I - Is the Establishment Reviving Eugenics?

On Sunday, the New York Times published one of the most deeply embarrassing articles I have ever read. This article was so bad that it should have never even had a chance of seeing the editorial light of day. Let me get this point out front and let's be perfectly clear about the focus of my concerns. My liminal awareness suggests to me that this was an intentional move by a very important element of the U.S. media Establishment that has demonstrated a long-standing pattern and praxis of promulgating "scientific" racism to support another and geographically local element of the U.S. Establishment which was recently humiliated by its trusted employee James Watson's clumsy ideological disclosure of some of its institutional and Establishmentarian ass.

THE NY TIMES has a science reporter, Nicholas Wade, who makes very similar claims, using rhetoric that is much less provocative. In Wade’s recent book, BEFORE THE DAWN, he writes: “Over the course of many generations the peoples of each continent emerged as different races” (181). And he later suggests that Jews “may be genetically more intelligent” than other races (that is, other groups, he regards as “races”; see pp. 252-56). Let me say that I believe that Watson and Wade have every right to express their views; I believe in free speech, almost with no limits. But when Watson and Wade say such things, there ought to be ample opportunity for others to lay out the factual and logical errors in their arguments and conclusions. This paper calls attention to Watson’s provocative claims about human races, but when will THE NY TIMES provide space to those who disagree with the more soberly expressed, but in many ways convergent, views of its reporter, Nicholas Wade?

Tell me till you're blue in the face that Watson's views were unknown to the board of trustees at Cold Spring Harbor (and don't be fooled because they host this "Never Forget" archive) and that Wade's pseudo-scientific essentialism is unknown to the NY Times. Cause if you truly believe that, I've got some stories to tell you about Santa Clause and his elves and some swampland to sell you at a firesale discount....,

Such categorical violations of editorial standards for journalistic integrity, scientific validity, and source accountability have to have had a subtextual motivation. That the "grey lady" which has a track record for supporting "scientific" racism would carry it is bad enough. However, this piece of propagandistic garbage was put on the wire and uncritically repeated far-and-wide by such media chains as McClatchy - which themselves never paused to exercise editorial standards for integrity, accountability, and validity.

It took up half of page 8 in the front section of the Kansas City Star as a Sunday Health and Science feature with the even more ridiculous title Geneticists worry data could fuel racial prejudices. That something like this was promulgated far and wide suggests to me that elements in the U.S. Establishment have taken the decision to resuscitate and legitimize eugenics in the U.S.. First and foremost let me be clear that I believe that big money is the prime mover behind this effort. Highly credentialed negrodemics are staging protests in support of genetic racial pseudo-science because there's a buck to be made off of it.

Pharmaceutical and genomics companies have $trong in$entives to grease this pseudo-science on the skids of public awareness and acceptance. However, it never hurts to kill multiple birds with one stone - and to the extent that race remains a vital lever in the U.S. Establishment's system of governance - why not cast fundamental and scientific doubt on the human worth of Black folks - while you set the stage for raking in the big bucks? Isn't this exactly what happened in the entertainment industry in 1988 when organic and politically conscious HipHop was sacked in favor of the race pornography of gangsta RaP. (Rhyming and Posing)