Prof says science will support racist claims

Published Jul 14, 2000

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Washington - Philippe Rushton, a much-vilified Canadian professor who linked race to intelligence and behavioural traits, believes human genetics research will vindicate the theories expounded in his controversial 1989 booklet on the subject.

He has been shunned by some of his colleagues at the University of Western Ontario and elsewhere for postulating, among other things, that "blacks in general have a more explosive personality and are more prone to crime".

Relaunching his Race, Evolution and Behaviour booklet in Washington this week, Rushton said ongoing genome studies will show "one way or another whether I am correct".

He claimed the academic world was trying to silence him because he suggested blacks have smaller brains than whites and Asians.

"It is a taboo topic almost everywhere in the Western world you go today," he said.

He was joined at the relaunch by academics with similar theories. Robert Gordon, a sociology professor at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, said: "My own recent research has found the black-white difference in HIV prevalence in the US to be closely commensurate with the black-white difference in IQ distributions."

Michael Levin, a social philosophy professor at New York's City College, dismissed other academics' rejection of such ideas as a manifestation of "white guilt".

The revised edition of Rushton's booklet includes new theories on why blacks can run and jump better than people of other races. He said he was relaunching it because the incidence of Aids among US blacks was approaching levels in Africa. - Sapa

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