Oh, look. That Reich op-ed, in Reich was scrupulously careful to merely imply that humans vary in intelligence by race, has been cosigned by Andrew Sullivan, who says it explicitly. nymag.com/daily/intellig…
Here's a link to my thread on the Reich essay from yesterday. I won't rehash it here.
Note what Sullivan says here. He sprinkles bits and pieces of it across two paragraphs to avoid giving a clear quote, but here's what happens when you paste it back together:
Sullivan quotes Reich saying that "East Asians, Europeans, West Africans and Australians were, until recently, almost completely isolated from one another," and says that has created "subtle variations in human brains, and thereby differences in intelligence tests."
Those differences in intelligence, he says—again, he says explicitly that these are racial differences—"could be (and actually are) substantial."
There are, Sullivan says, "substantial" evolutionarily-based differences in intellectual capacity between races, differences that do not, he says, appear within races.
If you weren't sure that Andrew Sullivan was a racist—a believer in the innate superiority of some races over others—you can stop wondering. He says it himself.
We need to be really clear about this. To say that Andrew Sullivan is a racist isn't an attack, or even a contentious claim. It's a factual statement. It's uncontestably true given his own account of his beliefs.
If you claim that some human races are innately superior to others, you're a racist. If your claim is correct, then racism is correct. Racism doesn't need to be false to be racism. (It IS false. It doesn't NEED TO BE false.)
When someone tells you're they're a racist—literally tells you they're a racist—believe them.
Also note that Sullivan and Reich's "I wish it weren't true, but it is, and I'm honest enough to admit it" schtick is pretty standard practice among racists.
The racist dragged reluctantly into racism by his clear vision and love of truth is a trope that's literally hundreds of years old.
"I'm not a racist, I just accept unpleasant truths others would prefer to suppress" is a thing racists say. It's a thing racists have been saying for centuries.
Wow. I swear that I never in my life until yesterday had any inkling that it might be controversial to suggest that a belief that one race was intellectually superior to another was racist.
