Intellectuals and Race

by Thomas Sowell

  92. Ibid., pp. 49, 92, 95–96.

  93. Ibid., p. 155.

  94. “The Great American Myth,” Saturday Evening Post, May 7, 1921, p. 20.

  95. Kenneth L. Roberts, “Lest We Forget,” Saturday Evening Post, April 28, 1923, pp. 158, 162.

  96. Kenneth L. Roberts, Why Europe Leaves Home (Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1922), p. 15.

  97. Ibid., p. 21.

  98. Ibid., p. 22.

  99. Ibid., p. 119.

  100. Kenneth L. Roberts, “Slow Poison,” Saturday Evening Post, February 2, 1924, p. 9.

  101. George Creel, “Melting Pot or Dumping Ground?” Collier’s, September 3, 1921, p. 10.

  102. Ibid., p. 26.

  103. George Creel, “Close the Gates!” Collier’s, May 6, 1922, p. 10.

  104. Henry L. Mencken, The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche (Boston: Luce and Company, 1908), pp. 167–168.

  105. “Mencken’s Reply to La Monte’s Fourth Letter,” Men versus The Man: A Correspondence Between Robert Rives La Monte, Socialist and H.L. Mencken, Individualist (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1910), p. 162.

  106. H.L. Mencken, “The Aframerican: New Style,” The American Mercury, February 1926, pp. 254, 255.

  107. Ibid., p. 255.

  108. H.L. Mencken, “Utopia by Sterilization,” The American Mercury, August 1937, pp. 399, 408.

  109. H.G. Wells, The Work, Wealth and Happiness of Mankind (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Doran & Company, 1931), pp. 733, 734, 746.

  110. H.G. Wells, What Is Coming?: A European Forecast (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1916), p. 254.

  111. Jack London, The Unpublished and Uncollected Articles and Essays, edited by Daniel J. Wichlan (Bloomington, IN: AuthorHouse, 2007), pp. 60, 66.

  112. George McDaniel, “Madison Grant and the Racialist Movement,” in Madison Grant, The Conquest of a Continent, p. ii.

  113. Arthur S. Link, Woodrow Wilson and the Progressive Era: 1910–1917 (New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1954), pp. 64–66. The number of black postmasters declined from 153 in 1910 to 78 in 1930. Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy (New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1944), p. 327. See also Henry Blumenthal, “Woodrow Wilson and the Race Question,” Journal of Negro History, Vol. 48, No. 1 (January 1963), pp. 1–21.

  114. S. Georgia Nugent, “Changing Faces: The Princeton Student of the Twentieth Century,” Princeton University Library Chronicle, Vol. LXII, Number 2 (Winter 2001), pp. 215–216.

  115. Edmund Morris, The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt (New York: The Modern Library, 2001), p. 483.

  116. In his memoirs, looking back on his days as a police commissioner in New York, Theodore Roosevelt said: “The appointments to the police force were made as I have described in the last chapter. We paid not the slightest attention to a man’s politics or creed, or where he was born, so long as he was an American citizen; and on an average we obtained far and away the best men that had ever come into the Police Department.” Theodore Roosevelt, The Rough Riders: An Autobiography (New York: The Library of America, 2004), p. 428.

  117. Edmund Morris, Theodore Rex (New York: Modern Library, 2002), pp. 52–53.

  118. Quoted in Bernard Lewis, The Muslim Discovery of Europe (New York: W. W. Norton, 1982), p. 139.

  119. Edward Byron Reuter, The Mulatto in the United States (Boston: Richard G. Badger, The Gorham Press, 1918).

  120. Theodore Hershberg and Henry Williams, “Mulattoes and Blacks: Intragroup Color Differences and Social Stratification in Nineteenth-Century Philadelphia,” Philadelphia, edited by Theodore Hershberg (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981), p. 402.

  121. For examples of the latter assumption, see, for example, Michael Tonry, Punishing Race: A Continuing American Dilemma (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), pp. 65–66.

  122. See, for example, E. Franklin Frazier, The Negro in the United States, revised edition (New York: The Macmillan Co., 1957), p. 67; David W. Cohen and Jack P. Greene, “Introduction,” Neither Slave Nor Free: The Freedmen of African Descent in the Slave Societies of the New World, edited by David W. Cohen and Jack P. Greene (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1972), p. 7; A.J.R. Russell-Wood, “Colonial Brazil,” Ibid., p. 91.

  123. Calculated from data in The Seventh Census of the United States: 1850 (Washington: Robert Armstrong, 1853), pp. xliii, lxi; U.S. Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States: Colonial Times to 1970 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1975), Part I, p. 382.

  124. Urbanization data for blacks in 1860 and 1920 calculated from data in the following sources: Wilbur Zelinsky, “The Population Geography of the Free Negro in Ante-Bellum America,” Population Studies, Vol. 3, No. 4 (March 1950), pp. 387, 389; Reynolds Farley, “The Urbanization of Negroes in the United States,” Journal of Social History, Vol. 1, No. 3 (Spring 1968), p. 255; U. S. Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States: Colonial Times to 1970, Part 1, pp. 8, 9, 12, 22.

  125. Thomas Sowell, “Three Black Histories,” Essays and Data on American Ethnic Groups, edited by Thomas Sowell and Lynn D. Collins, p. 12.

  126. Ibid.

  127. Madison Grant, The Conquest of a Continent, pp. 283–284.

  Chapter 4: Internal Responses to Disparities

  1. James Buchan, Crowded with Genius: The Scottish Enlightenment, Edinburgh’s Moment of the Mind (New York: HarperCollins, 2003), p. 129.

  2. See, for example, Olive and Sydney Checkland, Industry and Ethos: Scotland 1832–1914 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1989), pp. 147–150; William R. Brock, Scotus Americanus: A Survey of the Sources for Links between Scotland and America in the Eighteenth Century (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1982), pp. 114–115; Esmond Wright, “Education in the American Colonies: The Impact of Scotland,” Essays in Scotch-Irish History, edited by E. R. R. Green (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1969), pp. 40–41; Bruce Lenman, Integration, Enlightenment, and Industrialization: Scotland 1746–1832 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1981), p. 91.

  3. Anders Henriksson, The Tsar’s Loyal Germans: The Riga German Community: Social Change and the Nationality Question, 1855–1905 (Boulder: East European Monographs, 1983), pp. 1, 4.

  4. Ingeborg Fleischhauer, “The Germans’ Role in Tsarist Russia: A Reappraisal,” The Soviet Germans, edited by Edith Rogovin Frankel (London: C. Hurst & Company, 1986), p. 16.

  5. Anders Henriksson, The Tsar’s Loyal Germans, p. 2.

  6. Ibid., pp. 15, 35, 54.

  7. Ibid., p. 15.

  8. Robert A. Kann and Zdenĕk V. David, The Peoples of the Eastern Habsburg Lands, 1526–1918 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1984), p. 201.

  9. Gary B. Cohen, The Politics of Ethnic Survival: Germans in Prague, 1861–1914 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981), p. 3.

  10. Jeremy King, Budweisers into Czechs and Germans: A Local History of Bohemian Politics, 1848–1948 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), p. 4.

  11. Gary B. Cohen, The Politics of Ethnic Survival, Chapters 1, 2; Anders Henriksson, The Tsar’s Loyal Germans, pp. x, 12, 34, 35, 54, 57–59, 61; Donald L. Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), p. 286.

  12. Gary B. Cohen, The Politics of Ethnic Survival, p. 28.

  13. See, for example, Gunnar Myrdal, Asian Drama: An Inquiry Into the Poverty of Nations (New York: Pantheon, 1968), Vol. III, p. 1642.

  14. Donald L. Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict, p. 97.

  15. Leon Volovici, Nationalist Ideology and Antisemitism: The Case of Romanian Intellectuals in the 1930s (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1991), p. 60.

  16. Ibid., p. 14.

  17. Ibid., p. 31.

  18. Ibid., p. 42.

  19. Mary Fainsod Katzenstein, Ethnicity and Equality: The Shiv Sena Party and Preferential Policies in Bombay (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1979), pp. 48–49; Myron Weiner and Mary Fainsod Katzenstein, India’s Preferential Policies: Migrants, the Middle C
lasses, and Ethnic Equality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), pp. 10–11, 44–46.

  20. Ezra Mendelsohn, The Jews of East Central Europe Between the World Wars (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983), pp. 98–99, 106.

  21. Larry Diamond, “Class, Ethnicity, and the Democratic State: Nigeria, 1950–1966,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 25, No. 3 (July 1983), pp. 462, 473; Donald L. Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict, p. 225.

  22. Anatoly M. Khazanov, “The Ethnic Problems of Contemporary Kazakhstan,” Central Asian Survey, Vol. 14, No. 2 (1995), pp. 244, 257.

  23. Leon Volovici, National Ideology and Antisemitism, passim; Joseph Rothschild, East Central Europe between the Two World Wars (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1992), p. 293; Irina Livezeanu, Cultural Politics in Greater Romania: Regionalism, Nation Building, & Ethnic Struggle, 1918–1930 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995), passim.

  24. Gunnar Myrdal, Asian Drama, Vol. I, p. 348; Donald L. Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict, p. 133.

  25. Conrad Black, “Canada’s Continuing Identity Crisis,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 74, No. 2 (March-April 1995), p. 100.

  26. See, for example, Gary B. Cohen, The Politics of Ethnic Survival, pp. 26–28, 32, 133, 236–237; Ezra Mendelsohn, The Jews of East Central Europe Between the World Wars, p. 167; Hugh LeCaine Agnew, Origins of the Czech National Renascence (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1993), passim.

  27. William Pfaff, The Wrath of Nations: Civilization and the Furies of Nationalism (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993), p. 156.

  28. Maurice Pinard and Richard Hamilton, “The Class Bases of the Quebec Independence Movement: Conjectures and Evidence,” Ethnic and Racial Studies, Volume 7, Issue 1 (January 1984), pp. 19–54.

  29. Joseph Rothschild, East Central Europe between the Two World Wars, p. 20; Irina Livezeanu, Cultural Politics in Greater Romania, pp. 56, 218, 242, 298–299.

  30. Irina Livezeanu, Cultural Politics in Greater Romania, p. 385.

  31. Chandra Richard de Silva, “Sinhala-Tamil Relations and Education in Sri Lanka: The University Admissions Issue— The First Phase, 1971–7,” From Independence to Statehood: Managing Ethnic Conflict in Five African and Asian States, edited by Robert B. Goldmann and A. Jeyaratnam Wilson (London: Frances Pinter, 1984), p. 126.

  32. Warren Zimmerman, “The Last Ambassador: A Memoir of the Collapse of Yugoslavia,” Foreign Affairs, March-April 1995, pp. 9, 17; William Pfaff, The Wrath of Nations, p. 55.

  33. Paul Johnson, Modern Times: The World from the Twenties to the Nineties, revised edition (New York: Perennial Classics, 2001), pp. 654–655.

  34. Quoted in William Pfaff, The Wrath of Nations, p. 96.

  35. Myron Weiner, Sons of the Soil: Migration and Ethnic Conflict in India (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978), p. 107; Donald L. Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict, pp. 219–224.

  36. S. J. Tambiah, Sri Lanka: Ethnic Fratricide and the Dismantling of Democracy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), pp. 20–21, 26; William McGowan, Only Man is Vile: The Tragedy of Sri Lanka (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1992), pp. 97, 98.

  37. Joseph Rothschild, East Central Europe between the Two World Wars, p. 92.

  38. Radomír Luža, The Transfer of the Sudeten Germans: A Study of Czech-German Relations, 1933–1962 (New York: New York University Press, 1964), pp. 9, 11, 42.

  39. Ibid., p. 34.

  40. Ibid., p. 290.

  41. Cacilie Rohwedder, “Germans, Czechs are Hobbled by History as Europe Moves toward United Future,” Wall Street Journal, November 25, 1996, p. A15.

  42. P.T. Bauer, Equality, the Third World and Economic Delusion (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1981), pp. 70–71.

  43. Michael Ornstein, Ethno-Racial Inequality in the City of Toronto: An Analysis of the 1996 Census, May 2000, p. ii.

  44. Charles H. Young and Helen R.Y. Reid, The Japanese Canadians (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1938), pp. 9–10, 49, 53, 58, 76, 120, 129, 130, 145, 172.

  45. Thomas Sowell, Black Rednecks and White Liberals (San Francisco: Encounter Books, 2005), p. 251.

  46. Elissa Gootman, “City to Help Curb Harassment of Asian Students at High School,” New York Times, June 2, 2004, p. B9; Joe Williams, “New Attack at Horror HS; Top Senior Jumped at Brooklyn’s Troubled Lafayette,” New York Daily News, December 7, 2002, p. 7; Maki Becker, “Asian Students Hit in Rash of HS Attacks,” New York Daily News, December 8, 2002, p. 7; Kristen A. Graham and Jeff Gammage, “Two Immigrant Students Attacked at Bok,” Philadelphia Inquirer, September 21, 2010, p. B1; Jeff Gammage and Kristen A. Graham, “Feds Find Merit in Asian Students’ Claims Against Philly School,” Philadelphia Inquirer, August 28, 2010, p. A1; Kristen A. Graham and Jeff Gammage, “Report Released on Racial Violence at S. Phila. High,” Philadelphia Inquirer, February 24, 2010, p. A1; Kristen A. Graham, “Other Phila. Schools Handle Racial, Ethnic Tensions,” Philadelphia Inquirer, February 4, 2010, p. A1; Kristen A. Graham and Jeff Gammage, “Attacking Immigrant Students Not New, Say Those Involved,” Philadelphia Inquirer, December 18, 2009, p. B1; Kristen A. Graham, “Asian Students Describe Violence at South Philadelphia High,” Philadelphia Inquirer, December 10, 2009, p. A1.

  47. See, for example, Ian Urbina, “Mobs Are Born as Word Grows By Text Message,” New York Times, March 25, 2010, p. A1; Kirk Mitchell, “Attacks Change Lives on All Sides,” Denver Post, December 6, 2009, pp. A1 ff; Alan Gathright, 7News Content Producer, “Black Gangs Vented Hatred for Whites in Downtown Attacks,” The DenverChannel.com, December 5, 2009; Meg Jones, “Flynn Calls Looting, Beatings in Riverwest Barbaric,” Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, July 6, 2011, pp. A1 ff; Mareesa Nicosia, “Four Skidmore College Students Charged in Assault; One Charged with Felony Hate Crime,” The Saratogian (online), December 22, 2010; “Concealing Black Hate Crimes,” Investor’s Business Daily, August 15, 2011, p. A16; Joseph A. Slobodzian, “West Philly Man Pleads Guilty to ‘Flash Mob’ Assault,” Philadelphia Inquirer, June 21, 2011, pp. B1 ff; Alfred Lubrano, “What’s Behind ‘Flash Mobs’?” Philadelphia Inquirer, March 28, 2010, pp. A1 ff; Stephanie Farr, “‘Geezer’ Won’t Let Thugs Ruin His Walks,” Philadelphia Daily News, October 20, 2011, Local section, p. 26; Barry Paddock and John Lauinger, “Subway Gang Attack,” New York Daily News, July 18, 2011, News, p. 3.

  Chapter 5: Race and Intelligence

  1. Mark H. Haller, Eugenics: Hereditarian Attitudes in American Thought (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1963), p. 11.

  2. Arthur R. Jensen, Straight Talk About Mental Tests (New York: The Free Press, 1981), p. 171. See also, Robert C. Nichols, “Heredity, Environment, and School Achievement,” Measurement and Evaluation in Guidance, Vol. 1, No. 2 (Summer 1968), p. 126.

  3. Mark H. Haller, Eugenics, p. 11.

  4. The article was Arthur R. Jensen, “How Much Can We Boost IQ and Scholastic Achievement?” Harvard Educational Review, Vol. 39, No. 1 (Winter 1969). For examples of the reactions, see for example, Lawrence E. Davies, “Harassment Charged by Author of Article About Negroes’ I.Q.’s,” New York Times, May 19, 1969, p. 33; “Campus Totalitarians,” New York Times, May 20, 1969, p. 46; “Panelists Assail View on Black I.Q.,” New York Times, November 23, 1969, p. 88; Robert Reinhold, “Psychologist Arouses Storm by Linking I.Q. to Heredity,” New York Times, March 30, 1969, p. 52; “Born Dumb?” Newsweek, March 31, 1969, p. 84; Maurice R. Berube, “Jensen’s Complaint,” Commonweal, October 10, 1969, pp. 42–44; “Intelligence and Race,” New Republic, April 5, 1969, pp. 10–11; “The New Rage at Berkeley,” Newsweek, June 2, 1969, p. 69; “Let There Be Darkness,” National Review, October 7, 1969, pp. 996–997. For early intellectual responses by professionals, see Environment, Heredity, and Intelligence, Reprint Series No. 2, a 246-page reprint of articles compiled from the Harvard Educational Review, Vol. 39, Nos. 1 and 2 (Winter and Spring 1969).

  5. Arthur R. Jensen, “How Much Can We Boost IQ and Scholastic Achievement?” Harvard Educational
Review, Winter 1969, p. 100.

  6. Ibid., p. 78.

  7. Ibid., p. 100.

  8. Ibid., p. 95.

  9. Ibid., pp. 106, 115–117.

  10. Ibid., p. 117.

  11. Ibid., pp. 106, 116.

  12. Ibid., p. 79.

  13. Ibid., p. 95.

  14. James R. Flynn, Asian Americans: Achievement Beyond IQ (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers, 1991), p. 1.

  15. Ibid., pp. 116–117.

  16. Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray, The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life (New York: The Free Press, 1994), pp. 70–74; Robert Klitgaard, Choosing Elites (New York: Basic Books, 1985), pp. 104–115; Stanley Sue and Jennifer Abe, Predictors of Academic Achievement Among Asian American and White Students (New York: College Entrance Examination Board, 1988), p. 1; Robert A. Gordon and Eileen E. Rudert, “Bad News Concerning IQ Tests,” Sociology of Education, July 1979, p. 176; Frank L. Schmidt and John E. Hunter, “Employment Testing: Old Theories and New Research Findings,” American Psychologist, October 1981, p. 1131; Arthur R. Jensen, “Selection of Minority Students in Higher Education,” University of Toledo Law Review, Spring-Summer 1970, pp. 440, 443; Donald A. Rock, “Motivation, Moderators, and Test Bias,” Ibid., pp. 536, 537; Ronald L. Flaugher, Testing Practices, Minority Groups, and Higher Education: A Review and Discussion of the Research (Princeton: Educational Testing Service, 1970), p. 11; Arthur R. Jensen, Bias in Mental Testing (New York: The Free Press, 1980), pp. 479–490.

  17. Richard Lynn, Race Differences in Intelligence: An Evolutionary Analysis (Augusta, GA: Washington Summit Publishers, 2006), pp. 124–125.

  18. Robert Klitgaard, Choosing Elites, pp. 161–165.

  19. The Supreme Court said, in Griggs v. Duke Power Company, that any job criteria “must have a manifest relationship to the employment in question.” Griggs v. Duke Power Company, 401 U.S. 424 (1971), at 432. But what is “manifest” to third parties with neither expertise in psychometrics nor practical experience in the particular business, much less a stake in the outcome, is something that can be known only after the fact, and is thus essentially ex post facto law that is expressly forbidden by the Constitution in Article I, Section 9.