Now, as it happens, the above KKK argument does not work; and I asked my class to explain why. 

In passing, I should point out that the KKK argument is complicated by the reality that KKK folks hate Jews; yet, two Jews are on that list.  So a KKK person can say that he or she is not blind to talent even when that talent displays itself in people who are despised by KKK folks. 

Getting back to the argument: There are two kinds of responses that are immediately offered.  One I shall label the genius uplift response; the other I shall label the victim of racism response.  According, to the uplift response, there are lots of blacks that belong on that list: e.g., Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, Jimmy Hendrix, and George Washington Carver.  There is no denying the talent of these names.  But let us see.

I think that Elton John and Stevie Wonder are on a par with one another when it comes to musical talent.  Yet, surely Elton does not think for a moment, and rightly so, that he is on a par with Mozart or Beethoven.  So, by parity of reasoning, it follows that Stevie Wonder is not on a par with Mozart or Beethoven, and not think such a thing.  Nor, for that matter is, Aretha Franklin. 

Martin Luther King, Jr. was also mentioned as someone who should be on the.  I would place him on the same plane as Winston Churchill.  Neither, though, makes that very dis-tinguished KKK list. 

As for George Washington Carver, there is no doubt that he had considerable talent.  But he was no Darwin or Freud or Einstein.  No doubt, Carver was Nobel Prize material.  Yet, many Nobel Prize winners do not hold a candle to Darwin or Freud or Newton or Einstein.  So the uplift response proves to be rather unsuccessful.

The victim response insists that were it not for the vicious racism that blacks have suffered down through the years, then there would be blacks on the list.  I presume that this is true.  And as one student observed, it may very well be that Shakespeare did really do all that writing, but some blacks instead.

The victim argument may very well have more weight in the minds of my students than the uplift argument.  The problem with the victim argument is that it still leaves one empty-handed.  It is rather like saying that one would have earned a Ph.D. had one gone to graduate school.  Unless one has done something that makes this claim manifestly obvious, there is a respect in which the claim rings hollow.  That blacks would have been on the list had things been otherwise is no substitute for being on the list.  I do not think that any genuine satisfaction derives from running around saying “I could have been on that list”. 

You see, the problem with the victim argument is that it still privileges the list in a way that requires an explanation for why blacks are not on it.  Accordingly, I think that those who spend so much time advocating the uplift argument miss a marvelous opportunity to advance a much more im-portant argument.  A far better strategy would be to show that, in the relevant respects, not much turns on not being on the list.  I presented that argument in lecture today. 

What does the KKK argument show about the intelligence of Xs?  It most certainly does not show that any random X chosen is apt to be more talented than any random non-X chosen.  That is to say, from the fact that only Xs are on the list, what does not follow at all is that only Xs are gifted or likely to be gifted.  After all, only human beings are on the list, too.  Less flippantly, from the fact that only Xs are on the list does not show that there is a strong correlation between being an X and being on the list.  There could not possibly be. 

Why?  Because there are millions upon millions of Xs who are manifestly and unambiguously not on the list.  Likewise for millions and millions of Ys or Ws or whatever.  No X can look at himself and think that it was just as likely that he or the other person would be on the list as not.  For if anything is true it is true that it notoriously unlikely that anyone would be on that list; and it does not matter whether the person is an X or a non-X.   But then it follows from all of this that with regard to intelligence Xs as such and Ys as such and Ws as such are all on the same plane. 

The probability of being on the list is painfully small and equally small whether one is an X or a Y or a W or what-ever race.  9 or so people on the list out of millions and millions of people of one racial group is statistically the same as 0 people on the list out of millions and millions of people from another racial group. 

This argument does not in any way downplay the extraordi-nary contributions of the people who are intellectual giants.  It merely points out that nothing of any signi-ficance follows with regard to one race or the other given the simple fact that all on the list turn out to be white. 

This argument thus diffuses the standing of the list.  So no non-X need find the list in any way threatening because non-Xs are not on the list. 

Returning back to Mill’s distinction between living beliefs and dead dogma, I trust that the class can see that I have done something extremely important.  Without in any way resorting to either the uplift or the victim argument, I have completely diffused the argument pre-sented by the KKK person.  And it seems to me that, prior to lecture, way too many of this class could not even envision this possibility. 

Worse, it seems to me that one of the deep and painful shortcomings of political correctness is that it is much too willing to avail itself of the charge of racism rather than look for what in fact would be a far effective and devastating argument.  The uplift argu-ment cheapens the intellectual contributions of a Darwin or a Freud or a Mozart.  In this regard, the victim argument is a better argument.

On the other hand, there is a straightforward sense in which advocates of the victim argu-ment are held hostage by the very ideology that they eschew.  That blacks or members of any other group are not on the list is problematic only if not being on the list represents something nega-tive about the intellectual wherewithal of blacks or others as a race. 

Showing that this is not the case is actually better than making the charge of racism.  Thus, it seems to me that for some invoking the charge of racism is rather like a drug to which one is addicted.  And the proof of this is that some continued appealing to the victim argument even after I had given the argument that I gave regarding the fact no significance at all, regarding the matter of intelligence between the races, attaches to the fact that all the members of the list are white, since the racial composition of the list does not show that Xs as a group are in any way more likely to be more intelligent than non-Xs. 

The power of the argument that I have given, if the argu-ment is sound, is that it renders otiose both the uplift and the victim arguments—not by denying the reality of racism, but by drawing attention to the truth that the best explanation for apparent differences be-tween races may have noth-ing at all to do with race precisely because the ap-parent differences turn out to be just that: merely apparent rather than real.

© Laurence Thomas 2006