The Legacy of Slavery Emancipation

By N.S.

In his most recent Taki’s Magazine column, my old VDARE colleague, Steve Sailer, writes:

If the IQs of self-identifying African-Americans don’t vary by fraction of white admixture in their DNA, then that would suggest that it isn’t genetics that is responsible for the IQ gap but instead social constructionism: the act of ascribing African-American identity to them.

Not surprisingly, scientists have tried to carry out this key test quite a few times going back to 1934. For example, writing in The New York Times in 2009, Jim Holt confidently asserted in a review of U. of Michigan psychologist Richard E. Nisbett’s book Intelligence and How to Get It, which attempts to debunk The Bell Curve:

“Among his more direct evidence, Nisbett cites impressive studies in population genetics. African-Americans have on average about 20 percent European genes, largely as a legacy of slavery.”

The second clause of the last sentence is false. It should read ‘largely as a legacy of emancipation.’

Nisbett/Holt were confidently citing the scholarship of blaxploitation movies, not to mention blaxploitation “scholars.”

According to the late historian Eugene Genovese (in Roll on, Jordan?), White-black racial admixture largely occurred when black females worked as prostitutes after the Civil War, serving a largely White clientele. However, I would add another major factor: black-on-White rape.

Note, however, that according to legendary black journalist-civil rights activist Ida B. Wells-Barnett (who has her own postage stamp, so her authority is unassailable), no black man ever raped a White woman. The White hussies threw themselves at irresistible black men, and only cried “Rape!,” when they got caught in flagrante.