Invention of the white race // Rakesh on eugenics

Yoshie Furuhashi furuhashi.1 at osu.edu
Thu May 28 17:14:32 PDT 1998


Wojtek wrote:
>The problem lies not in the existence of quacks like Jensens or Murrays,
>but everyone else - especially publishers -- taking their
>flat-earth-science drivel seriously. The public attention this crap is
>getting gives it legitimacy.
>
>That might be indicative of two, not necessarily mutually exclusive things:
>
>- the supremacy of form over content in what passes for 'science' - if a
>theory is suffcienctly 'mathematical' in its form, or uses a lots of
>mathematical formulas, equations, and kindred technical abrakadabras -- it
>must be true (cf. economics);
>
>- the instigation of a Kulturkampf by publishing worthless yet inflamatory
>bullshit by those who control the means of material production of culture -
>and I wonder why?

No doubt the above and other things that get Wojtek exasperated contribute to the resurgent popularity of the 'biological inferiority' thesis, the wretched 'IQ' debate, and so on. But I think that empty formalism, the publishing industry's need for a profitable Kulturekampf, etc. are minor factors.

With the hegemony of neoliberalism and the severe erosion of what little elements of the 'welfare state' that the USA has ever developed, the ruling class in America is in need of a new emphasis on geneticism and biologism. Blacks in America have become refigured within the ruling ideology, from the unworthy clients of costly social services to the targets of outright repression. Before neoliberalism and while the 'welfare state' was still in place, 'black inferiority' was figured by the ruling ideology as a matter of environment, culture, etc. and thought of as susceptible to interventions by the state. Now that the agenda of capital is different, the environmental or cultural explanations have become inadequate for the ruling class. The argument that biology is destiny is far more consnant with the reliance upon more overt and direct repression + social control of those who cannot be even admitted to the regular labor market.

Yoshie



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