Another Angle on Rushton, Murray et. al

Rob Prince (PRINCER@MSCD.EDU)
Fri, 28 Oct 1994 12:12:37 -0600

The following is a most unofficial (but basically accurate translation
of an article from the French monthly `Le Monde Diplomatique' of
October, 1994. p. 5.

Intelligence and Demography

`Is it really desirable that unhealthy people (les personnes
malades) reproduce? Ms. Charlotte Hohn, the director of Wiesbaden
Demographic Institute and member of the German delegation to the
Cairo Conference on Demography and Development asked this question
in an interview published by Tageszeitung, a Berlin magazine, on
the conference's opening day. Ms. Hohn also complained about certain
taboos prohibiting the assertion that `the average intelligence of
Africans is inferior to those of other human groups.'

`Mr. Kanther, German interior minister and head of the German
delegation to Cairo, did not seemed particularly shocked by this
idea. In his remarks to the conference he gave the impression of
that in general Germans have too few offspring (he has six) and that
the Third World produces too many. It was only after Ms. Alisa Fuss,
President of the International League of Human Rights, and Mr. Rudolf
Scharping, leader of the German Social Democratic Party in tandem
with the Green Party so insisted that Ms. Charlotte Hohn was pressured
to leave the conference 5 days prior to its closing. Her parting comment
was "it should be possible to bring forward statistical proofs that
certain people are less intelligent than others. That does not
signify that I think it necessary to discriminate against them".

`To the end, Ms. Hohn enjoyed the support of members of the German
delegation...

END