The Science of Racism | Print Article | THE ROOT.com - The Diigo Meta page

• 25 Oct 08
  

  Therapsid Girl

  gates

• 10 Jun 08
  

  I don't think James Watson is a racist. But I do think that he is a racialist—that is, he believes that certain observable traits or forms of behavior among groups of human beings might, indeed, have a biological basis in the code

  science society genetics politics

• 09 Jun 08
  

  rational parent

  reader

• 

  Pranger Prangerson

  racism genetics intelligence science

• 02 Jun 08
  

  Alex Whitlock
  • Having spent the past three decades studying racist discourse in the West (starting with my Ph.D. dissertation on the Enlightenment), I know that such conclusions—say, about an entity called "Jewish intelligence"—would deleteriously affect me as a black person because it would reinforce stereotypes about Jewish people being genetically superior to us, and that such a conclusion would reinforce stereotypes about black people being inherently less intelligent than other members of the human community. If such differences in intelligence were purported to have a genetic basis, as David Duke proclaimed on his Web site with such naked glee, all of the social engineering in the world could have only so much effect. (Head Start? Why bother, when nature is to blame.) Sooner or later, in a time of increasing economic scarcity, members of these supposedly "different" or "lesser" ethnic groups or genetic populations could very well find their life possibilities limited and perhaps even regulated. Who among us can doubt that this would be true?

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