Tag - racism

Sociobiology: The Controversy Continues

After over almost a year's reflection and review and after analyzing the reaction to the new wave of books this fall on sociobiology, particularly E.O. Wilson's On Human Nature, the Sociobiology Study group of the Boston Chapter of Science for the People has decided on a new course of action. We find there is a...

AAAS: Sociobiology on the Run

The very fact of the AAAS sponsoring this symposium on the "controversy" is an indication of the success we have had in making the claims of the sociobiologists controversial. What caught many of us in Science for the People by surprise at the AAAS meetings was the extent of the spreading negative reaction to...

Recombinant DNA: Does the Fault Lie Within Our Genes?

I have been doing research in bacterial genetics for the last 12 years at Harvard Medical School and I am a member of Science for the People. Over the last couple of years, we have been discussing in our laboratory how the recombinant DNA technique could make certain of our experiments much easier to do. However, as a...

Health Care Politics: APHA Conference Report

From October 20-24, the American Public Health Association (APHA) held its 102nd annual meeting in New Orleans. The theme was a more progressive one than ever previously adopted as a convention topic: "The Health of Non-White and Poor Americans". The more than 8,500 participants represented a cross-section of American...

Racism at Harvard

In the middle of May, as students at Harvard Medical School were preparing for their exams, as many medical schools around the country were completing their admissions decisions, as President Ford spoke of "alternatives to busing," Bernard D. Davis, a Professor at Harvard Medical School, stirred up a storm the impact...

Prisoner’s Verdict: The Prisons Are the Crime

There is presently for prisoners throughout the U.S., both state and federal, a new kind of warfare and dehumanization. For prisoners it is a present terror, for those on the outside it is a threat. 

Unmasking the IQ Lie

Jensen, Herrnstein and others have claimed that people's IQ is highly inherited and plays a large part in determining their "success" in later life. In this section of the magazine we show the fallacies of all these arguments. "IQ and Class Structure" demonstrates that IQ is not a cause of success and that it is...

A History of Eugenics in the Class Struggle

A raft of reports has appeared claiming a genetic basis for intelligence in human beings. These hereditarian explanations for intelligence have been given considerable publicity—by far more than given to opposing views. As a result, whether consciously or not, the U.S. scientific and general public has begun to absorb...

Rx for the People: Preventative Genocide in Latin America

In recent years, both the American government and the "philanthropic" agencies such as IPPF, have exerted continual pressure upon Latin American nations to reduce birth rates. A celebrated case in 1969 was Bolivia, which had recently nationalized Gulf Oil's holdings. When Bolivia, with a population density of less...

Psychology in the Legitimation of Apartheid

From an historical point of view, the capitalist mode of production and distribution has led to the emergence of two characteristic types of political system: the liberal democracy exemplified by England and the United States of America on the one hand, and the repressive police state exemplified by Nazi Germany on...