Race, Evolution and Behavior
Implications for Guyana’s Future
By Gary Girdhari
Guyana Journal, February 2007
“We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal, that they are endowed with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
– The United States Declaration of Independence.
Since these laudable and profound words were promulgated, the “American Dream” of equality, liberty and fraternity was stymied for blacks in America; the dream became An American Dilemma1 wherein “racism had compromised the American creed for equal opportunity, fair play and justice for all. Racism was seen not only as wrong but also as an irrational pathology... the Negro was himself pathological as a result of his oppression; he was the product of an insufficient, degraded subculture.”
But change is inevitable.
It is now many years since the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision when the United States Supreme Courts threw out the Jim Crow laws of discrimination against blacks. The “separate but equal” status quo was found to be without any legal constitutional basis. Since then, despite undisputed social and economic gains, the opportunity for equality is still in reality elusive for many blacks – in employment, educational institutions, law enforcement and the judicial system. For although the federal and state governments stipulate it illegal to discriminate on the basis of race, color, gender, nationality, religion, disability and sexual orientation, many businesses and individuals continue to harbor prejudices, suggesting that the moral fabric of the society as a whole has to be continually enlightened and rejuvenated.
Racial discrimination and various forms of prejudices and bigotry continue to be common everyday practices – oftentimes surfacing to national dimensions in the United States. Many nasty comments and actions are known; few get national attention through the news media. In the Texaco exposé, for example, senior executives of the company were recorded, where they described African American employees as “nigger”, “orangutans”, “porch monkeys” and “black jelly beans”. (See also)
The doctrine of racism is old and, in America, is based on a presumed superiority of one race (white) over the other (black). Even Abraham Lincoln2, noted for his Emancipation Proclamation which freed slaves in some states, laid bare the prevailing thinking, “I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about the social and political equality of the white and black races. I am not nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people.
There is a physical difference between the white and black races which will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And insomuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.”
Thus, the superiority/inferiority basis for racism is rooted in bigotry, without any sound foundation for the ideological stance; in other circles it is supported by pseudo-science. Throughout history, the belief has been propagated to sustain the “superior people” status quo. Well known “great” people such as Thomas Jefferson said that “they [Negroes] have never been viewed by us as subjects of natural history” and felt that blacks were “inferior to the whites in the endowments both of body and mind”. The philosopher David Hume stated that “Negroes [are] naturally inferior to whites with no civilized nation.” Others, like Rudyard Kipling proclaimed blacks and other people of color as “inferior”, as a “lower form of evolution” and as “the white man’s burden”. Clearly then, one can understand the rationale for bigots and racists – they want to maintain the “natural order of things”.
In contemporary times, prejudice means “thinking ill of others without sufficient warrant” or “an avertive or hostile attitude toward a person who belongs to a group, simply because he belongs to that group, and is therefore presumed to have the objectionable qualities ascribed to the group.” In certain instances, societal antipathy, such as the age-old caste system of India or tribalism may be regarded as an accepted cultural value system rather than prejudice of the particular society. Regardless, such “prejudice is an antipathy based upon a faulty and inflexible generalization.” Indeed, in today’s world one finds many cases (e.g. in the US, Britain, France and elsewhere) where the presumption provokes institutional targeting of and personal attacks on Muslims or those who ‘look’ like Muslims, markedly since 9/11.
When prejudice is displayed by simply talking negative things, it is referred to as antilocution. But it may develop to the point of avoidance, i.e., refusal to interact with the other group – the subaltern. Negative attitudes, beliefs and feelings can be played out in discrimination, such as refusal in employment and promotion, credit, red-lining, exclusion from housing, hospitals, restaurants, cafes, theaters, and other spheres of public life. Feelings sometimes become so intense that the result may be physical attacks, as in beatings, riots, lootings, physical eviction, desecration of synagogues, churches, mosques and cemeteries, or racial gang fights. In extreme situations, there may be extermination, e.g., lynching (Negroes), pogroms and genocides (Jews in Nazi Germany), massacre and ethnic cleansing (tribal warfares – the Biafra war in Nigeria, Tutsi and Hutu in Rwanda). In all of the above, rumor oils the wheels of the prejudices, fanning the flames of the human commotion.
In the United States, racial segregation was also a consequence of prejudice. “Segregation is a form of discrimination that sets spatial boundaries of some sort to accentuate the disadvantage of members of the out-group.” For example, a discriminated black person may persist and finally obtain a job only to find that he/she is placed in a secluded area to perform his/her duties; s/he may get over the discriminatory practice of hiring (because of the law) but end up being segregated nevertheless. Similarly, blacks (called Negroes then) were allowed into cafes, restaurants, schools, and public transport, but delimited “for coloreds only”; or drink from a water fountain “for coloreds only”; or may be allowed to buy properties with provisos such as: “and furthermore, no lot sold or leased to, or occupied by, any person excepting of the white race”; “[p]rovided further, that the grantee shall not sell to Negroes or permit use or occupation by them, except as domestic servants”; or “shall not permit occupation by Negroes, Hindus, Syrians, Greeks, or any corporation controlled by them”; or “no part of the area may be owned or occupied by any person of Negro blood or by any person who is more than one-fourth of the Semitic race... including Armenians, Jews, Hebrews, Turks, Persians, Syrians and Arabians....”3 Also, discrimination may occur in hiring such as “male preferred”, “no colored”, “openings for Christians”, etc.
Such institutionalized discriminatory practices were/are perpetuated for many reasons, but mainly because of exaggerated and inaccurate generalizations (stereotypes) and for manipulative and exploitative purposes. Private and public polices are sometimes developed or advocated because of racist ideology. This is borne out modern-day in the “incendiary conservative theorist” Charles Murray’s The Bell Curve.4 Charles Murray concludes that basically people (American) can be divided into two major categories – those with low I.Q. and those with high I.Q. He claims that I.Q. is based almost entirely on genetic inheritance. Genetics and I.Q. will determine who become the successes and leaders (“the cognitive elite”) or who will remain in poverty, crime and dependency. According to Murray, the social and economic dichotomy will inevitably become more entrenched and widened. He posits that society will have to strengthen its protective devices (military and police) to guard against potential and foregone reprisals from the growing underclass. Further, on the assumption that the lower I.Q. people cannot benefit from exposure to institutions of learning and social programs, he advocates the withdrawal of benefits for those at the lower end of the social ladder.
Many academic researchers have protested Murray’s proposal to abolish welfare, food stamps and remedial education, to reject immigrants of below-average I.Q., to cut benefits to women who he believes encourage the reproduction of low I.Q. children. Charles Murray was dropped from the Manhattan Institute ‘think tank’, and the Boston Globe denounced his book, pointing to it as being pseudo-science.
The perfidious and dangerous aspect of The Bell Curve is that it offers validation to many, including closet racists, especially in business and government. It buttresses negative stereotypes. Murray gives no importance and credence to the impact of environmental cause and effect. He proselytizes with religious fervor that cognitive differences result in intractable inequality but does not recognize that inequality produces cognitive differences. Many academics doing twin studies and adoption follow-up research have, to the contrary, concluded that intelligence and I.Q. scores have an extremely high environmental etiology. The authors of The Bell Curve have treaded on dangerous ground and their work is feeding racist politicians and businessmen with justification to promote racist policies. So that, because they believe that black people are intellectually inferior, there should be no affirmative action!
The Bell Curve is an attempt to influence public policy in bolstering racist behavior and prejudices by providing (false) ‘scientific’ evidence. Most scholars know that this new construct is erroneously premised, criticize it for its partiality, and condemn it for its potential detriment to integration.
Integration, 53 years since the Topeka case, is still a slippery abstraction in the minds of many whites (and some blacks). White racist theorists and their cohorts feel that their special preserves will forever be lost. They were/are unable to appreciate the idea that non-discrimination and integration could reduce the process of economic inequalities. They also feared ‘mixing of the blood’ or miscegenation. This was also true for some black thinkers like W.E.B. DuBois who worried about possible cultural genocide of blacks. Many whites could not countenance the idea of blacks living with them as equals because of deep-rooted prejudices; and blacks wondered if they could ever forget the injustices, physical and emotional, meted out to them at the hands of whites.
Ralph Ellison5, a black Nobel Laureate for literature, in his book The Invisible Man, saw integration as a form of liberation when a person may maintain his or her individuality. He says, “Whence all this passion toward conformity anyway? Diversity is the word. Let man keep his many parts and you’ll have no tyrant states. Why, if they follow this conformity business they’ll end up by forcing me, an invisible man, to become white, which is not a color but the lack of one. Must I strive toward colorlessness? ... America is woven in many strands; I would recognize them and let it so remain.”
But liberation of the mind and spirit needs to be supported by laws where one can redress the failure of their application. Thus, the Topeka Brown v. Board of Education ruling paved the way for the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Fair Housing Act of 1968 – all important milestones for human rights.
Still, legislation notwithstanding, discrimination and segregation exist in other patterns of behavior. “Whites fled the urban areas with greater and greater speed – they took their tax base and middle-class children with them to the suburbs.” The result is that this new demographic shift perpetuated residential segregation, and hence segregation in schools and other places; and it has maintained the racial divide without breaking the law. Roger Wilkins in Modern Maturity states, “So the problem of the undigested black masses still confronts us. Not only is it destroying black lives, it is also destroying our cities, dividing our country, and warping our political priorities.”
The excesses of the prejudices have produced extremes of poor economic conditions, crime and ghettos, that have become self-perpetuating. Many white people feel that such situations are due to a lack of black leadership, now that the protective laws are on the books. Advocates like Charles Murray and his ilk on the right end of the ideological spectrum believe that such a state is predetermined, innate in the low I.Q. black people. They tend to marginalize those blacks, stating that it is in their genes and therefore any attempt at amelioration of the social conditions is a waste of valuable resources. Others see the problem as a lack of white leadership – for not grasping the core of the problem, and not accepting and responding – “to repair the deep and ugly racial damage ... [of] history.”
To resolve the scourge of the “oppressed” the conservative pedagogues want to build more prisons to house more prisoners at a cost close to $100,000 per prisoner per year, rather than spend similar or lesser sums in some positive aspects of development. Jessie Jackson has been advocating the latter for many years now. As Roger Wilkins6 puts it, “Both are very expensive. It’s just that the family program works a whole lot better for the people who are targeted – and for America’s future as well.”
What is needed is still to come – the liberation of the mind.
More
Implications for Guyana’s Future
By Gary Girdhari
Guyana Journal, February 2007
“We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal, that they are endowed with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
– The United States Declaration of Independence.
Since these laudable and profound words were promulgated, the “American Dream” of equality, liberty and fraternity was stymied for blacks in America; the dream became An American Dilemma1 wherein “racism had compromised the American creed for equal opportunity, fair play and justice for all. Racism was seen not only as wrong but also as an irrational pathology... the Negro was himself pathological as a result of his oppression; he was the product of an insufficient, degraded subculture.”
But change is inevitable.
It is now many years since the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision when the United States Supreme Courts threw out the Jim Crow laws of discrimination against blacks. The “separate but equal” status quo was found to be without any legal constitutional basis. Since then, despite undisputed social and economic gains, the opportunity for equality is still in reality elusive for many blacks – in employment, educational institutions, law enforcement and the judicial system. For although the federal and state governments stipulate it illegal to discriminate on the basis of race, color, gender, nationality, religion, disability and sexual orientation, many businesses and individuals continue to harbor prejudices, suggesting that the moral fabric of the society as a whole has to be continually enlightened and rejuvenated.
Racial discrimination and various forms of prejudices and bigotry continue to be common everyday practices – oftentimes surfacing to national dimensions in the United States. Many nasty comments and actions are known; few get national attention through the news media. In the Texaco exposé, for example, senior executives of the company were recorded, where they described African American employees as “nigger”, “orangutans”, “porch monkeys” and “black jelly beans”. (See also)
The doctrine of racism is old and, in America, is based on a presumed superiority of one race (white) over the other (black). Even Abraham Lincoln2, noted for his Emancipation Proclamation which freed slaves in some states, laid bare the prevailing thinking, “I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about the social and political equality of the white and black races. I am not nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people.
There is a physical difference between the white and black races which will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And insomuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.”
Thus, the superiority/inferiority basis for racism is rooted in bigotry, without any sound foundation for the ideological stance; in other circles it is supported by pseudo-science. Throughout history, the belief has been propagated to sustain the “superior people” status quo. Well known “great” people such as Thomas Jefferson said that “they [Negroes] have never been viewed by us as subjects of natural history” and felt that blacks were “inferior to the whites in the endowments both of body and mind”. The philosopher David Hume stated that “Negroes [are] naturally inferior to whites with no civilized nation.” Others, like Rudyard Kipling proclaimed blacks and other people of color as “inferior”, as a “lower form of evolution” and as “the white man’s burden”. Clearly then, one can understand the rationale for bigots and racists – they want to maintain the “natural order of things”.
In contemporary times, prejudice means “thinking ill of others without sufficient warrant” or “an avertive or hostile attitude toward a person who belongs to a group, simply because he belongs to that group, and is therefore presumed to have the objectionable qualities ascribed to the group.” In certain instances, societal antipathy, such as the age-old caste system of India or tribalism may be regarded as an accepted cultural value system rather than prejudice of the particular society. Regardless, such “prejudice is an antipathy based upon a faulty and inflexible generalization.” Indeed, in today’s world one finds many cases (e.g. in the US, Britain, France and elsewhere) where the presumption provokes institutional targeting of and personal attacks on Muslims or those who ‘look’ like Muslims, markedly since 9/11.
When prejudice is displayed by simply talking negative things, it is referred to as antilocution. But it may develop to the point of avoidance, i.e., refusal to interact with the other group – the subaltern. Negative attitudes, beliefs and feelings can be played out in discrimination, such as refusal in employment and promotion, credit, red-lining, exclusion from housing, hospitals, restaurants, cafes, theaters, and other spheres of public life. Feelings sometimes become so intense that the result may be physical attacks, as in beatings, riots, lootings, physical eviction, desecration of synagogues, churches, mosques and cemeteries, or racial gang fights. In extreme situations, there may be extermination, e.g., lynching (Negroes), pogroms and genocides (Jews in Nazi Germany), massacre and ethnic cleansing (tribal warfares – the Biafra war in Nigeria, Tutsi and Hutu in Rwanda). In all of the above, rumor oils the wheels of the prejudices, fanning the flames of the human commotion.
In the United States, racial segregation was also a consequence of prejudice. “Segregation is a form of discrimination that sets spatial boundaries of some sort to accentuate the disadvantage of members of the out-group.” For example, a discriminated black person may persist and finally obtain a job only to find that he/she is placed in a secluded area to perform his/her duties; s/he may get over the discriminatory practice of hiring (because of the law) but end up being segregated nevertheless. Similarly, blacks (called Negroes then) were allowed into cafes, restaurants, schools, and public transport, but delimited “for coloreds only”; or drink from a water fountain “for coloreds only”; or may be allowed to buy properties with provisos such as: “and furthermore, no lot sold or leased to, or occupied by, any person excepting of the white race”; “[p]rovided further, that the grantee shall not sell to Negroes or permit use or occupation by them, except as domestic servants”; or “shall not permit occupation by Negroes, Hindus, Syrians, Greeks, or any corporation controlled by them”; or “no part of the area may be owned or occupied by any person of Negro blood or by any person who is more than one-fourth of the Semitic race... including Armenians, Jews, Hebrews, Turks, Persians, Syrians and Arabians....”3 Also, discrimination may occur in hiring such as “male preferred”, “no colored”, “openings for Christians”, etc.
Such institutionalized discriminatory practices were/are perpetuated for many reasons, but mainly because of exaggerated and inaccurate generalizations (stereotypes) and for manipulative and exploitative purposes. Private and public polices are sometimes developed or advocated because of racist ideology. This is borne out modern-day in the “incendiary conservative theorist” Charles Murray’s The Bell Curve.4 Charles Murray concludes that basically people (American) can be divided into two major categories – those with low I.Q. and those with high I.Q. He claims that I.Q. is based almost entirely on genetic inheritance. Genetics and I.Q. will determine who become the successes and leaders (“the cognitive elite”) or who will remain in poverty, crime and dependency. According to Murray, the social and economic dichotomy will inevitably become more entrenched and widened. He posits that society will have to strengthen its protective devices (military and police) to guard against potential and foregone reprisals from the growing underclass. Further, on the assumption that the lower I.Q. people cannot benefit from exposure to institutions of learning and social programs, he advocates the withdrawal of benefits for those at the lower end of the social ladder.
Many academic researchers have protested Murray’s proposal to abolish welfare, food stamps and remedial education, to reject immigrants of below-average I.Q., to cut benefits to women who he believes encourage the reproduction of low I.Q. children. Charles Murray was dropped from the Manhattan Institute ‘think tank’, and the Boston Globe denounced his book, pointing to it as being pseudo-science.
The perfidious and dangerous aspect of The Bell Curve is that it offers validation to many, including closet racists, especially in business and government. It buttresses negative stereotypes. Murray gives no importance and credence to the impact of environmental cause and effect. He proselytizes with religious fervor that cognitive differences result in intractable inequality but does not recognize that inequality produces cognitive differences. Many academics doing twin studies and adoption follow-up research have, to the contrary, concluded that intelligence and I.Q. scores have an extremely high environmental etiology. The authors of The Bell Curve have treaded on dangerous ground and their work is feeding racist politicians and businessmen with justification to promote racist policies. So that, because they believe that black people are intellectually inferior, there should be no affirmative action!
The Bell Curve is an attempt to influence public policy in bolstering racist behavior and prejudices by providing (false) ‘scientific’ evidence. Most scholars know that this new construct is erroneously premised, criticize it for its partiality, and condemn it for its potential detriment to integration.
Integration, 53 years since the Topeka case, is still a slippery abstraction in the minds of many whites (and some blacks). White racist theorists and their cohorts feel that their special preserves will forever be lost. They were/are unable to appreciate the idea that non-discrimination and integration could reduce the process of economic inequalities. They also feared ‘mixing of the blood’ or miscegenation. This was also true for some black thinkers like W.E.B. DuBois who worried about possible cultural genocide of blacks. Many whites could not countenance the idea of blacks living with them as equals because of deep-rooted prejudices; and blacks wondered if they could ever forget the injustices, physical and emotional, meted out to them at the hands of whites.
Ralph Ellison5, a black Nobel Laureate for literature, in his book The Invisible Man, saw integration as a form of liberation when a person may maintain his or her individuality. He says, “Whence all this passion toward conformity anyway? Diversity is the word. Let man keep his many parts and you’ll have no tyrant states. Why, if they follow this conformity business they’ll end up by forcing me, an invisible man, to become white, which is not a color but the lack of one. Must I strive toward colorlessness? ... America is woven in many strands; I would recognize them and let it so remain.”
But liberation of the mind and spirit needs to be supported by laws where one can redress the failure of their application. Thus, the Topeka Brown v. Board of Education ruling paved the way for the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Fair Housing Act of 1968 – all important milestones for human rights.
Still, legislation notwithstanding, discrimination and segregation exist in other patterns of behavior. “Whites fled the urban areas with greater and greater speed – they took their tax base and middle-class children with them to the suburbs.” The result is that this new demographic shift perpetuated residential segregation, and hence segregation in schools and other places; and it has maintained the racial divide without breaking the law. Roger Wilkins in Modern Maturity states, “So the problem of the undigested black masses still confronts us. Not only is it destroying black lives, it is also destroying our cities, dividing our country, and warping our political priorities.”
The excesses of the prejudices have produced extremes of poor economic conditions, crime and ghettos, that have become self-perpetuating. Many white people feel that such situations are due to a lack of black leadership, now that the protective laws are on the books. Advocates like Charles Murray and his ilk on the right end of the ideological spectrum believe that such a state is predetermined, innate in the low I.Q. black people. They tend to marginalize those blacks, stating that it is in their genes and therefore any attempt at amelioration of the social conditions is a waste of valuable resources. Others see the problem as a lack of white leadership – for not grasping the core of the problem, and not accepting and responding – “to repair the deep and ugly racial damage ... [of] history.”
To resolve the scourge of the “oppressed” the conservative pedagogues want to build more prisons to house more prisoners at a cost close to $100,000 per prisoner per year, rather than spend similar or lesser sums in some positive aspects of development. Jessie Jackson has been advocating the latter for many years now. As Roger Wilkins6 puts it, “Both are very expensive. It’s just that the family program works a whole lot better for the people who are targeted – and for America’s future as well.”
What is needed is still to come – the liberation of the mind.
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