Thomas Sowell has been writing about intellectuals and race. He can probably get
away with addressing this topic since he is African-American. Most scholars avoid any
discussion of race and intellect for fear of being branded as racist.

That is unfortunate, because there is a sad and sorry history especially when
Darwinian evolution and eugenics were applied. Thomas Sowell points out that a
hundred years ago, people from different races had very different rates of success in
education. Many political leaders as well as intellectuals took this as clear proof that
some races were genetically superior to other.

Francis Galton, cousin of Charles Darwin, actually invented the word “eugenics.”
He and others proposed methods by which to reduce the reproduction of certain races and
urged “the gradual extinction of an inferior race.” Thomas Sowell reminds us that
eugenics was not an idea held by “a bunch of fringe cranks” but espoused by academics
at our leading universities.

Sometimes assumptions about intellectual inferiority of certain races were based
upon flawed data. For example, American soldiers were given mental tests during the
First World War. Men of German ancestry scored higher than those of Irish ancestry,
who in turn scored higher than those who were Jewish. Mental test pioneer Carl Brigham
said these Army tests helped to “disprove the popular belief that the Jew is highly
intelligent.”

A better explanation can be found in immigration patterns. German immigrants
came to the U.S. decades before most Irish immigrants. Both groups arrived before most
Jewish immigrants. Years later, Brigham admitted that “many of the most recent
immigrants grew up in homes where English was not the spoken language.” He finally
admitted that his earlier conclusions were “without foundation.

Much of the racism and anti-Semitism associated with intelligence and test scores
is past history, and hopeful we will learn from the past.