Wednesday, August 08, 2018

Historian of Race Raymond Wolters’ “Road to Damascus”

Excerpted by Nicholas Stix

Raymond Wolters is the last living, honest historian of race in America. Therefore, I am seeking to read everything he’s ever written or spoken on the topic, and to re-post and discourse on as much as possible of his work.
 

Raymond Wolters: My Journey to Race Realism
August 10, 2015
Luke Ford

From 1944 until 1956, I attended Catholic schools in Los Angeles County. I mention this because the Catholic school curriculum of the 1940s and 1950s differed from the standard fare in public schools. Both school systems taught students to read, write, and cipher. But many public schools also adopted a social science curriculum that was intended to combat racial prejudice by showing that race was a historical and social construction, or myth, rather than a meaningful way to describe human diversity. Designed by Franz Boas and his disciples, this curriculum maintained that there was no scientific proof that race influenced the distribution of behavior, intelligence, or personality; that culture was more influential than race in determining the behavior of individuals; that “opportunities” were more important than “biology” in determining success. Boas acknowledged that his program, which was funded by the American Jewish Committee (AJC), was a form of propaganda. But so many schools adopted this curriculum between the late-1930s and the mid-1950s that Boas succeeded in revising the prevailing views about race. He showed, as Margaret Mead has noted, that it was “well within the power of educational leaders” to change “the climate of opinion in which young people are reared, a change which will inevitably have profound reverberations . . . “ Some public school parents and students continued to believe that racial differences were important, but these parents and students also learned what teachers expected them to say about human diversity; and to recognize that adhering to the Boasian gospel would help them avoid a career damaging faux pas.

Those of us who attended Catholic schools, on the other hand, were not taught to mimick Boas. The leaders of our Church (especially in Los Angeles) associated intercultural agitation with the propaganda of the Communist Party, and my teachers, while insisting that all individuals should be treated with respect, said little about racial matters and nothing about social construction. In grade school the nuns taught reading, writing, and arithmetic, drilled students on the Baltimore Catechism, and taught us something about the history of our Church. Then, in my high school, the curriculum was especially strong in math and foreign languages. All students were required to take at least two years of Latin (and two years of a modern language as well) and four years of math. In addition, there were four years of religion and English, three years of history, two years of science, and a year of civics. We learned the geometry of Euclid and were told about the theology of Thomas Aquinas. But we heard nary a word about Franz Boas and his disciples….

By the 1980s liberals were dominant in academia and in the national culture (although not in American politics at that time), and academic liberals had coalesced in support of the idea that racial justice required that students should be assigned by race to create racially balanced, white majority schools. The rationale for this was articulated most influentially by sociologist James S. Coleman. It held that the quality of a school depended largely on its youth culture and that middle-class schools were better. Since “white” was presumed to be synonymous with “middle class” and “black” the same as “lower class,” the purpose of integration was to create schools with enough middle-class white students to shape the prevailing attitudes and a substantial number of lower-class black children to benefit from being exposed to peers who recognized the importance of school work.

It took some courage – or maybe just contrariness – for me to challenge the liberal consensus. But I pointed out that careful studies of test scores did not support Professor Coleman’s theory; that, in fact, the evidence was so strong that Coleman eventually conceded that his theory was, in his own words, mistaken “wishful thinking.”…

[Read the whole thing here.]


More from Raymond Wolters

“Constitutional History, Social Science, and Brown v. Board of Education 1954–1964,” Part I: “The Historical and Social Science Evidence”;

Part II: “The Continuing Controversy”;

“Hear America’s Last Living, Honest Historian of Race: Raymond Wolters’ 2004 Lecture, ‘Fifty Years Since Brown v. Board of Education’”;

“New Book on Race Only Gets Two Topics Wrong”; and

“Was Charles Darwin a Genocidal, White Supremacist?!”

6 comments:

  1. AMBER UPDATE FROM THE WEEKEND:BLACK GIRL MAKES UP A WHOPPER ON BLACK BF.
    GRPD: False report from mom sparked Amber Alert
    GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) — Grand Rapids police say a woman accused of falsely reporting her infant missing, sparking an Amber Alert, was angry with her baby’s father.

    Jennell Ross, 27, turned herself into authorities Wednesday and was arraigned on a felony charge of making a false report of a child abduction.

    Grand Rapids police say Ross contacted them late Saturday evening, saying that a male named Terrell had stolen her vehicle from a gas station in the 4200 block of Kalamazoo Avenue SE with her 18-month-old daughter still inside.

    In an affidavit, police say Ross repeated her claim before detectives found the child with her father. Ross then admitted to lying, police said.

    Police say Ross said she lied because she had been arguing with her baby’s father and there was a no contact order between the two.

    Officers say at least a half-dozen agencies got involved in the case before a relative called to report they had the child, who was OK. The family member brought the infant to the Grand Rapids Police Department, which took custody of her.

    The baby is currently in custody of a “safe” family member, police say.

    Ross is free on bond. Her next court hearing is scheduled for Aug. 16.

    If convicted on the felony charge, Ross could spend up to four years in prison.
    GRA:So it was no biggie--just a negro spat.
    There's also an incident that occurred over the weekend concerning a 66 year old white pastor,found shot to death next to his SUV,on the side of a 68th st suburban Grand Rapids area road.He had been in the middle of changing a flat tire.Certainly not something you'd expect a whitey to do,but if anything interesting turns up,I'll update.
    --GR Anonymous

    ReplyDelete
  2. Lesta Tries To Rile Up Nashville
    https://www.newschannel5.com/news/video-released-in-fatal-officer-involved-shooting-in-nashville
    GRA:Background:
    Cops,looking for people who are stealing cars,find a suspicious vehicle with blackies in it.The car stops,blackie jumps out,tries the 400 yd dash and gets shot (with gun in hand).
    Mrs.Cleaver (Eldridge,not June,lol) goes on TV "looking for justice"(and money).
    --GRA

    ReplyDelete
  3. “the climate of opinion in which young people are reared, a change which will inevitably have profound reverberations"

    I think both Hitler and Lenin more or less said that same thing about rearing the young and the influence of the educational system.

    "Give me one generation and the entire mind-set will be changed forever".

    ReplyDelete
  4. Nature versus nurture. I guess the current best consensus is 80 % nature and 20 % nurture.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Anonymous said...
    Thursday, August 9, 2018 at 12:54:00 P.M. EDT

    “Nature versus nurture. I guess the current best consensus is 80 % nature and 20 % nurture.”

    I don’t think there is any consensus anymore. In 1968, in IQ in the Meritocracy, Richard Herrnstein wrote that the breakdown was almost exactly what you wrote: 81-19.

    However, in The Bell Curve, if memory serves, Herrnstein and Charles Murray claimed that nature accounted for 40-60%, which averages out to 50%.

    Unfortunately, they lied. A few years ago, in a speech Murray gave before AEI, he bragged that he and Herrnstein had deliberately fudged the numbers.

    My hunch is that that was Murray’s idea, but I haven’t asked him, and doubt he’d answer me. He’s not terribly fond of me. Then again, I suppose I’ll have to try.

    ReplyDelete
  6. " a 66 year old white pastor,found shot to death next to his SUV,on the side of a 68th st suburban Grand Rapids area road.He had been in the middle of changing a flat tire."

    Especially if your car breaks down in a negro area. Great danger for a whitey. And don't try to go into the "community" seeking help.

    ReplyDelete