Carl Coon about his father

[svin]

I found it here:

Talk:Carleton S. Coon - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Coon was not a racist in the pejorative sense

I have a special claim to authority on this subject as I am Carleton Coon's son. I grew up with him. He firmly believed that race is a legitimate field of scientific inquiry, in that subspecies have evolved and that differences between them can affect not only normative physical features, but also behavior. He detested adversaries like Ashley Montagu and most of the Boas school that decided ex cathedra that race doesn't exist, and he could express himself quite strongly when he got on the subject. But he never agreed that racial stereotypes could legitimately be applied to individuals. In fact he prided himself on the fact that his friends and correspondents were distinguished representatives of all racial groups. Here's what he had to say in his article, "What is Race?", in the December, 1957 issue of the Atlantic Monthly:

"...in most if not all races men of superior intelligence are born from time to time. In the past it was rarely possible for many of them to meet and exchange ideas, and even in social situations where they were accepted, much of their individual brainpower was wasted. Thanks to the new techniques of transport and communication of our century, world-wide meetings of the intellectual elite of all races are becoming common. In them it has often been observed that the world's most intelligent men find it completely natural to forget about race, for the mutual stimulation of intellectual exchange creates in such a group a new level of equilibrium, in which looking alike is of no importance.
"It seems safe to predict that the frequent association of the world's top minds in various disciplines can turn out to be the equivalent of that step in biological evolution for which many have been waiting:the appearance of a new and superior race based on a new adaptation, not to a special physical environment, but to the need of solving special problems which men have themselves created. As it will be drawn from many races, no master-race behavior need be feared."

In other words, my father was an elitist but not a racist, not in the present pejorative sense. But how about that opening reference to "most if not all races"? I am quite confident, on the basis of my recollection of my discussions with him, that he did not mean to include all negroes, or Congoids, or sub-Saharan Africans, as a blanket category incapable of producing superior minds. Africa being the cradle, there is probably at least as much racial variation within the region as outside it, and generalizations about race within the region always troubled him. (I recall his commenting on the large cranial capacity of the Ibo, for example). I infer that his phrase "most if not all races" referred to subgroups, perhaps some very minor groups, not to any of his five major categories.

That last point is arguable but with the increasing homogenization of the global gene pool it may also be becoming moot. Race as a whole, however, will never become moot. In his passion for analyzing its particulars, my father was not behind his times. I feel confident that future generations will look back on the record and judge that he was ahead of them.

Carl Coon (talk) 11:57, 13 March 2008 (UTC)