Krishna
This book is amazing in its scope and concept, and is stunning in sections. Why? Because it takes the fundamental arguments of racist theories and attacks it head on. In fact, along the way, it demolishes a lot of other concepts that we take for granted, like the validity of IQ tests and what they really measure.
The main theme of the book is to look at the various scientific “proofs” of the various scientists and scholars over the years who have claimed that intelligence is not only measurable but also innate, and thus cannot be “improved”. This is the theory of “biological determinism”.
Their argument goes like this: You either have it or you don’t and if you don’t, it is something that you were not endowed with at birth, and so you have to learn to live with it. There are even “scientific experiments” done with full results published that corroborate the above claim and these have been published in scientific journals for all to see.
Stephen takes the premise among each of the arguments and the supporting data for experiments and proves the fallacy of the arguments cogently, in a manner that makes sense and in a manner that is irrefutable. In the process, he also brings out the hidden bias that subconsciously make even the most objective minded scientists to veer towards expected conclusions, even though their aim was to remain unbiased.
The book is a good read. Stephen himself does not hide his liberal background. He talks about his Hungarian Jewish grandparents who were immigrants to USA and the social work his family did as a matter of course. He loathes everything republican, including the Republican President of the day (yes, Ronald Reagan. He does not say so
outright, but it is there for all to see. Contrast that with the almost adoring mention of the same President in the books of Tom Clancy, for instance in The Red Rabbit, and you have a glimpse of how the bias of the authors come out in books that has literally nothing to do with the central theme of the book in question.)
Since Biological Determinism is the factor behind such ills as racism, Hitler’s Aryan supremacy theory, many sexist attitudes, slavery, much of the discrimination, this rebuttal is a vital tool in removing the ignorance that causes much of these ills. (Will the people who hold such views read this book? I wonder.)
Trained as a statistician (though by profession a paleontologist), Stephen uses statistical sampling and analysis techniques to disprove the conclusions reached my many of the earlier scientists, using their own data! Pretty cool to read.
He starts with the craniometry, the earliest attempts to `prove’ white superiority in intelligence by measuring the size of the skulls and `proving’ that white people had bigger skulls and thus more intelligence. Broca “proved” that women were much less intelligent than men because their skulls were uniformly smaller.
When the data did not support the conclusions, some, like Cyril Butt in his experiments on twins, simply fabricated the required data to prove their conclusions! Goddard even altered the photographs of some mentally challenged people (thicker eyebrows etc) to prove that facial features are indicative of intelligence.
Apart from the fascinating deconstruction of the theories themselves, quotes from the old books and conversations of the old time celebrities themselves cause consternation to read today.
There are nuggets of racism among the older population, even among world famous ones, that would have landed them in hot water today. There is the English Professor, who toured US during the late 19th century offering the unsolicited advice that `the US might solve their racial problem if every Irishman killed a Negro, and got hanged for it’.
Nott and Giddeon depicted in several of their works, a `social ladder’ with Whites on the top, blacks in the middle, and Chimpanzees at the bottom. Not satisfied with that, in pictures, they inflated the Chimpanzee’s skulls falsely and extended the black person’s jaw to give the impression that `blacks may even rank lower than the apes’.. Furthur they talk about the `similarities between the inferior type of man and the superior type of the monkey’.
These `scientists’ did not believe in the common ancestry of man. They believed in polygeny, which holds that mankind evolved as different species in different places on earth simultaneously, a comforting notion for those who abhor the idea that all men are equal, but one disproved conclusively to their dismay by modern genetic work!
Even great men held really bizarre views. Benjamin Franklin, one of the founding members of the US, did hope that `America would become a domain of whites, undiluted by “less pleasing colours” `.
Lincoln, the man behind the abolition of slavery, believed that `Given the physical differences between the white and the black races, they can never live together in social harmony’. He did believe in equal rights for all people but did not consider the people themselves as equal in their abilities!
The craniometrists, and later, the IQ test creators (Binot Scale) classified people into groups based on intelligence, and people who ranked in specific range were named, without irony, “Morons”. It was deemed that morons were required to do the manual labour and the intelligent people were needed to `run the world’.
Even slavery was defended on these grounds: `We need to look after the inferior race for their own good, just like parents have to look after children until they become more intelligent’.
Cartwright has a solution to `eliminate the lethargy of the black slaves’: “Stimulate their skin by washing with soap, anoint all over with oil, slapping it in with a broad leather [belt], and put them to hard work in open air that will compel them to expand their lungs.” This will cure `the almost full lack of feeling for pain in black slaves’.
Stephen takes their claims one by one and destroys them. He shows how their sampling or methodology is so biased (in craniometry for example or the IQ tests administered to immigrants in the US earlier) that the results cannot be anything other than the preconceived notion. But even then some anomalies crept in: Some black skulls were much larger than the white population, or skulls of some well known genius men were smaller than even the `lower races’ they either hurriedly “explained it away”, contradicting their own earlier stance in some cases, or simply altered the evidence!
Were women spared? No, the prejudices extended to them too. Apart from the skull size remark make earlier, there are other instances mentioned in the book. Gustave, for instance, says, “All psychologists who have studied the brains of women (presumably men psychologists!) recognize that they represent the most inferior form of human evolution. They are close to savages and children than `adult, civilized, men’. They excel in fickleness, inconstancy, absence of thought and logic, and incapacity to reason. Intelligent women do exist but they are not normal, they are a monstrosity like a
gorilla with two heads”
For not just the shock value but as an instructive book on how biased opinions were even as late as the seventies, and for a really scientific, cogent argument on why all men (and women) are equal in ability, read this book.
It may sag a bit at times, and also in sections is full of statistical reasoning, but even if you skip over these, it is a
brilliant read.
Let us say a high 8/10
— Krishna