NOTES
1. "Racism," The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of
Egoism (New York: New American Library, 1964), p. 126.
2. The question is especially pregnant because thoughtful Randians know
that, in their own intellectual gifts, they are far more likely to resemble
Eddie Willers than Dagny Taggart or John Galt!
3. Nathaniel Branden, at the time a Rand confidant, wrote: "Eddie Willers ...
represents the best of the average man: the honest, conscientious person
of limited ability. At the end of the story, his fate is deliberately left
indeterminate; we do not know whether he will live or die; if someone
comes along to save him, he will survive; if not, he will perish. The
meaning of his fate is that men such as Eddie can function productively
and happily in a world in which the Hank Reardens and the Dagny Taggarts
are left free, but men such as Eddie have no chance in a world ruled by the
collectivists." (Who Is Ayn Rand? [New York: Random House,
1962], pp. 121-22.)
4. J. Philippe Rushton, in Race, Evolution, and Behavior (see
note 6), has this to say of the founder of the Montessori approach:
5. I am not certain how far determinist assumptions have penetrated into
today's common culture, but it is interesting to note the large proportion
of people who, in stating an opinion, don't say "I think," but rather "I feel."
That is just what an honest determinist must say (assuming
"honesty" has any meaning in a determinist context!).
6. An excellent starting point for one's self-education in these matters is
Rushton's Race, Evolution, and Behavior: A Life History
Perspective (New York: Transaction, 1994).
7. Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, expanded 2nd ed.
(New York: NAL Books, 1990), p. 72.
8. Among possibly important qualifying factors, given the context, are sex
and age.
9. See especially "Myth of the racist cabbie," by Dinesh D'Souza, National
Review, Oct. 9, 1995, p. 36.
10. I also do my best to avoid karate-strutting Oriental youths wearing Fu
Manchu moustaches and muscle shirts, and white bikers wearing tattoos
and Wehrmacht helmets (as well as U.S. soldiers and paramilitary police
wearing Wehrmacht helmets). But in this particular discussion, I am
focusing not on voluntarily adopted styles, but rather on the involuntary
attribute of skin color in combination with sex and age. Few of us hesitate
to act on our prejudices against people who exhibit traits that are
obviously voluntary; we tend to feel much more tender — if not
actually guilty — about responding negatively to inborn traits.
11. "A Philosopher Looks at the O.J. Verdict," Ford Hall Forum, 1996. Since
I have fired a shot across Peikoff's bow, I hasten to assure my readers
that this taped lecture is a gripping and thought-provoking analysis of
how the chaos and evil in the American justice system is attributable to
irrational and evil philosophy; and another fine demonstration that ideas
have consequences.
12. As for what intelligence is and whether it can be measured, a
comprehensive explication of those questions is quite beyond my compass
here, and also beyond my competence. But I will venture to make a couple
of points. Contrary to the folklore fabricated by the leftists' gutter press,
standard intelligence tests are highly predictive of future educational and
occupational success. Also, the IQ differences among races show up most
clearly with respect to general mental ability ("the g factor")
and not clearly at all with respect to the sorts of
performance that we would expect to be most conditioned by cultural and
socioeconomic disadvantage. According to Rushton,
Of course creative ability, including the ability to create advanced
civilizations, involves more than sheer intelligence. Otherwise the
industrial revolution — for instance — surely would have
occurred in the Orient rather than in the Occident, given the superior IQ of
Orientals (see Rushton, p. 134 inter alia). Even so, Rushton
writes that East and West have much more in common, civilizationally,
than certain other parts of the world:
Twenty-one criteria by which a civilization could be judged were set up
by J. R. Baker [in Race ; see note 13].... He ... proceeded to
analyze the historical record to ascertain which races have originated
civilizations. His conclusion was that the Caucasoid peoples developed all
21 components of civilization in four independent locations, the Sumerian
in the valley of the Tigris and the Euphrates, the Cretan, the Indus Valley,
and the ancient Egyptian. The Mongoloids also developed a full civilization
in the Sinic civilization in China. The Amerindians achieved about half of
the 21 components in the Maya society of Guatemala, a little less in the
Inca and Aztec societies, but these peoples never invented a written
script, the wheel (except possibly in children's toys), the principle of the
arch in their architecture, metal working, or money for the exchange of
goods. The Negroids and the Australian aborigines achieved virtually none
of the criteria of civilization. (pp. 141-42)
13. Most investigators, including Rushton, find an average difference
between white Americans and black Americans of about 15 IQ points (100
versus 85), amounting to one full standard deviation. (Cf. John R. Baker,
Race [Athens, Ga.: Foundation for Human Understanding,
1974], especially Chap. 25, "Racial differences in cognitive ability.") The
average difference between white Americans and pure Africans seems to
be far greater; in Race, Evolution, and Behavior, Rushton
summarizes the startling results of studies showing an "approximate
mean [IQ] for pure Negroids" of 70. (p. 137)
14. All lynchings of whites and blacks in American history were by
definition illegal, but obviously not all of them can have been unjust.
15. As one race-conscious writer has recently observed, all the modern
blather about how it was the Negroes who really built the South ignores
the fact that without white management the entire region would have
remained a howling wilderness.
I would revise that only to point out that the howling would actually have
been somewhat louder than before, what with its new features of ritual
murder, cannibalism, clitoridectomy — and, of course, slavery.
Import several million pure Negroes from Africa and leave them to their
own devices, and chances are very great that you will merely end up with
a new Africa, at least for the first few millennia. About the only horror
missing would be the tsetse fly.
I do not mean to imply any praise for those who did import — and
then manage — the Negroes.
16. Vic Olivir, "When America Goes Down."Maria Montessori ... the well-known Italian educational
reformer, not only devised a system of self-education for young children
but also lectured on anthropology at the University of Rome. She accepted
evolutionary-based differences in criminality and intelligence from the
work of Broca and Lombroso. She also measured the circumference of
children's heads in her schools and concluded that faster learning was
made by children with bigger brains. (p. 109)
[Arthur] Jensen concluded ... the average black-white
difference on diverse mental tests may be interpreted as chiefly a
difference in g, rather than as a difference in the more
specific sources of test score variance associated with any particular
informational content, scholastic knowledge, acquired skill, or type of
test. (p. 139; see also pp. 32- 34)