Dear Mr. Stoloff: July 29, 1969
[NOTE: I’ve reconsidered publishing this letter as sent, as Campbell used a series of offensive racial epithets. I, originally, felt that it was necessary to carry the full “flavor” of the original correspondence but I have reconsidered.]
Since the original attack on me was published, it seemed to me that a published reply was the proper and equitable “equal time on the air” proposition; I did intend my original reply be published.
Now as to your latest comments.
“You’ve got to be carefully caught thought” is indeed a line from a well-known song. It’s not ordinarily held that lines from songs constitute evidence in a discussion of fact. And folklore, while worthy of investigation, it’s not, per se, evidence of anything but the anthropological fact that the people believe the cited lore.
This includes the folklore of science – the ideas idealistic beliefs that have never been subjected to proper, control test and observation, but, instead, Science has voted against investigating these facts! (As did the National Academy of Science, by 200 to 10, recently.)
Evidence that “you’ve got to be carefully taught” is false abounds – it’s simply very carefully ignored. The best example – on a massive scale, too!! – is the reactions of Americans from New England when they started settling the Hawaiian islands. They’ve been well and “carefully taught” on how to deal with peoples with colored skins; if they were brown, they were to be enslaved, and if red, they were to be shot. (“The only good Injun’s a dead one.) So how did they treat the brownish skin Polynesians?
They settle down and built a joint culture with them.
Conclusion: it is not how you’re taught – it’s what you learn yourself in life that determines attitudes.
Read up on what happened when Americans from the “lower 48” went into the arctic to build the Dew Line stations – young engineers who’d never met Eskimos, and Eskimos and Cree Indians who never before actually encountered whites.
Get some data, friend! The data that sociologists-with-removable-convictions simply ignore because it doesn’t fit with what they’ve already decided for sure. In two years, and Eskimo who had never seen a white man before the Dew Line men moved in had been made Shop Foreman of the Machinist’s Union. They were welcome the white Mess, and shown no “discrimination”. The Cree Indians on the other hand were unskilled laborers, strongly rejected, and not allowed in the white Mess.
Why did the early Englishman, who had never encountered other races, (1) enslave Negroes in Africa when they met them, (2) start eliminating Indians in North America, and (3) build a joint citizenship with Maoris in New Zealand?
One possible – but sternly rejected! – answer is that the three different people each earn precisely what they got.
As to genetic prejudice: one of the major characteristics of Man that sets him apart from animals, is this ability to override, by conscious decision, the urgings of instincts. The genetic computer in man is subject to “manual override”, while that in the animals is not. This makes it appear that Man doesn’t have those instincts. The LEM of Apollo 11 would have “instinctively” tried to set down in a crater full of boulders, but human manual override took over – which made it appear that the LEM didn’t have a tendency to set down stupidly.
I have never said or suggested the blacks should be rejected because they are black; what I am saying is that every individual man – black, white, red, yellow or polka-dot should be valued in terms of what he is. This means not giving a black any preference on the basis of skin-color – which is the situation that’s been shoved at us now. A Negro looter is a criminal, just as much as an Indian or white looter. A black bum who won’t work for a living deserves no more consideration that [sic] a white slob who prefers to be supported by welfare checks.
There is such a thing as a “n*****”; a “n*****” is a slob of an African ancestry – just as a “w**” is a bum of Italian ancestry, a “k***” is a Jewish slob, and a “s***” is an oath of Spanish dissent. What’s important is that he’s a no good, not that he’s of African, Italian, Spanish or other decent.
And I am but hardly sick of the fatuous sob-sisters who are so loathe facts, and dearly loved their idealistic, but unsane beliefs, that they won’t look at data.
Ghettos do not breed crime, ignorance, dirt and incompetence; it was in ghettos the Jews learn to be among the most intelligent, learned, and competent people in the world. The Chinese ghettos have the lowest crime rates of any part of New York City, and their people are clean, intelligent and educated.
I know one individual who grew up in a Negro ghetto, demeaned, rejected and discriminated against because of his skin color. His father was a waiter in a restaurant; they had to live in a cheap area. But he is a PhD, a systems engineer for Sperry-Rand, Dr. Harry Wong, Chinese whom the blacks had rejected.
As to the Italians in the Mafia – the Mafia exist because it provides a service to public wants – something the society says it thinks wrong, but pays to have. See my recent editorial.
The only reason color has had that “prejudice” effect is that as a racial group, the African blacks have not developed high civilization, and statistically, achieve less than whites.
That’s not arguable; it’s simply a statement of observational fact. I’m not denying that “if it hadn’t been for ….they could have!” I’m saying that history shows they didn’t. And history shows that white and yellow both did.
That we cannot alter, nor are we responsible for it; it’s a fact.
A solution to any problem requires that the factual data be fed into the consideration – or you can bet, with high certainty that you’ll get an answer that will blow up in your face.
It’s failure to take facts into consideration that’s responsible for the present tendency to explosions.
I had an argument with a young sociologist a while back – and it turns out that there is perfectly valid and objective reason for saying the white race actually is superior to the others – in strictly zoological terms!
A superior subspecies of any animal species is characterized by (1) its ability to spread its territorial range in the face of opposition, (2) adapt to a wider range of climate successfully, and (3) to increase its numbers beyond that of other subspecies.
In those strictly zoological terms – whites spread their territory range over the planet, defeating every other sub species of Man that tried to stop it. It has adapted to climates from extreme Arctic (and Arctic scientific stations, for instance!) to extreme tropic. (We might add to airless vacuum and one-sixth gravity as of now!) And despite propaganda you may have heard, the Caucasoid strain out numbers every other sub species on the planet.
I don’t see that approves anything wonderful – but but a lot of propaganda nonsense that’s been thrown around at us doesn’t prove a damn thing either.
I’m intensely annoyed by efforts to several major problems of the real world by chanting slogans – and both sides annoying me about equally. My attitude towards H. Rap Brown is only matched by feelings towards the American Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan – they are equally a bunch of crackpots chanting slogans, and deeply afraid of any straight-thinking, honest and objective study of the situation. A major part of the Ku Klux Klan is made up of incompetent whites who want to be superior by reason of skin color, because they damn well aren’t in any other terms; the black Militants are in 100% agreement with the Ku Klux Klanners, only they insist black is superior.
Neither is, of course – except a highly specialized terms. (Whites get skin cancer from intense sunlight, blacks don’t. Whites can be photographed much more easily than blacks – ask any movie cameramen.)
But nothing is more hateful to all men than the idea of a method of testing that would determine the actual worth of every individual!
Think how many science-fiction stories have been based on revolt against a system that rated individuals on their own individual competence, and not on their self image terms!
Sincerely,
John W Campbell
Editor
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