They, the people

In 1853, Joseph-Arthur, Comte de Gobineau published a tract entitled “Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races”, in which he argued that “history springs only from contact with the white races” and that miscegenation with “commoners” as well as with “yellow” and “black” races leads to the “demise of civilization”. Widely credited with popularizing the concept of the Aryan master race, Gobineau’s thoughts found purchase among pro-slavery Americans and, eventually, became an ideological cornerstone for the American Breeder’s Association, the American Eugenics Society and the Nazi party. His royalist assertions of elite white “bloodlines” have been enduringly influential in the United States.

Few have had a greater hand in carrying Gobineau’s notions into the present than Charles Murray. Along with J. Philippe Rushton, Arthur Jensen, Richard Herrnstein and Nicholas Wade, Murray has championed social Darwinism, an ideology that divides humans into biologically distinct “races” with distinct genetic propensities that neatly predict everything from penis size to brain function and criminal disposition. Their bottom line is that dark-skinned people are evolutionarily limited and thus unsuited to modern life.

Hard scientific...