It’s hard to know what to say about this. Goldblatt’s argument works as well to demonstrate there cannot be a difference in skin color between whites and blacks as to demonstrate that other sorts of differences can’t exist.

It seems that the more educated people become, and the more experts and writers there are, the more discourse becomes a world in itself wholly liberated from any contact with reality. The more obviously irrational it is the harder it is to dispute because what is accepted as rationality has evidently changed.

And, ironically, it’s certain conservatives, more than the usual liberal suspects, who are now making these gnostic denials of the existence of race. Here is S.T. Karnick, editor of The American Outlook (published by the Hudson Institute), writing in its Spring 2002 issue pregnantly entitled “The Illusion of Race,” which I believe I posted about a month ago:

“Unfortunately, for nearly two centuries, the idea that there are several distinct races among human beings has been quite commonly accepted as a scientifically proven fact. This idea is SIMPLY FALSE, as both common sense and modern genetics make quite clear …

“Ironically, a good deal of the persistence of this idea may be attributable to ITS UTTER SPURIOUSNESS. If human racial divisions had at least some germ of truth to them, we could easily see their limitations. The fact that THEY HAVE NO BASIS AT ALL, however, enables their advocates to shift their ground each time a particular contention is proven untrue….” [emphasis added].

For some info on how these inconceivably irrational and obscurantist claims are playing out in medicine, see:

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/30/health/genetics/30RACE.html

The reason those who think it “essential to take race and ethnicity into account” feel required to put forward is that it is “to ensure that everyone shares equally in the expected benefits of genomic medicine.” Equality is the universal standard for judging all issues.

Another nugget among many:

“Meanwhile a proposal for avoiding racial labels, at least for drug trials, has recently been made by Dr. David Goldstein, a population geneticist at University College, London. He has suggested that patients be assigned to different genetic groups by analyzing their DNA. The process gives much the same result as asking people to identify their ethnicity, but yields a more accurate division in terms of how people respond to drugs, Dr. Goldstein says. He adds that the expense of the genetic testing will be affordable in drug trials.”

So expensive DNA testing gives you much the same results as self-identification, but it’s just better, and besides drug trials are expensive anyway, so who cares about the expense?

Goldblatt is a nonentity on the neo-con right and his shallow, convoluted thinking on race is typical of the species.

All respectable thinking on race is convoluted. The range is from bland, evidently well-meaning irrationality as in the case of Mr. Goldblatt to something that seems to reflect a genuine spiritual disorder as in the case of Mrs. Alibhai-Brown.

This is certainly an interesting converstation, but I wonder, are any of those involved in the discussion trying to say that one race is inherently better?

I think that this is where the fault begins. Although each race no doubt has it’s qualities, which translate into strenghths and weaknesses, all are human, and thus possess the station of centrality in the universal scheme of things.

What I mean by this is that all races, by they’re humanity, can know truth, and reagardless of intuitive, rational, analytical, symbolical, or musical intelligence, all can know truth, and that is primary.

So if a black man knows the truth, he is better than a white man, and vice versa.

Do you all agree with that?

I’d say that there are no racial distinctions in the most basic things (e.g. the capacity to orient oneself toward the good, beautiful and true). I’d also say that almost every degree of human strength and weakness can be found among those of every race.

Mr. Dickson is certainly correct that each human being is a potential knower of truth, and that the true spiritual criterion of people’s worth is how close they are to the truth. But that’s not the issue raised by liberalism and its belief in racial egalitarianism. The issue raised by liberalism is that all races are collectively equal to each other in their intellectual and other abilities, and that therefore the actual inequality of blacks is the fault of society or of whites. That is the basic premise of modern liberal attitudes about race. The only way to refute that liberal premise, along with the anti-white propaganda and the social engineering policies that are based on it, is to demonstrate the reality of inherent differences in average intelligence between the races.

This understanding does not take anything away from the capacity of individuals to know the truth and be fully human. Rather, it refutes the liberal enterprise of reconstructing society so as to bring about absolute equality of results among all groups.