“Today’s eugenicists - many of them gathered under the Pioneer Fund’s umbrella - focus their attention on blacks and Latinos, although a fixation with Jews still persists among the most rabid, who, like Hitler, believe the ’colored races’ are being used to generally undermine whites so the Jews can take over the world. Under various guises, Pioneer Fund researchers have promoted many of the same policies for tailoring the gene pool as did their Nazi precursors. To limit mixing with the unworthy, Pioneer Fund grant recipients have lobbied for restrictive immigration policies and promoted various forms of segregation. To rid the world of ’undesirables’ - and their potential offspring - some grant recipients have suggested sterilization or even extermination.” So wrote Adam Miller in “Professors of Hate; Academia’s Dirty Secret,” in the October 20, 1994 issue of Rolling Stone (p. 106)
The Pioneer Fund gives millions of dollars to those doing research to find a genetic foundation for differences in intelligence among races. It is research financed by this fund that Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein used for their provocative book, The Bell Curve.
One race scholar, J. Philippe Rushton, has been obsessed with Black sexuality and penis size. He says: “Even if you take something like athletic ability or sexuality - not to reinforce stereotypes - but you know, it’s a trade-off: more brain power or more penis. You can’t have everything.” (ibid. p. 112) Miller further writes of Rushton:
He suggests that white supremacists’ opposition to abortion is a genetic impulse against a procedure that may add to what they perceive to be the demographic threat of black and Latino immigration and fertility. He details how humanist, egalitarian and anti-racist ideas support these population shifts that endanger “North European“ civilization. And he implies that eugenics could change this. (ibid.)
The late humanist leader Paul Kurtz was certainly one to warmly embrace the free mingling of the “races.” Moreover, he was an internationalist that believed in one world government, and using global taxes to help uplift the poor nations of the world.
In part two of this article, I discussed the first president of the Pioneer Fund, Harry Laughlin.
Laughlin’s political work was directed toward keeping Jewish immigrants out of the U.S. His plans worked all too well, for they also prevented many Jews fleeing ethnic cleansing in Russia and later, from the Holocaust, from entering the U.S. Miller continues:
In 1922, Laughlin also wrote the Model Eugenical Sterilization Law, which was adopted in one form or another by 30 states and resulted in the forced sterilization of tens of thousands of people in the United States. The law also served as the basis for the Nazi program that resulted in the forced sterilization of at least 2 million people. For his contributions to eugenics, Laughlin received an honorary degree from the University of Heidelberg in Germany, in 1936. The Nazis’ scientific adviser for the extermination of the handicapped notified Laughlin of the award. In 1937, Laughlin obtained a Nazi film praising eugenic cleansing and offered screenings to 3,000 U.S. high schools. There were 28 takers. Third Reich newspapers celebrated this success. The Pioneer Fund’s founder, [Wickliffe] Draper, took a special interest in this project as well as in efforts to promote black reparation. (ibid.)
Of course, none of this necessarily means that the tainted sources of The Bell Curve are completely useless, per se. That would be committing a common logical fallacy, such as poisoning the well, or the genetic fallacy. However, one has to wonder why race scholars ignore, downplay or completely try to hide the ugly truth about their predecessors. If they are ashamed of this history, this is perfectly understandable. Yet there is something insidious and invidious (and downright cowardly) about scholars that make it a point to hide the truth, and at the same time, try to distance themselves from the political, social and economic implications and consequences of their research.
Many of these race scholars are not simply obsessed with I.Q. Many of them are obsessed with the notion that smart people have bigger brains than their dimwitted counterparts. To this end, they like to compare the brains of different races.
Samuel Morton carried out research on the differences in head size among the races. He was one of the leading scientists of the 19th century. He published his book Crania Americana in 1839, and his findings were published in the Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences. Among those ranked in cognitive ability, Whites, Teutons and Anglo-Saxons came out on top. Jews came in second, and finally, “Hindus.” (Today, most race scholars put “Hindus” at the top.)
Some scientists believe that there is a moderate correlation between brain size and intelligence, but that that does not necessarily mean that people with smaller brains are less intelligent than those with larger brains. After all, Neanderthal brains were larger than ours. Moreover, many geniuses throughout history, including Kant, had small brains. The French author Anatole de France’s brain was only about 70% the size of the average man’s brain.
Then there is the fact that Black men have larger brains than White women, but no one argues that Black men are smarter than White women. (Indeed, one could be inclined to argue that women are smarter than men based on the fact that they outperform men in many areas at most school levels.)
Perhaps even more upsetting to many race scholars is the fact that the Khoi (aka, Bushmen) have the biggest brains among South Africans. Again, there are no race scholars rushing to argue that the Khoi are more intelligent than their White South African counterparts. (Incidentally, Vincent Sarich and Frank Miele in their book Race: The Reality of Human Differences on pp. 226-228, are baffled by “The Tale of the Bushman and the Bendix Spring.” They are amazed at a Black African’s applied intelligence in figuring out a problem that left “even” intelligent White Westerners completely stumped.)
Perhaps this gem from a story in the February 19, 2002 issue of USA TODAY can help clarify matters:
A comparison of human brains with those from orangutans, chimps and gorillas finds that the frontal lobes in humans are proportionally no bigger than those of apes. Instead, researchers say, human brains, still the largest overall, just might be better wired. Scientists used magnetic resonance imaging to look at 15 great apes such as gorillas and chimps, four gibbons, five monkeys and 10 people to make the brain size estimate. Past studies had compared only a few individuals. ( “Wiring, not size, may give humans an edge,“ p. 16B)
Of course, this will not deter race scholars. They will simply try to prove that there are racial differences in the way our brains are wired. As the saying goes, “what we find depends mainly on what we look for.” Sadly, race scholars are simply looking for ways to stigmatize Black people, and, more often than not, to have their research used for public policy that negatively influences the lives of Black people all over the globe..