Chapter Seven

Racism in psychology

SO FAR connections have been demonstrated between respectable scientists and those semi-academic, semi-political magazines, like The Mankind Quarterly, Nouvelle Ecole and Neue Anthropologie, which are actively promoting a racist culture; there have even been contacts with more overtly fascist and racist publications. Given such contacts, it is possible that ideas, originating from undeniably racist sources, are percolating into the academic arena.

Audrey M. Shuey's book The Testing of Negro Intelligence⁽⁷⁷⁾ offers a good example of the interconnections between political and academic racism. This mammoth book, which runs to nearly 600 pages, is a compendium of the research conducted into black IQ. Shuey's conclusion is that there are "native differences between negroes and whites as determined by intelligence tests": in other words blacks are less intelligent than whites.

Shuey's book contains an introduction by Henry Garrett, whose extremist views and connections have already been described. Garrett's contribution to Shuey's work goes further than writing a laudatory introduction. Shuey in her preface goes out of her way to thank Garrett: "Special thanks are due to Dr. Henry E. Garrett, for encouraging the writing of this book". Not altogether too surprisingly Shuey leans quite heavily in parts on Garrett's work.

If the motivation behind Shuey's work came from Garrett, whose political views were hardly inimical to the conclusions of The Testing of Negro Intelligence, nevertheless the work has had a deep impact on respectable psychologists.

For instance, Eysenck in Race, Intelligence and Education praises Shuey's work in most generous terms. His chapter on 'The intelligence of American negroes' is based on Shuey's work, as Eysenck is the first to admit:

"In surveying the results of work in this field, I have done little but paraphrase the scholarly, extensive and very reliable summary published by Audrey M. Shuey, entitled 'The Testing of Negro Intelligence'. . .It would clearly be impossible to go into similar detail here, as well as being supererogatory - such a job needed to be done, but having been well done, requires no repetition. Readers who wish to consult the references on which my own summaries and conclusions are based can do no better than read Shuey" (pp.87-88).

It is perhaps worthwhile to mention that Shuey, like Eysenck, is an Honorary Editorial Advisor to The Mankind Quarterly.

Shuey's conclusions are returned to racist circles, when Eysenck recommends her book during his Beacon interview. He mentioned that he used to believe that racial IQ differences were the product of environmental causes, but he changed his mind: "Then came first of all that book by Shuey and that I found really convincing".

Shuey in the preface of her book refers to 'Racial Psychology'. The growth of such 'Racial Psychology' (and Shuey includes her own work and those of other psychologists researching into racial differences in IQ) has led to a climate where racialist assumptions can be found in so-called objective psychological science. Eysenck's own department at the Institute of Psychiatry, Maudsley Hospital, London, is one where Racial Psychology can be said to be flourishing.

Jensen himself has contacts with the Institute of Psychiatry. Between 1956 and 1958 he worked as a Research Fellow at the Institute. His contacts with Eysenck have continued since then.

It was at a conference in the Institute of Psychiatry that Jensen delivered a highly publicised talk in August 1970, discussing the IQ of American blacks and Mexican-Americans. This talk was later to form the basis of Jensen's book Educability and Group Differences. In his book Race, Intelligence and Education (p.16), Eysenck went out of his way to thank the organiser of the conference: none other than A.J. Gregor (formerly of The Mankind Quarterly, the IAAEE and Oswald Mosley's European).

A good example of the way racialist presuppositions intrude into research at the Institute of Psychiatry is provided by Dr Glenn Wilson, who is a lecturer there. Wilson has collaborated with Eysenck on a number of books, including a recent work on the psychology of politics.⁽⁷⁸⁾

Wilson's own research has nothing to do with Eysenck's theories of racial differences in IQ; Wilson is in fact a social psychologist concerned with the study of attitudes. His book The Psychology of Conservatism⁽⁷⁹⁾ is ostensibly a scientific study of Right-wing political attitudes. It includes a commendatory preface by Eysenck, as well as some revealing assumptions.

Wilson starts The Psychology of Conservatism by saying that he prefers to use the term 'conservative' to 'fascist'. His reasons are that "most people would quite reasonably take exception to being described as 'fascist'" (p.4). Moreover, argues Wilson, the term 'conservative,' unlike 'fascist', "is relatively free of derogatory value-tone" (i.e., is not insulting).

Therefore Wilson, in order not to offend anyone, uses the term 'conservative' throughout his book, rather than fascist. The absurdity of this is that he uses 'conservative' even when talking about obvious fascists; for instance on page 7 he specifically refers to the National Front as a conservative organisation.

Wilson's concern not to offend does not, it seems, extend to all equally. On page 88 Wilson describes a questionnaire scale which he designed to measure 'realism'. Labelling a set of beliefs as 'realistic' and describing the believers as 'realists' indicates, at least implicitly, something about the scientist's own assumptions.

According to Wilson's scale, realists support 'white supremacy' and 'apartheid'; realists also reject 'coloured immigration'.⁽⁸⁰⁾ Wilson does not discuss any "derogatory value-tone" associated with this labelling.

In contrast to some of the academics already mentioned, it is highly unlikely that Wilson is consciously promoting racial theories or deliberately exonerating fascism. In fact, it is Wilson's lack of any conscious motivation which makes his remarks so disturbing. The proponents of racial theories hope to create an intellectual climate in which racialist assumptions are accepted as second-nature, even by those with no particular axe to grind. When large numbers of well-intentioned people fail to question racist assumptions, then racism can truly flourish.

It should be mentioned that Wilson's Psychology of Conservatism has been much quoted since its publication. Reviewers of the book, and psychologists studying Wilson's work, do not appear to have noticed anything untoward in Wilson's assumptions.

If Wilson represents an example of how racist presuppositions can be unthinkingly accepted, then the Institute of Psychiatry can also offer a more extreme example of racial psychology: that of a psychologist who uses psychology to justify his prejudices.

DR JOHN J. RAY

One of the contributors to Wilson's Psychology of Conservatism is Dr John J. Ray, lecturer at the University of New South Wales in Australia. During 1977 and 1978 Ray however was on sabbatical leave at the Institute of Psychiatry, where no doubt he found the intellectual atmosphere congenial to his research. Probably Ray was attracted by the fame of Eysenck, whom Ray had described as "the world's most eminent living psychologist".

Ray himself holds some forthright views on racism. His book Conservatism as heresy⁽⁸¹⁾ includes chapters with such appetising titles as 'Rhodesia: in defence of Mr Smith' and 'In defence of the White Australia policy'. Ray also argues that it is "moralistic nonsense" to denounce racism.

Well might Ray defend racism. He does not mince his words when he writes about Australian Aborigines. Ray says that "aborigines are characterised by behaviour that in a white we would find despicable . . . White backlash is then reasonable. Unless we expect whites to forget overnight the cultural values that they have learned and practised all their lives, they will find the proximity of aboriginals unpleasant" (p.58).

Ray has conducted a number of academic surveys in order to bolster his prejudices. For instance Ray assumes that it is natural that whites should develop an antipathy towards Aborigines:

"If, for instance, people suddenly find themselves living in close contact with Aborigines and Aborigines happen to be in fact rather unhygienic in their habits, some people previously without prejudice will start to say that they don't like Aborigines." (p.261.)

Therefore Ray designed a survey to measure white Australians' attitudes towards Aborigines, comparing those who lived near Aborigines with those who lived further away.

The results of his survey failed to confirm his prediction; Ray did not find that whites living near Aborigines were in fact more prejudiced. Ray described his results as "disappointing" (p.267). Instead of discarding his hypothesis, Ray still strove to maintain his own prejudices; he searched around for reasons why his questionnaire might not have obtained the correct results. Thus, even in the face of negative results, Ray clings to what he calls his 'rational prejudice model'.

Ray's prejudices do not just relate to Aborigines. Dr. Ray enjoins us to "face the fact that large numbers of even educated Australians do not like Jews or 'Wogs'." (p.70.) Ray writes approvingly of people who will

"among friends, exchange mocking misnomers for suburbs in which Jews have settled: Bellevue Hill becomes 'Bellejew Hill' and Rose Bay becomes 'Nose Bay'; Dover Heights becomes 'Jehova Heights'." (p.71.)

Ray obviously has sympathy with the racists and anti-Semites. Many of the people who make the comments Ray cites, are according to our Australian psychologist "superbly functioning and well-adjusted Australians". In Ray's opinion such people will "justly deny being racists" (p.70): n.b. the give-away word 'justly'.

The main reason why Ray does not find such attitudes racist is that he considers them perfectly logical. Thus he asserts that people "who don't like sloth . . . may object to Aborigines. People who do not like grasping materialism, will certainly find no fault with Aborigines but they may find fault with Jews" (p.265).

It seems that Dr Ray, in an academic paper about psychology, is repeating the racist and anti-Semitic assumptions that Aborigines are lazy and Jews are 'grasping materialists'. It is hard to find any other explanation for Ray's continual defence of prejudice.

In his academic papers Ray has a tendency to use some curious turns of phrase. Thus when he criticises, as he often does, the classic work in the psychology of fascism, The Authoritarian Personality by Adorno, Frenkel-Brunswick, Levinson and Sanford, he refers to "the work of these Jewish authors" (see, for instance, the start of Ray's article in the distinguished social science journal Human Relations).⁽⁸²⁾ This is not the standard way of describing opponents' research, at least not since the days of Nazi Germany.

But there again Ray is not exactly ignorant of the ways of Nazism. During the 1960s Ray was a member of various Australian Nazi parties. In fact Ray has openly described his seven-year association with Nazism (see, for instance, his article 'What are Australian Nazis really like?' in The Bridge, August 1972).

To chapter #8