuted out of their own mouths. I challenge
any intelligent person to study their books and come to any other
conclusion. I make only one stipulation. Each time the reader finds the
phrase: “It has been proved that--” let him ask the question “Where?”
Next, I suggest he talk to some of our non-equalitarian anthropologists
who will tell him the truth if he wins their confidence. They will,
however, simply be supporting conclusions which he will already have
drawn for himself.[8]
Finally, I should point out that anthropologists--apart from their
position as equalitarian or non-equalitarian--may be divided into two
classes, social and physical. It is the social anthropologists who have
led the equalitarian movement although they are the least qualified
to pass upon racial biology. The physical anthropologists, along with
the physiologists and anatomists, are the ones who are expert in this
field, but partly because of expense and partly for other reasons,
most of our American universities do not have chairs in physical
anthropology. Instead, social anthropology has been combined with
sociology into one department where each can aid and abet the other in
the equalitarian drive.
One’s choice of physical anthropologists will therefore be relatively
limited in the United States but such men are available upon the terms
I mention.
* * * * *
_Is Arnold Toynbee a victim of hypnosis?_
It depends on how you interpret Toynbee. “It will be seen,” he writes,
“that when we classify mankind by color, the only one of the primary
races, given by this classification, which has not made a creative
contribution to any one of our twenty-one civilizations is the Black
Race.” Then he comments that this “single exception” of the Negro
should not prevent the conclusion that “the capacity for civilization
... is the universal birthright of mankind”, and goes on to justify
his position by observing that only 6,000 years have elapsed since the
first civilizations appeared on earth, and it is perhaps too early to
judge whether the Negro is “in a day dream ... paralyzed ... or out
of the running.” Concerning this Toynbee theory, another writer has
remarked that “if 60 centuries is too short a period for man to draw
general inferences about his past, then Toynbee’s life work has been a
waste of time.”
Toynbee, however, relates his argument to a time-scale which gives
it validity in its place. He points out that the Negro still has 83
million times 6,000 years ahead of him, by astronomical calculations,
before we can conclude that he lacks the capacity for civilization.
On such a time-scale I would agree with Toynbee. In the next
500,000,000,000 years I would be quite prepared to concede the
possibility the Negro may, through normal processes of mutation and
natural selection within his own race, eventually overtake and even
surpass the white race.
The school controversy, on the other hand, is concerned with the
present, and with foreseeable future generations. When the Negro has
bred out his limitations over hundreds, or thousands, of years, it will
be time enough to consider absorbing him in any such massive doses as
would be involved in the South today.
* * * * *
_Has it not been shown that the skulls of the grandchildren of certain
immigrants to the United States are larger than those of their
forebears and does this not prove that environment can alter racial
capacities?_
The skull changes you mention are not sufficient, in either nature or
degree, to affect such capacities.
* * * * *
_Has not J. C. Carothers suggested that the similarity between the
mentality of a European who has had his frontal lobes immobilized by
an operation, and the mentality of a normal African may be due to the
fact that the African’s culture does not place as great a demand on his
frontal lobes?_
Dr. Carothers suggests this. He also suggests the opposite
possibility--that the frontal lobe condition of the African is innate.
The truth is that a race must create its culture before the culture
can influence the race. It is not a case of the hen and the egg. The
race must come first. Or, if one prefers, one may say that a race and
its culture in the long run interact upon each other. Whichever way
one states it, the fact remains that, if a race has a culture which
does not require frontal lobe activity beyond a given threshold, the
explanation must lie in the quality of that race’s frontal lobes.
* * * * *
_Was not Alfred Kroeber a leading anthropologist and does not his
“Anthropology” contradict your views?_
Alfred Kroeber was indeed a leading anthropologist. As to his
contradicting my views, I would say rather that he affords an excellent
example of the fact that the older scientists in this field were only
partially hypnotized even twelve years ago. At pages 203-204 of the
book you mention (ed. 1948), in discussing the question of whether
one can rate the hereditary worth of various races according to the
number of their men of genius, Kroeber remarks: “A great work naturally
requires a great man, but it pre-supposes also a great culture. It
may be that, historically speaking, a great genius cannot arise in
a primitive degree of civilization.... Biologically the individual
of genius may be there; civilizationally he is not called forth....
Consequently it is unsound to argue from the historical record to
biological worth.”
Kroeber here ignores the overwhelming probability that, over the long
run, a race capable of producing biological geniuses with sufficient
frequency to justify a high rating if they were recognized, would, _in
the same long run_, have produced, or caught by contagion,[9] a culture
which would have called them forth.
But the example of ambivalence I wish to stress comes in a subsequent
paragraph on Kroeber’s page 204:
“The drift of this discussion may seem to be an unavowed argument
in favor of race equality. It is not that. As a matter of fact,
the anatomical differences between races would appear to render it
likely that at least some corresponding congenital differences of
psychological quality exist. These differences might not be profound,
compared with the sum total of common human faculties, much as the
physical variations of mankind fall within the limits of a single
species. Yet they would preclude identity. As for the vexed question
of superiority, lack of identity would involve at least some degree of
greater power in certain respects in some races. These pre-eminences
might be rather evenly distributed, so that no one race would notably
excel the others in the sum total or average of its capacities; or they
might show some minor tendency to cluster on one rather than on another
race. In either event, however, race difference, moderate or minimal,
qualitative if not quantitative, would remain as something that could
perhaps be ultimately determined.
“But it is one thing to admit this theoretical probability and then
stop through ignorance of what the differences are, and another to
construe the admission as justification of mental attitudes that may
be well grounded in historical conditioning but are in considerable
measure unfounded objectively.”
I offer the above paragraphs as an illustration of the scientific mind
in semi-trance, talking out of both sides of its mouth. Or perhaps to
the white Southern mother whose child is about to be forced into a
predominantly Negro school, it seems more like academic fiddling while
Rome burns.
* * * * *
_You are preaching a doctrine of white supremacy and allying yourself
with lynchers and bombers. Worse, don’t you realize that this is the
doctrine that led to Hitler’s barbaric policies?_
I am advocating a doctrine of white leadership based on proved
achievement, not supremacy in any sense of domination, exploitation, or
violence. As far as the Negro race is concerned, if it is interested
in such cultural elements as our white civilization has to offer, it
should realize that to destroy or to debilitate the white race would be
to kill the goose that lays the golden egg. It is a temptation as old
as the human species, and always ends with a dead goose and no eggs.
Regarding Hitler, can we condemn Christianity because of the atrocities
of the Spanish Inquisition? Truth has often been warped by evil men
to vicious ends. One does not solve the problem by going to the other
extreme and embracing error.
* * * * *
_In your letter to the President you say the Southern Negro must earn
equal status with the white man, yet in your letter to the Attorney
General you mention natural limitations which indicate you do not
believe the Negro capable of earning it. How do you explain this
contradiction?_
It isn’t really a contradiction. I believe the Negro, if he desires
it, should be given every reasonable chance of achieving social and
cultural adaptation through equal education in his own schools and by
every community effort that does not involve pulling down the white
race, but it does not follow that I believe the average Negro capable
of achieving it, within any time limits that could have a practical
bearing on the present controversy.
Over a matter of hundreds of years, the constant surrounding stimulus
of white civilization upon the Negro may be expected slowly to have
an adaptive effect. Changes in a race occur by mutation and natural
selection which involve the gradual elimination of those genes which
are unsuited to the surrounding environment. This takes place by
mating choices within the race itself and by the dying-off without
children of those with a preponderance of unsuitable genes. The process
must obviously be a slow one, involving many generations, before the
adapting race can hope to achieve equality. Meanwhile the increasing
number of individuals above the average, who are in fact raising the
average, should be given every opportunity for the development of their
natures within the limits already mentioned.
It is possible, however, to look at the question from a different point
of view. Does the Negro really _want_ to become like the white man, or
will he not in the end prefer to maintain his own racial integrity,
eliminating only those factors which conflict with a peaceable life in
a predominantly white civilization? In other words, may not the best
solution to the problem be permanent voluntary segregation through
pride in, and loyalty to, one’s own race, Negro as well as white? This
would mean adaptation only in those qualities which tend to make the
Negro a burden on our white culture and economy, not in others.
This second point of view has been well summarized by the Rev. G. W.
Walker, the Negro publisher of the _National Christian Magazine_. The
Rev. Mr. Walker says in part:
“We have been given the assignment, the responsibility, the duty, and
the obligation:
“1. To teach the Negro the plain and simple view that he has customs,
background, consciousness and fundamental characteristics of his own
and that he must develop these or else cease to exist as an ethnical
identity in America....
“3. To convince the Negro not to desert his own schools, clubs,
institutions and churches, but, instead, he must develop them until
they are where they should be--on a par with the whites’....
“5. To inform him of the truth, that he has a date with destiny and he
cannot keep his date if he integrates and amalgamates with the white
race, because this is the sure road or way to a lost race.
“6. To prove to the Negro that integration and race mixing are lethal
methods of robbing him of his last chance and only chance to stand on
his own two feet and develop a social order of his own, one which he
and his true friends can be proud of....
“8. To teach him to stop wanting to be the uninvited guest (rather
stranger) in the homes of others and in the places and areas prescribed
for others.
“9. To show the Negro that what he really needs for his further
advancement and betterment in America is the right kind of education
and training, rather than a closer association with white people.
“10. To teach him that aping the white man and trying to be white will
dupe him out of his self-respect and the respect of others....
“13. To teach the Negro that there is a vast difference between the
white man and himself and that this actual fact must be recognized and
dealt with from a realistic and objective point of view.
“14. To teach him that he has many fine qualities, such as kindness,
courtesy, loyalty, cheerfulness, gaiety, etc., which are admired and
respected by the other races in America and that these fine qualities
should be capitalized upon....
“16. To show him his many golden opportunities for greatness in the
South, which he is not now utilizing and that he, like the white race,
can make great achievements in the South.
“17. To prove to the Negro that it is not morally wrong for his true
white friends in the South to wish him to develop his own ways of life,
with their friendly help and cooperation; and to teach his own children
in his own schools and homes to follow in his own footsteps....
“20. To convince the Negro that it is no disgrace or stigma on his race
to be black instead of white and that it is more natural for him to be
happier in his own traditions and in his own places than it is for him
to be in the traditions and places of the white man....
“28. To convince the Negro that it is not necessary for him to attend
integrated schools in the North or in the South, because his true
advancement will only come from within his own group....
“38. To teach the Negro to be proud of his own racial heritage and
background and to build his future upon the good it has to offer, along
with what he has acquired, here in America.”
The choice in the long future will be as much the Negro’s as the white
man’s. The Negro may, by cleaving to his own kind, and by adapting to
the good rather than to the bad in our white culture, build across the
centuries such a race that the white man in the end will be knocking on
the Negro’s door, rather than vice versa.
* * * * *
_Why speak of a character-intelligence index? Does not character follow
from intelligence?_
Some of the worst criminals in history have been highly intelligent.
Conversely, we can all think of friends who are not very keen
intellectually, but to whose honor and responsibility we would trust
our lives.
Intelligence is almost entirely a matter of heredity. Heredity is also
substantially involved in character--ask any man who knows and loves
animals--but it is more subject to modification by environment than
intelligence.
* * * * *
_How can you say singing and athletics do not involve character and
intelligence?_
I did not say they did not _involve_ character and intelligence. I said
they were not _primarily_ matters of character and intelligence.
Primarily they are physical gifts. While there is no question that
every great champion has to have a lion’s heart, and other stalwart
virtues, these virtues were equally present in cave men. They are
desirable in any civilization, but they are not distinctive attributes
of an advanced civilization. I might even point out that a canary sings
beautifully, and each year a horse wins the Kentucky Derby.
* * * * *
_The NAACP maintains that your comparison of the achievements of
great white men with those of Negroes is pointless. They say the same
comparison could be made between white men and white women, yet no one
claims that women are biologically inferior. They also say that the
early Irish immigrants to this country were more shabby and lived in
poorer shanties than the Negroes. What is your answer?_
As to the achievements of women, not even in _Alice in Wonderland_ do
we find an attempt to equate biological inequivalents. Most women,
through history, have been in the home, bearing and rearing children,
and to see a Negro man hiding behind a white woman’s skirts is just a
little sickening.
Concerning the Irish, when the NAACP can point to a Negro city the
equal of Dublin or Cork or Belfast, it will be time to discuss it.
* * * * *