Race : a study in modern superstition / Jacques Barzun.

  • Jacques Barzun
Date:
1938
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Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: Race : a study in modern superstition / Jacques Barzun. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    III . . . the new importance that has been attached for the last half-century to the idea of common descent as opposed to that of mere artificial nationality has made a word necessary. Ra cial is not the word that might have been or namental as well as useful; but it is too well established to be now uprooted— h. w. and f. G. fowler in The King's English, 1906 RACE-THINKING does not consist merely in believ ing a particular theory about human races, and to refute the Nazi believer in Nordic or Aryan supremacy would not suffice to show up the basic error involved in the notion of a Nordic or Aryan race. It would only let the disillusioned racialist fall into the arms of the Celti- cist, the Yellow Peril fanatic, or the dolichocephalic anthropologist. What must be extinguished is the passion for labeling and classifying large groups of people on insufficient evidence. That remarkable urge to lump to gether the attributes of vast masses with which we can have no acquaintance is common to everyone. The Japanese are a crafty and imitative race. Isn't that typically American? That is a Jewish trait. Nordic self-control. Why do we all feel an inward satisfaction in mouthing these inexact platitudes? Why does it take conscious restraint to keep from doing it at every turn? Some answers will be suggested throughout this book.