TABLE TALK
Tribal lore
DENIS BROGAN
When the future Lord Beaconsfield attribu- ted too much importance to race, he was probably not thinking of race in the modern and real or pseudo-scientific sense. He was thinking of Gentiles and Jews. He had no illusions about the superiority of his own race, i.e. he believed it was as axiomatic a condition of political judgment as a proposi- tion in mathematics. But it is my private conviction that there are no propositions dealing with race which are axiomatic, and, indeed, it is almost impoSsible to say any- thing about race without saying something foolish. The foolishness may not come from race propagandists in, let us say, the Nazi sense or the less scientific prejudices of Nor- thern Ireland. In a recent debate over the question raised by Professor Jensen in which he suggested that perhaps race had some meaning and that certain racial groups were better at certain forms of human endeavour than were others, it was the defenders of a view that, intellectually, all racial groups were equal who produced the most implaus- ible levee des boucliers. Even to ask the question if racial differences had any intel- lectual importance was to blaspheme the spirit of science.
Whether asking questions can ever bias-. pheme the spirit of science I very much doubt. It is characteristic of the pathological state of the world that asking what is, after all, an important question, even if you know the answer already, should be regarded as a scientific sin against the Holy Ghost. Pro. fessor Jensen may be foolish; he may be ill informed; but his question is not foolish, Of course, there is some emotional justifica- tion for the wrath he has provoked. Such abominable crimes based on such atrocious science as we have seen in the last genera4 tion make any kind of tool and rational disc cussion of 'race' very, very difficult. All my own biases are in favour of a firm belief in absolute equality of all races. On the other hand, I am not sure that I am right in taking this line or that my attitude is scientific.
What passed for racial -differences in the nineteenth century were not what is meant today by racial difference. A naive belief that languages defined races was enough to create mythical entities like the Celtic race. People still talk loosely of the Celtic race, although even if this had some linguistic meaning, it has no biological meaning. For example, I am told that- three groups quite loosely called 'races' have an exceptionally high quota of a certain type of blood. But the so-called 'Celtic' races, i.e. groups of people who speak, or whose ancestors spoke, Celtic languages, are a purely philological iuvention, for the three groups who have this exceptionally high blood quota are the Irish, the Scotch, and the Basques, and yet the Basques are not thought to be Celts—indeed, I am not quite sure what they are thought to be. Their language is not Celtic any more than it is 'Teutonic'. The Irish or the Scots are not thought to be responsible for the activities of the Welsh or the Bretons.
But although most of what is written or said about race is nonsense, not all of it is nonsense. At any rate, the subject demands some serious investigation. It does not seem to me totally impossible that racial groups differing from each other in physical appear4 ance may differ in intellectual equipment.. This is not to say that the intellectual equip- ment of race A is inferior to that of race s; but it may be different. We accept this when we think of physical equipment. True, we do not always accept it when the results are inconvenient. One of my very learned brothers points out that one reason why there are no good English boxers is that the Englishman is the wrong shape, and is infallibly inferior to a Negro or, indeed, to some other white groups. The records of British champions in this century suggest there is something in this unkind theory.
It might be noted that what are loosely called racial groups, including groups marked off from each other by colour, may have equally valuable attainments, but dif- ferent attainments. Of course, it is possible to exaggerate the attainments of a group with which you are emotionally connected. I can remember during the last war a con- versation in an Oxford Street bar between myself, the late A. J. Liebling and an Ar- menian common friend. Liebling, waving his hand to his Armenian friend, who had been at Columbia University with him, said, 'It wasn't till Pan came to New York that he realised there are millions of stupid Jews'. On the other hand, I think it is highly probable that Jews have certain special qualities for the study of mathematics, for the study of most natural sciences, perhaps all natural sciences, but perhaps are short of talent for some other human activities.
For example, I cannot think of many or perhaps any absolutely first class Jewish artists or composers of music (I don't mean executants, of which the Jews have produced a great many). I don't know any Jewish equivalent of Picasso, of Bach, or perhaps of Michelangelo. I could, if (look the time off, think of reasons why this is so, but I am just content to assert that it is so. On the other hand, it may well be that certain types of intellectual achievement come with more difficulty to non-Jews or, if you like, to non-white men. Of course, we must be very cagey. One of the most brilliant Greek scholars is, as Holy Writ says, 'black but comely'. He is a product of King's College, Cambridge, and has been a professor of Greek at Princeton University, USA. He is now head of the University of Ghana. Some Negroes are brilliant athletes—we have only to look at the records of great boxers since the days of Sam Langford, and we saw at the Commonwealth Games how much Blacks excel in certain sports.
This is a plea for not assuming that any discussion of racial difference is Nazi or Fascist or inspired by savage race bias, e.g. as in the case of the Jews. Perhaps an ob- jective study of what may be known (and much less is known than most propagandists seem to think) about racial differences, how far they are inherited and how far they are the result of purely historical advantages or disadvantages. Quite obviously, Mr Ralph Bunche would not have been a Nobel Prize- man if the United States had still had a slave system; nor, indeed, would such great boxers as Jack Johnson and Cassius Clay have been superb champions of the world if the mech- anism that excluded Negroes from competing for that championship had still been- oper- ating. I start, that is to say, with a strong bias in favour of a belief that racial dif- ferences have very little importance or don't exist. The trouble is flint- T a^-" "I' is so. And perhaps one good beginning would be to try to assess in what ways the genetics of race have been studied fully, scientifically and with a willingness to accept the result wherever science leads us. A good test of this would be the acceptance of people of mixed Celtic origin like myself of the possibility that they belong to a very inferior group—inferior not only to Negroes, but to the English. I am rather inclined to believe this myself : but then I am not a patriotic race man.
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