X-NUPop-Charset: English Date: Sat, 11 May 1996 10:46:02 -0600 (CST) From: "Alan Spector" Sender: spector@calumet.purdue.edu Reply-To: spector@calumet.purdue.edu To: revs@csf.colorado.edu Subject: Pseudo-scientific Racism Info >From Alan Spector, REVS editor: The following appeared on the Eram list. Some members of REVS might be interested in reading this. ------------------------------ From: marek.kohn@mcr1.poptel.org.uk (Marek Kohn) Date: Fri, 10 May 1996 19:48:50 +0100 To: eram-list@bradford.ac.uk Subject: Introducing myself ... Hello. I'm here because of my book 'The Race Gallery: The Return of Racial Science' (Cape 1995), and the Web site I've been maintaining in order to update the book and encourage discussion around it (http://www.hrc.wmin.ac.uk/racegallery/). The Race Gallery discusses how science deals with the issue of race, and how scientific (or pseudoscientific) ideas about race circulate around society at large. Recently, the site has been covering the controversy over Christopher Brand, the Edinburgh University lecturer whose book on intelligence was withdrawn by its publishers after the Independent on Sunday ran an interview in which he described himself as a "scientific racist". I've been particularly concerned by the ways in which his critics have responded, since these raise important questions about the relationship between freedom of expression and opposition to racism. I'll be posting more on the subject to this list before long, but in the meantime please check the site. You may also find Kenan Malik's article in this week's Spectator interesting. Here's a snippet which I've just added to my pages: 'British newspapers went to town on a report, by the school inspection agency Ofsted, about reading standards in three inner London boroughs; Islington, Southwark and Tower Hamlets. Naturally enough, they highlighted two stark findings: that 80 per cent of 7-year-olds and 40 per cent of 11-year-olds had reading ages lower than their actual ages. They tended to overlook a detail which casts an interesting sidelight on the row over Christopher Brand's book on intelligence and race. The worst readers were poor white children; the best were black Africans.' Marek Kohn +44 171 286 5943 27 Warrington Crescent London W9 1ED England ______________________________________________________________________________ 'The Race Gallery' Web pages have moved to http://www.hrc.wmin.ac.uk/racegallery/. Please visit! ____________________________________________________________________________ __