The Myth of Race: The Troubling Persistence of an Unscientific Idea

by Robert Wald Sussman

Gottfredson wrote a letter that was published in the Wall Street Journal and signed by fifty-two scientists in defense of the volume The Bell Curve (Herrnstein and Murray 1994), which summarized the rhetoric of the new scientific racism. The letter was written after the book was criticized by a large group of competent scientists (see Jacoby and Glauberman 1995, for example). In this letter, the members of the new bigot brigade claimed that since as many as fifty-two scientists signed this letter, the contents of the book and of the letter must be true. Using this logic, since the vast majority of anthropologists and other social scientists and of geneticists do not agree with the conclusions of this volume, does that mean it must be false? Obviously not. However, it is the actual science that began with Boas and his colleagues and that has continued to this date that makes these authors’ beliefs and approach untenable at any level.