>>> jfn1 at msc.com 10/11/00 11:18AM >>>
On Wed, 11 Oct 2000, Charles Brown wrote:
>
> I don't know anybody radical who thinks Gunnar Myrdal had
> any special insights on race in the U.S.
Stephen Gould quotes him approvingly in _The Mismeasure of Man_ for comments he makes about 'biological' racism in the US. I don't remember the passages and I've never read Myrdal. But I think Gould qualifies as a 'radical'.
_________
CB: OK.
Stephen Gould's book is important as an expert biologist's critique of racist aspects of IQ testing , etc. But anti-biological racism is pretty much universally accepted among liberals since the work of the anthropologist Boas , et al., in the 30's. It is a lowest common denominator for avoiding being classified as a reactionary racist. Radical anti-racists have to go a lot further than that. In other words, denying biological racism gets Myrdal a grade of "C" in his anti-racist credentials. It is the minimum. Myrdal's social scientific analysis of race is not radical, but liberal. ( I don't know that Gould has a radical social scientific critique of racism).