There can be no doubt that in some circumstances involving controversial issues, fear and social forces do indeed severely and even dangerously restrict or otherwise interfere with the performance and/or publication of reliable, honest science. In 1999, the U.S. Congress voted unanimously to condemn responsible scientific research that found that some (certainly not all) victims of what is generally termed child sexual abuse (CSA) recovered quite well and went on to lead happy, healthy, and productive lives. Some of these victims even retained a fondness for their memories of these events. As one would expect, this happy result was inversely correlated to the degree of coercion, manipulation, and violence involved. But the key finding was quite positive, as any honest reader would have to admit: Not all children who experience such unfortunate events are doomed to be psychologically and socially “damaged” for the rest of their lives.
But that positive scientific truth was considered far too dangerous by a great many people (including Congress), and a major effort was undertaken to squelch that research, with even many scientists fearing quite irrationally that if it became widely known, child sexual abuse might somehow become “acceptable” (or some such nonsense). Thus, some scientists themselves lit torches and joined the mob’s efforts to destroy the research, publications, and reputations of those involved with that research.
We’ve seen something quite similar regarding the fields of Sociobiology and Evolutionary Psychology, with such befuddled Marxist luminaries as Stephen J. Gould joining with other dangerous idea-squelchers and anti-scientists to publish an open letter vehemently denouncing those fields, due in large part to their irrational fear that certain highly unpopular views – such as racial differences – might just find some scientific support from evolutionary research.
We see the same kind of smug, moralistic, grandiloquent truth-hiding when it comes to the question of the existence of race. The current Marxist, Gouldian, socially expedient, disingenuous, postmodern-influenced, politically correct view is that race doesn’t exist; that it is just an “illusion”. But the great majority which contends that race doesn’t exist makes that somewhat disingenuous claim based on re-defining the concept of “race” so that it becomes this illusion by mere pronouncement rather than by factual and truly relevant scientific conclusions.
This dubious new definition declares that the term “race” refers essentially to a standard set of genes possessed by all members of a particular population grouping described by a traditional racial name such as “Caucasian” or “Asian” associated with visible physical attributes. The trick is performed by proclaiming the truthful but essentially irrelevant scientific finding that no such standard set of genes reliably exists that would unerringly distinguish an individual of one race from another.
But science can’t deny the everyday, admittedly largely intuitive (probably evolutionarily quasi-preconditioned) observation that a small and varying set of average general physical characteristics tends to vary according to what has been traditionally referred to by the term “race”. If one were to abolish the word “race”, another would be immediately coined in its place to refer to this simple, intuitively obvious phenomenon. Wishing it away by dint of public pronouncement is ultimately quite futile, because race does indeed exist and it is definitely not just a social construction.
The essence of egalitarian social justice does not reliably emerge from the highly dubious assertion that no such thing as race exists, but rather from social values to the effect that it is immoral and unjust to treat the members of one race any differently from any other. It is that noble end which we must join together to guarantee forthrightly and honestly to all, not by the expedient deceit of pseudo-scientifically asserting that race does not exist, but by transcending those very minor but real average differences to do what is morally right.
