Rushton, Murray and Herrstein

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1. You never answered the questions I put to you.
No matter. It has taken me about a week to figure out what is going
on and why you have joined this and other lists. This I will share
with you and others on the list. Responding to you about the insignificance
of brain size differences already addressed by others isn't worth it.

2. This must have been a hard week for you with Murray and Herrstein's
book The Bell Curve having made its grand debut in the national media -
Newsweek, the Wall Street Journal, and according to my students, national
tv. Murray-Herrstein's views are not all that different from yours,
except that they are more careful not to expose the kind of virulent
racism you seem to advocate and thrive upon. Still the message is about
the same: the spurious claim of genetic inferiority of blacks based on
iq tests. I doubt that they stoop to the genital details that you seem
to love to wallow in. This makes their book far more palatable form of
racism than yours, which is fixated in 19th century racial categories. It
also, suppose, makes their ideas more dangerous. There is nothing new
in either of your arguements; you are essentially falling back on
Jensen and co, slightly revising the message and repackaging it for tne
1990s.

3. The fundamental problem for your book is that it will not get anywhere
near the publicity of Murray-Herrstein's. Having failed to grab the
national media attention you have decided to put on your electronic walking
shoes to see if you could possibly shake up some publicity knowing your
ideas would provoke strong responses with an eye on the possibility that
the discussions here would filter up into the media and give you the
kind of national attention you hope to get to sell your book and get another
big grant from the Pioneer Fund or like minded folk.

4. I don't think it will work (although I could be wrong), my reasoning
being that yours is too naked a racism (for the moment) to be considered
acceptable. It was the virulence of your racism which I think through
many people on this list off for a moment. This is old time KKK stuff
rather than more subtle Daniel Moynihan version of blaming the victim.

5. Finally since you did not respond to the contrary, I am going to
take the quotes from you published in the October 20, 1994 Rolling Stone
article and the comments attributed to you in Stefan Kuhl's The Nazi
Connection at face value. I have made the former required reading for
my anthro students over the next few weeks.

This ends my open correspondence with your.

Rob Prince/Metro State College/Denver

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