Although positioning himself as a liberal, Walter Willcox was an active member of the American Eugenics movement and was actually a racist who predicted that because Blacks were inferior Darwinian law would inevitably lead to their extinction. Nevertheles, Du Bois did not exclude scholars from the conferences because their views differed from his own (p. 80).

 

Scientific racism, espoused by scholars of the day, provided political actors the ideology to justify the oppressive regime (p.87)…..it is instructive to keep in mind that the consensus regarding Black inferiority cut across all academic disciplines during the first half of the twentieth century (p. 87)….Du Bois’s school of sociology operated on the belief that a scientific approach, as advocated at Atlanta University, would produce objective research findings that would blow up the premises of scientific racism and lead to the political overthrow of racial oppression (p. 88).

I’m confused by Boas, who stated that White racism, rather than flawed genetics or Black cultural practices, was the cause of racial inequality. Several years later, Boas said in a speech that Blacks, because of slightly smaller head sizes than Whites on average, could not produce men of high genius at the same rate as Whites. What happened over those few years that so drastically changed his thinking? How does Boas make sense of these two opposing views? He is purported to support scientific research like Du Bois, but then espouses scientific racism based on ideology instead of research.

 

Du Bois’ colleague Frank Boas is said to have racial privileges unavailable to Du Bois because of his White skin, and Boas was hired at Columbia, which gave him access to considerable intellectual resources and trained gifted graduate students. On the other hand, at Atlanta University, Du Bois barely had resources to train undergraduates and a few master’s students. This is reminiscent of Kendi’s chapter about Black spaces and how vastly different these spaces can be resourced due to racial differences. Although both scientists were science researchers and professors at respective universities, one was given access to an abundance of resources, while another was given barely anything to work with, again, due to their different racial backgrounds and the respect/value that was associated with it at that time.