Learning-darkness

Scientific racism survived the collapse of the Third Reich. There are few researchers who do this, but there are more and more those who listen to them.

Michael Kundu's career was ruined by a single email. In early June, the education committee of the US city of Marysville, where he worked, discussed academic performance. Officials sounded the alarm: there were a lot of losers among schoolchildren from poor African-American families. Kundu quickly found an explanation. "It's not just about poverty," he wrote to colleagues on the committee. "It's been scientifically proven that whites are smarter than blacks." Someone forwarded the letter to human rights activists, a scandal broke out, and within a few days Kundu was convincing a hastily convened commission that it was "not a statement, but just a stream of consciousness." Didn't convince. On July 12, he had to retire.

In that letter, Kundu did refer to scientific research. He mentioned the work of Canadian psychologist John Philip Rushton, who has been with the University of Western Ontario for many years. All this time, Rushton is trying to prove that the level of intelligence of people depends on their ethnicity. So, a few years ago, Rushton and his colleagues went to the gypsy villages of Serbia, where they measured the skulls of local residents in order to roughly estimate the volume of the brain. It is difficult to call Rushton a pioneer in this matter. In the last century, Nazi anthropologists were engaged in such research with might and main.

Rushton was listed by the Intelligence Report as one of North America's most influential racists back in 2003, and the University of Western Ontario has received repeated requests to deal with the scientist. But Rushton got away with everything—his leadership put the brakes on complaints, referring to the freedom of scientific activity.

Now the psychologist's articles are freely published in serious academic journals. While Michael Kundu was saying goodbye to his work, the scientist he inadvertently quoted was preparing for a prestigious scientific conference.

The problem is, Rushton is not alone. The innate intellectual differences between races are calmly declared by scientists from politically correct America and Europe. Critics do not leave stone unturned from their work, but the authors continue in the same spirit. It's not just sympathizers like Michael Kundu who are interested in these studies. Those who give grants to fringe scientists also sponsor radical political organizations. And they, in turn, promote tough anti-immigrant laws. A few months ago, not without their support, one of these scandalous laws was passed in the United States.

mind games

John Philip Rushton's main tool is not even a ruler for measuring skulls, but a set of standard IQ tests. The scientist offered Serbian gypsies to solve just such problems. “Gypsies coped with some tests at the level of ten-year-old Serbian children,” Rushton wrote in his article. He did not give strict explanations for his observations: "The level of intelligence of the gypsies could be influenced by both social and genetic factors." But in passing he mentioned that, compared to the Serbs, the gypsies have a slightly less voluminous skull, and possibly even the brain.

Not only gypsies got it from Rushton. This year, another of his works came out, this time dedicated to the inhabitants of Africa. The scientist made approximately the same conclusions: blacks noticeably lag behind whites in intellectual development. Rushton didn't have to travel around Africa himself. The psychologist borrowed information about the average IQ of the inhabitants of the continent from a British colleague Richard Lynn from the University of Ulster.

In 2002, Lynn published his world atlas of intellectual differences. His book provides average IQs for residents of more than 100 countries. In the same place, for comparison, Lynn gives approximate indicators of the intelligence of some species of monkeys. The closest thing to primates, according to Lynn, is the indigenous population of Africa and the aborigines of Australia. The white population of North America and Europe has gone much further from the monkeys. Lynn found higher IQs only among residents of China and Japan.

Richard Lynn, however, also did not take these measurements himself. He worked with data from open sources and deduced a simple pattern: the lowest IQs, as a rule, turned out to be residents of the poorest countries. The scientist reasoned simply. According to Lynn, it was the low level of intelligence of their inhabitants that brought all these states to poverty. After the release of Lynn's book, only the lazy did not call him a racist. But Rushton, based on a colleague's research, went even further—he suggested that all blacks have a propensity for crime. Representatives of the black race have a low IQ and it is not so easy for them to control their behavior, the scientist argued in one of his works.

This logic made Rushton famous, but not in academia—he is often quoted by white nationalists in Canada and the United States. Psychologists prefer to deny the conclusions of their colleague. “I rarely get personal, but now I will make an exception,” resents New York University employee Joshua Aronson. “Rushton's reasoning is the least like science. Obviously, he has some kind of score of his own with blacks. ”

Aronson agrees with Lynn and Rushton on only one point: there really is a difference in IQ scores between whites and blacks. But he is sure that all these measurements have very little relation to the true level of intelligence. The point is that doing IQ tests effectively is a matter of daily mind training. "Many blacks simply don't have access to a good education," explains Aronson.

Aronson is not alone in interpreting Richard Lynn's data in his own way. A month ago, he was joined by another scientist, a biologist from the University of New Mexico, Christopher Eppig. He found that national IQ scores from Lynn's atlas correlated very well with the level of the epidemiological situation in the world. The lowest IQ was in the regions where the most dangerous diseases were spread. “Many types of infections are quite capable of affecting the development of the brain in children,” explains Christopher Eppig to Newsweek.

The scientist hopes that his work will defuse the atmosphere around the study of intellectual differences: "I think that my colleagues should favorably accept the medical explanation of Lynn's observations." At the request of a Newsweek correspondent, Richard Lynn himself got acquainted with Eppig's calculations. He did not look for counterarguments for long. “We still need to prove that it is the epidemiological situation that affects intelligence, and not vice versa,” says Lynn. “It is the lack of a basic understanding of medicine that leads to the spread of disease. You don't have to look far for an example: the President of South Africa once said that taking a shower, you can protect yourself from AIDS. Despite the criticism, Lynn is absolutely confident in his calculations. "Truly breakthrough research is always repulsed at first," he says.

Fighting off disgruntled colleagues is not too difficult for Lynn and Rushton—both scientists mean something in the academic community. Rushton achieved recognition for his research on altruism. And data from the Lynn atlas is constantly referred to by sociologists and economists. With all the claims to the numbers, there is simply no analogue to these tables. In addition, Richard Lynn is one of the editors of the well-known scientific journal Personality and Individual Differences. Rushton occupies the same position in the prestigious Intelligence. These journals often publish controversial articles by both researchers.

Hitler's charisma

Rushton reports on the results of research not only in scientific articles. He was invited to speak at the American Renaissance conference several times. This is not an academic event. “I’ll tell you what kind of meeting this is!” American activist Jeffrey Imm shouts into the phone. “Nazis from all over the country come to the conference—a real supermarket of evil!”

Imm visited this conference more than once and watched the participants from the sidelines. In appearance, everything is decorous - no swastikas on the forehead. “But you should have seen how they all, grinning, indulge in jokes about stupid blacks,” the activist is indignant. This year, he and his supporters managed to disrupt the conference. They sent warning letters to the hotels where the meeting participants were going to stay. The hotel owners decided not to spoil their reputation. Now Geoffrey Imma is regularly threatened with death by strangers. He especially remembered the tractor drivers "from a state far, far away." “They saved up money all year to come to the conference,” recalls Imm. “That’s what they told me!”

VDARE is an information resource for supporters of tougher immigration policies. Rushton periodically wrote articles there. “Recently it has been very difficult to get in touch with him,” complains Brymelow. “Rushton has begun to have health problems, and he spends a lot of time in hospitals.” A Canadian psychologist published another article for VDARE a month ago. In it, he argued that for the past 50 years, black students have noticeably lagged behind white students in academic performance and this gap is not closing.

Brymelow does not undertake to evaluate the ideas of a scientist. "It doesn't matter if he's right or not," argues the chief editor of VDARE. "Our task is to give him a platform." In America, he argues, the topic of interracial differences is almost taboo. "And let's assume that Rushton's ideas are correct," reflects Brymelow. "That means that equal opportunity in education cannot be achieved, despite all the government investments."

“That's the whole problem with such studies,” sighs the director of the American Institute for the Study of Racism in Science, Barry Mehler. “They are indestructible precisely because they have a clear political connotation. Many will like the idea of ​​blaming social inequality on the inferiority of the blacks themselves. Mehler himself was quite close to Rushton—they crossed paths several times on TV shows. “He is a good conversationalist and knows how to convey his difficult point of view to people,” recalls a specialist in racism. “However, Adolf Hitler also made a good impression on some.”

That's the impression Rushton made on Michael Kunda. He did not abandon the ideas of the Canadian scientist even after the dismissal scandal. “Rushton may be wrong about some of the details,” a former committee member tells Newsweek, “but the basic message of his writing is correct. Someday scientists will pluck up the courage to admit that not all races have the same intelligence." Kundu cites the example of Nobel laureate James Watson, the author of the double-stranded model of DNA. Three years ago, Watson suddenly declared that white people are noticeably smarter than black people. No discounts were made for him, and he lost his leadership position in his laboratory.

Pioneer - an example to all racists

The secret of Rushton's unsinkability is not only in charisma. Since the 1980s, his work has been supported by the Pioneer Charitable Foundation, and in 2002 Rushton headed it. At the same time, Richard Lynn joined the board of directors of the fund. Pioneer also funded his research.

This fund was established in 1937 by Wycliffe Draper, a retired American army officer who was fond of eugenics. Draper found money for his hobby without much difficulty—his father was a textile tycoon. In the late 1930s, the foundation promoted racial purity and showed Americans documentaries filmed in the Third Reich. And after World War II, Pioneer channeled Draper's money to support science.

Among those who were sponsored by the foundation were several psychologists who, as early as the middle of the 20th century, declared that blacks were underdeveloped intellect. The list of grant recipients is available on the foundation's website, but human rights activists from the American organization Center for new community are sure that in fact there are many more. “Pioneer is a very marginal organization,” says activist Jill Garvey. “Many of those who take money don't want to advertise it. In the fund, everyone understands perfectly and works quietly in the shadows.”

The fund's sponsors remain unknown. Pioneer accepts anonymous donations of "checks, securities, and real estate." Funding dubious scientific research is just one facet of Pioneer's activities, Garvey warns: "The foundation patronizes political organizations, and that's much more dangerous."

She gives an example: For many years, Pioneer money has been received by representatives of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR). Its members are in favor of tougher immigration laws. They have recently achieved great success. This year, Arizona passed a new law against illegal immigrants. He was uncommonly tough. One of the authors of the document is Senator Russell Pierce. Members of FAIR helped him draft the law.