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What Will Happen Here?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2024

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Scientists have been the poets of modern society. The myths of our age have been the creation, through popular repetition, of the genuine oracles of scientific discoverers, misunderstood, misinterpreted and misapplied by lesser men. The facts behind Darwin’s theory have been of less importance than the altered view of humanity they came to imply, the higher beast rather than the lesser angel. The clinical work of Freud is a small affair beside the wholesale change in sex-conventions that he fathered. Einstein’s few pages on Relativity revolutionized not only Physics but the concept of Truth itself in other disciplines and in popular understanding.

Not least important of the myths we have grown up with has been the notion of Race. Already in the nineteenth century, some evolutionists applied the idea of competing and differing species to the apparently different groups of mankind, defined by general differences of physical appearance. The survival of the fittest came to be seen, in terms of Race, as the story of Nordic man’s superiority. The science of anthropology dealt in terms of ‘backward’ and ‘advanced’ peoples, with the assumption of European man’s advancement implicit. Now, modern biology and anthropology no longer deal in these terms. Race, as the term is popularly used, is not a biologically valid or respectable concept. The anthropologist has discovered and learnt to respect the sophisticated culture and technology of the rest of the world’s history. But the myth of Race remains solidly embedded in the intellectual apparatus of all educated people in Europe and North America.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © 1967 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

References

Quoted above: ‘Report on Racial Discrimination’: P.E.P., 12 Upper Belgrave Street , London , S.W.I.Google Scholar
A few books on the immigrant in Britain: ‘Immigration and Race in British Polities’: Paul Foot (Penguin ).Google Scholar
How Colour Prejudiced is Britain?’: Clifford S. Hill (Gollancz ).Google Scholar
Black British’: R. B. Davison (Institute of Race Relations, 36 Jermyn Street , London , S.W.I ).Google Scholar
Race, Community and Conflict: a study of Sparkbrook’: Rex and Moore (I.R.R.).Google Scholar
Reports: ‘Immigrants and the Youth Service’ (Report of Lord Hunt's Committee): H.M. Stationery Office.Google Scholar
The Pakistani Family in Britain’: Dr Farrukh Hashmi, N.C.C.I., 6 Tilney Street , London , W.I.Google Scholar
Young Englanders’: Stuart Hall, N.C.C.I.Google Scholar
Other books: ‘The Autobiography of Malcolm X’: Malcolm X (Hutchinson ).Google Scholar
Crisis in Black and White’: Charles E. Silberman.Google Scholar
Black Like Me’: John Howard Griffin (Panther ).Google Scholar