There are so many fallacies about race that it would be hard to say which
is the most ridiculous. However, one fallacy behind many other fallacies is the
notion that there is something unusual about different races being unequally
represented in various institutions, careers or at different income or
achievement levels.
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.
Presidents of Stanford University and of MIT were among the many academic advocates
of theories of racial inferiority -- applied mostly to people from Eastern and
Southern Europe, since it was just blithely assumed in passing that blacks were
inferior.
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.
Among the many reasons for different levels of achievement is something as
simple as age. The median age in Germany and Japan is over 40, while the median
age in Afghanistan and Yemen is under 20. Even if the people in all four of
these countries had the same mental potential, the same history, the same
culture -- and the countries themselves had the same geographic features -- the
fact that people in some countries have 20 years more experience than people in
other countries would still be enough to make equal economic and other outcomes
virtually impossible.
Add the fact that different races evolved in different geographic settings,
presenting very different opportunities and constraints on their development,
and the same conclusion follows.
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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