Race, Evolution, and Behavior: A Life History Perspective. - book reviews

National Review, Sept 12, 1994 by Mark Snyderman

WHAT MUST Pat Shipman think of Phillipe Rushton? Dr. Shipman describes how the scientific study of racial difference has too often been polluted by political forces; she proclaims her allegiance to science, and declares that we are better off knowing the unaltered truth about racial differences. But her rhetoric betrays great fear of what science may reveal.

Phillipe Rushton apparently has no such fear. Although his story is absent from Dr. Shipman's book, it would fit neatly. Mr. Rushton, a professor of psychology at the University of Western Ontario, has endured excoriation because he has dared to posit an evolutionary/genetic explanation for racial differences in a wide variety of physical and behavioral characteristics. Undeterred, he has even appeared on Geraldo (though this episode may demonstrate more an ignorance of American television than fortitude). Mr. Rushton's new book--a synthesis of a vast body of scientific research on racial differences--is his most ambitious, and fearless, work. Pat Shipman should be happy. She probably won't be.

Dr. Shipman's book, The Evolution of Racism, is beautifully written, and endlessly intriguing, but one is never quite sure what it is supposed to be about. For starters, the title is misleading. The book is only marginally about racism, as the word is commonly understood.

What Dr. Shipman does present is a series of case studies, told largely through biographical accounts, of the politicization of scientific debate over racial differences and genetic explanations of behavior. These are fascinating stories, well told. But the stories have no clear moral.

The book begins with a wonderful portrayal of Darwin's insecurity about his new theory, of Thomas Huxley's unabashed championing of Darwinism, and of Huxley's famous debate with Bishop Wilberforce which put the theory of evolution over the top. Dr. Shipman begins the real discussion of race with the clash between the owlish Rudolf Virchow, perhaps the pre-eminent German scientist of the mid nineteenth century, and the vigorous Aryan Ernst Haeckel. Virchow opposed the theory of evolution because he thought it inconsistent with his own scientific theories and a fundamental challenge to his view of the social order, while Haeckel championed Darwinism and then used it to further his theories of racial superiority and his political position. Dr. Shipman decries the damage to science in the ensuing struggle.

There follows a discussion of the eugenics movement and of Hitler (who sought justification in Haeckel's writings), and the post-war backlash against the scientific study of race. Dr. Shipman gives us an enlightening account of anthropologist Ashley Montagu, a vehement anti-racist and author of the 1950 UNESCO Statement on Race. The Ashley Montagu Statement, as it has come to be known, denies the validity of any notion that human groups differ in innate characteristics of intelligence or temperament, and touts scientific support for "the ethic of universal brotherhood."

Montagu subsequently was among those who led the attack on Carleton Coon. According to Dr. Shipman, Coon was "a man betrayed by history." An anthropologist-explorer trained in the early twentieth century, Coon published his life's work, The Origin of Races, in 1962. His thesis was that the various races developed long ago--a half million years before we became Homo sapiens--and that some races developed into modern humans more slowly than others. Whatever its merits, Dr. Shipman explains, this was a work of science, not of racial politics. Yet it is not difficult to imagine the reaction to such a work in 1962, at the very moment that the civil-rights movement was coming into full swing. What is remarkable is that so much of the criticism from other scientists took the form of personal attack and political diatribe. As the line between concerned scientist and social activist blurred, genetic and evolutionary accounts of racial differences simply would not be tolerated even by those whose job it was to search for the truth: "It was an unresolvable conflict between the fervent social activist and the irascible scientific purist. But the tenor of the times was such that it was the scientific purist, Coon, who was disgraced and, to some extent, driven out of his profession."

Dr. Shipman's final case study is the tale of an attorney and researcher named David Wasserman. Mr. Wasserman had the idea to sponsor a conference on the legal and social implications of behavioral genetic studies of criminality. The story of how his innocent project became entangled in, and eventually destroyed by, the racially charged reaction to a wholly independent Bush Administration program is out of Kafka. Like many interested in biology and behavior, Mr. Wasserman was defeated by those who believe that there are some questions science simply should not ask.

In the end, one wonders where Dr. Shipman stands on this issue. She bemoans the politicization of science and proclaims that we are better off studying racial differences, yet she is afraid of what such research might find. Her fear comes very close to overwhelming her defense of science. Thus, the book ends with the following cryptic summation: