Letters to the Editor

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Deae Sir: In view ofthe controversy between Ashley Montagu and DwightJ. Ingle [i] onracial differences in man, it should be noted that this problem was recognized and solved long ago. According to the Oriental version ofthe origin ofman, God made man, not out of clay, but out ofdough. He shaped them in male and female form and put them in the oven to bake. The first lot was baked too long and turned out black. God was much too cautious with the second lot. They were half-baked widi pale pasty-white skin. The third lot was timed perfectly and produced a couple with golden brown skin—the ancestors ofthe people ofAsia. Obviously the blacks and the whites are the inferior races. This conclusion is confirmed by population statistics. Ofthe world's 3.6 billion people now alive, about 2 billion are brown, little more dian 1 billion are white, and less than 0.5 billion are black. reference I. DwightJ. Ingle. Midway, 10:105, 1970. Karl Sax Media Pennsylvania Dear Sir: In regard to Dr. Noble's "Race, Reality, and Experimental Psychology" [1] and Dr. Dreger's reply inthe same issue [2], I am sure many readers besides myselffelt that Noble's data were sound, but that certain ofhis conclusions and ofhis remarks about Dreger were neither sound nor entirely honest. "Perhaps," he says, "Dreger is easily Freudened [sic]: 'It happened there,' he reminds us of Nazi Germany; 'it can happen here.' " He adds, perhaps somewhat unfairly, that Dreger is prejudiced in favor ofthe Left and against the Right, adding that "selective indignation , a characteristic of the Left according to Sir Arnold Lunn, can distort one's perception of reality." But "selective indignation" is in fact characteristic of either the far Left or die far Right; it even crops up in controversies over specific issues, such as that of race differences. The disinterested bystander detects traces of it in Noble's preamble, for instance, when he speaks of "Dreger's ululations about Hitlerism." In presenting data 636 Letters to the Editor Perspectives in Biology and Medicine · Summer 1970 and trying tó reach conclusions, particularly in so emotional a matter as this one, one would do well to avoid this sort ofinfantile sarcasm, since it alienates those it is intended to convince and obscures with petty hatreds a question which, properly understood, may be unanswerable and tragic in its consequences. There can be, I think, no quarrel widi Noble's evidence, nor with that he cites from others. In addition, there is some he does not cite, concerning the relative extent ofthe temporal lobes in Negroes and whites [3] which might be taken to support his conclusions —particularly in view of the extensive literature which now exists, showing the importance of temporal association cortex to complex visual discriminations in lower primates or to language functions in man. There can also be no doubt that in recent decades in this country the "uniformity doctrine" or biological egalitarianism has been pushed at the expense ofstrict honesty. The reasoning which lies behind that policy must surely be obvious. Its most rational adherents might defend it this way: Granted, diere may be real and substantial differences—for instance, between Congoids and Caucasoids— but it might be better to disregard them and run the risk ofsome genetic downgrading by miscegenation than to publicize diem and encourage further waves of race wars and genocide. Granted that die trend of the evidence is that there are real and substantial differences between white and black, die real issue is what use will bé made of diat evidence when it becomes more conclusive and, inevitably, known to the general public. It isjust here, I believe, that Noble and Dreger diverge and that Noble is being less than straightforward. To put it more bluntly, any American, and especially any southerner, knows perfectly well what die result might be iftomorrow the wire services were to carry a story reporting that the genetic inferiority ofthe Negro, for example, in intelligence, was irrefutably established. The strength which any such hard evidence would give to extremists, or to the reaction which is building up even now against black intransigence, would...