Classic Essays

What a Difference 40 Years Makes

Henry Fairfield Osborn

THE ROT was already well advanced in the America of 1980, a time still within the memories of many of our readers. But we have lost much of our freedom of speech since that time, as evidenced by what Natural History magazine published in April of that year. No mobs burned down their offices, the editors were not arrested on false charges nor denounced in Congressional hearings, and no printers or financial institutions deplatformed them.

The 80th Anniversary Issue of Natural History (April, 1980) reprinted a 1926 article by Henry Fairfield Osborn en­titled, “The Evolution of Human Races.” Os­born was the great American naturalist who had a lot to do with the passage of the 1924 immigration laws, which, if they had not been junked after World War II, might have kept America American. His article provides refreshing reading, since it is totally devoid of the crusading equalitarianism that must now permeate popular writing on biological matters if it is to see the light of day. Osborn writes fearlessly about the different races and their different spiritual, intellectual and moral characteristics. He compares the in­telligence of the average Negro to that of an average 11-year-old member of Homo sa­piens, thereby implying that the Negro actu­ally belongs to a different species. But he is no bigot, not at all. He compliments Blacks for displaying “many noble qualities of spiri­tual and moral character” and a “superb physical development.”

Another Natural History reprint was a 1925 essay on starlings by ornithologist Frank Chapman. The following paragraph shows that even in those golden years some Americans thought that restrictive immigra­tion had come too late:

Having with thoughtless hospitality ac­corded the starling, house sparrow, San José scale, gypsy pests, including certain members of the genus Homo, free and unchallenged entry to our ports, we now ask (if to our sorrow, we have not already learned), “Are they de­sirable?”

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Source: based on an article in Instauration magazine, August 1980

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JM/Iowa
JM/Iowa
21 January, 2020 1:51 am

What our White forefathers had conquered before has now been given up without a fight. Our generation and succeeding ones must gather our best, build our strength, and do it again. And get what comes after right!