Americans today are too sensitive about race, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas told a gathering of college students in Florida on Tuesday.
Speaking at Palm Beach Atlantic University in West Palm Beach, Fla., Thomas, the second black justice to serve on the court, lamented what he considers a society that is more “conscious” of racial differences than it was when he grew up in segregated Georgia in the days before — and during — the civil rights era.
“My sadness is that we are probably today more race and difference-conscious than I was in the 1960s when I went to school. To my knowledge, I was the first black kid in Savannah, Georgia, to go to a white school. Rarely did the issue of race come up,” Thomas said during a chapel service hosted by the nondenominational Christian university. “Now, name a day it doesn’t come up. Differences in race, differences in sex, somebody doesn’t look at you right, somebody says something. Everybody is sensitive. If I had been as sensitive as that in the 1960s, I’d still be in Savannah. Every person in this room has endured a slight. Every person. Somebody has said something that has hurt their feelings or did something to them — left them out.
“That’s a part of the deal,” he added.
On his radio show today, Dennis Prager said: “To me, race is as important as shoe size. I don’t give a damn about your race. the more people emphasize the inherent significance of race, the closer they get to a racist fascist belief… I want to know about your values. I don’t give a hoot about your blood line.”
“Race doesn’t matter. It’s a color of skin. It’s pigmentation. Who cares?”
“People place more emphasis on race defining you today than when he grew up in Savannah, Georgia. the very notion that this president of the United States is black rather than mixed race shows it is all politics, not truth.”
“You know who counted the blood of your ancestors? The Nazis.”
“I love Clarence Thomas. He’s filled with a love of life. He has a big deep giant heart.”
In various countries and times, leaders of groups that lagged behind, economically and educationally, have taught their followers to blame all their problems on other people — and to hate those other people.
This was the history of anti-Semitic movements in Eastern Europe between the two World Wars, anti-Ibo movements in Nigeria in the 1960s, and anti-Tamil movements that turned Sri Lanka from a peaceful nation into a scene of lethal mob violence and then decades-long civil war, both marked by unspeakable atrocities.
Groups that rose from poverty to prosperity seldom did so by having their own racial or ethnic leaders to follow. While most Americans can easily name a number of black leaders, current or past, how many can name Asian-American ethnic leaders or Jewish ethnic leaders?
Phil Rushton writes:
…there is no stronger taboo today than talking about race. In many cases, just being accused of “racism” can get you fired. Yet, teachers in America know the races differ in school achievement; policemen know the races differ in crime rates; social workers know the races differ in rates of welfare dependency or getting infected with AIDS. And sports fans know that Blacks excel at boxing, basketball, and running. They all wonder why. Some blame poverty, White racism, and the legacy of slavery. Although many doubt that “White racism” really tells the whole story, few dare share their doubts. When it comes to race, do you really dare to say what
you think?
Racial groups differ much more widely than many people realize. Yet vocal groups in academia and the media simply forbid letting the public in on an open discussion. Many worry that just mentioning
that the races differ creates stereotypes and limits opportunities. But looking at race does not mean ignoring individuals. It may even help us become more aware of each person’s special needs.
This book presents the scientific evidence that race is a biological reality that has both scientific and everyday meaning. Other recent books on the issue are: The Bell Curve (the 1994 best seller by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray), Why Race Matters (a 1997 book by philosopher Michael Levin), The g Factor (a 1998 book by psychologist Arthur Jensen), and TABOO: Why Black Athletes Dominate Sports and Why We Are Afraid to Talk About It (a recent book by award winning journalist Jon Entine).Is race real? Do the races differ in behavior as well as in body? Are such views just the result of white racism? Modern science shows a three-way pattern of race differences in both physical traits and behavior. On average, Orientals are slower to mature, less fertile, less sexually active, less aggressive, and have larger brains and higher IQ scores. Blacks are at the other pole. Whites fall in the middle, but closer to Orientals than to Blacks.
White men can’t jump. Asian men can’t either. But according to Jon Entine’s new book, Taboo: Why Black Athletes Dominate Sports and Why We Are Afraid to Talk About It, Black men — and women — sure can. The usual reason given for Black athletic success is that Blacks have little chance to get ahead elsewhere. But Entine’s new book shows that in sports, Blacks have a genetic edge. The physical facts Entine reviews are quite well known. Compared to Whites, Blacks have narrower hips which gives them a more efficient stride. They have a shorter sitting height which provides a higher center of gravity and a better balance. They have wider shoulders, less body fat, and more muscle. Their muscles include more fast twitch muscles which produce power. Blacks have from 3 to 19% more of the sex hormone testosterone than Whites or East Asians. The testosterone translates into more explosive energy.Entine points out that these physical advantages give Blacks the edge in sports like boxing, basketball, football, and sprinting. However, some of these race differences pose a problem for Black
swimmers. Heavier skeletons and smaller chest cavities limit their performance.Race differences show up early in life. Black babies are born a week earlier than White babies, yet they are more mature as measured by bone development. By age five or six, Black children excel in the dash, the long jump, and the high jump, all of which require a short burst of power. By the teenage years, Blacks have faster reflexes, as in the famous knee-jerk response.
East Asians run even less well than Whites. The same narrow hips, longer legs, more muscle, and more testosterone that give Blacks an advantage over Whites, give Whites an advantage over East Asians.
But admitting these genetic race differences in sports leads to the greater taboo area — race differences in brain size and crime. That is why it is taboo to even say that Blacks are better at many sports.The reason why Whites and East Asians have wider hips than Blacks, and so make poorer runners is because they give birth to larger brained babies. During evolution, increasing cranial size meant women had to have a wider pelvis. Further, the hormones that give Blacks an edge at sports makes them restless in school and prone to crime.
Acclaim for J. Philippe Rushton’s book Race, Evolution & Behavior:
(An) incendiary thesis….that separate races of human beings evolved different reproductive strategies to cope with
different environments and that these strategies led to physical differences in brain size and hence in intelligence.
Human beings who evolved in the warm but highly unpredictable environment of Africa adopted a strategy of high
reproduction, while human beings who migrated to the hostile cold of Europe and northern Asia took to producing
fewer children but nurturing them more carefully.”
—Malcolm W. Browne, New York Times Book Review
“Rushton is a serious scholar who has assembled serious data. Consider just one example: brain size. The empirical
reality, verified by numerous modern studies, including several based on magnetic resonance imaging, is that a
significant and substantial relationship does exist between brain size and measured intelligence after body size is
taken into account and that the races do have different distributions of brain size.”
—Charles Murray, Afterword to The Bell Curve
“Describes hundreds of studies worldwide that show a consistent pattern of human racial differences in such
characteristics as intelligence, brain size, genital size, strength of sex drive, reproductive potency, industriousness,
sociability, and rule following. On each of these variables, the groups are aligned in the order: Orientals, Caucasians,
Blacks.”
—Mark Snyderman, National Review
“Rushton’s Race, Evolution, and Behavior…is an attempt to understand [race] differences in terms of life-history
evolution….Perhaps there ultimately will be some serious contribution from the traditional smoke-and-mirrors social
science treatment of IQ, but for now Rushton’s framework is essentially the only game in town.”
—Henry Harpending, Evolutionary Anthropology
.“This brilliant book is the most impressive theory-based study…of the psychological and behavioral differences
between the major racial groups that I have encountered in the world literature on this subject.”
—Arthur R. Jensen, University of California, Berkeley
“The only acceptable explanation of race differences in behavior allowed in public discourse is an entirely
environmental one…Professor Rushton deserves our gratitude for having the courage to declare that ‘this emperor
has no clothes,’ and that a more satisfactory explanation must be sought.”
—Thomas J. Bouchard, Jr., University of Minnesota
“The remarkable resistance to racial science in our times has led to comparisons with the inquisition of Rome, active
during the Renaissance…. Astronomy and the physical sciences had their Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo a few
centuries ago; society and the welfare of humanity is the better for it today. In a directly analogous fashion,
psychology and the social sciences today have their Darwin, Galton, and Rushton.”
—Glayde Whitney, Contemporary Psychology
“The data are startling to the uninitiated….Race, Evolution, and Behavior confronts us as few books have with the
dilemmas wrought in a democratic society by individual and group differences in key human traits.”
—Linda Gottfredson, Politics and the Life Sciences
“Professor Rushton is widely known and respected for the unusual combination of rigour and originality in his
work….Few concerned with understanding the problems associated with race can afford to disregard this storehouse
of well-integrated information which gives rise to a remarkable synthesis.”
—Hans J. Eysenck, University of London
“Should, if there is any justice, receive a Nobel Prize.”
—Richard Lynn, Spectator.
