Is Black Equal To

White?

The Absurdity of The UNESCO Claim

Contributed by M. M., a Resident of New Guinea.

ONE of the most sweeping statements I ever have read or heard was put out by a body of scientists working through U.N.E.5.C.0.; and. about a year ago. this statement was supported by a well-known South Pacific Administrator in a radio talk. No stir of controversy has followed this statement, so let us now see what we can do about it.

These scientists said, among other things; “There is no proof that the groups of mankind differ in intelligence, temperament or other innate character istics.” I am convinced that many others besides me will reply to that in one word “Poppycock.” Against all the biologists, geneticists, psychologists, sociologists, and anthropologists I will say it.

European man—which means, broadly, the white man, for it includes all of European stock —is so different mentally and temperamentally from some of the other races, as almost to belong to another species. If you want proof of that, look at the whole of human history. Look at the record of the restless, ruthless, roving, pugnacious white peoples.

While the black man was squatting on his haunches beating a tom-tom, and while the red man was screaming in some war-dance round a totem pole, the white man was otherwise engaged. He was thinking, inventing, composing, find ing things out.

Do these scientists seriously tell us that

there is no mental difference between the cultivated Western European and the Stone-Age bushman of Australia, or the native of New Guinea?

Perhaps they do not go so far. But they say: “Given similar degrees of cultural opportunity to realise their potentialities, the average achievement of each ethnic group is about the same.”

Opportunity? What opportunity? Why, living in equable climates, with leisure to think, have some races no literature, or music, or art? Why have they never discovered or worked the vast mineral wealth that lies beneath their feet? Why have they never even discovered the principle of the wheel?

Such peoples and tribes do not lack opportunities. What they lack is the ability to make use of them. They lack the creative faculty which (has given mastery to western man, and which was the glory of his Greek and Roman civilisation.

To claim all thought, all culture, all progress for the Europeans be ridiculous, however. It was a small Semitic people in the Near East who gave us our incomparable religion, and the Arabs who invented our methods of calculation. The Chinese, the Egyptians, the peoples of India, and others, have developed their own unique forms of civilisation. They have contributed vastly to the sum total of enlightenment —yet each shows obvious mental and cemperamental differences from the others.

The men of other races can be taught to drive tanks, fly aeroplanes, or man modern battleships—but whoever heard of them inventing such things! They never even had the imagination to create a body like U.N.E.S.C.O. —and white men have to talk nonsense on their behalf!

Why do they do it?

The reason is not scientific, but political. Because a maniac like Hitler turned racial differences into racial hatreds, we are now called upon to deny these differences in the interest of world brotherhood.

One thing seems certain. If, by some disaster, European civilisation should perish, the rest of the world would, within a generation, relapse into savagery or return to its ancient superstitions.