I read on in fascinated horror. The author of the tract soon fixed his hostile gaze on those seminal figures of twentieth-century anthropology, Franz Boas and his acolyte, Ashley Montagu. He indicted them both for, presumably, through their writings, provoking ethnic and racial intermixing. The author went on to uphold the very sort of nineteenth-century racism posing as science that Boas and Montagu were instrumental in unmasking. It is tempting to call such views as these marginal, but it would be a mistake to do so. Some of the ideas in this diatribe have increasingly important cachet in the United States of the late twentieth century. Witness what now floats on the ether of the internet and sits on the shelves of popular bookstores. The year 1994 saw the publication of both The Bell Curve and Phillipe Rushton's Race and Evolution,
1 the latter of which states that blacks are genetically inclined to greater libido, less intelligence, and less parental investment in their children. Rushton is no anonymous writer of diatribes, but a former Guggenheim Fellow and tenured faculty person, and a recipient of almost a million dollars from the racist Pioneer Fund. Biological
|