Re: Carleton Coon

Ralph L Holloway (rlh2@COLUMBIA.EDU)
Fri, 24 Nov 1995 12:20:06 -0500

Wow! After that testimonial by Mike I would have to agree that he indeed
was a racist! I did find it interesting that Mike, like me, found parts
of "Origins.." useful, particularly as it related to the empirical
aspects of the fossil record rather than the interpretation. As for the
"genetic shit", I am sorry to have heard that one, although I rather
expect it is a common ploy of all us to demean that which we don't
understand particularly well. I've heard the same said about
paleoanthropology, i.e., "all that fossil hom shit", about molecular
genetics, i.e., "all that molecular crap", about hominoids, ie.," all that
Miocene shit", "all that linguistics shit, all that archaeology shit,
all that soc/cult crap, etc. None of the labellers I remember as
particularly "racist", but this is hardly meant as some excuse for Coon's
statements that Mike remembers.
Ralph Holloway