National Review Still Selling 'Racialist IQ Hogwash'

Salon's Alex Pareene says that National Review may have fired two bigots, but we shouldn't expect the conservative publication to part with the idea that race determines intelligence. Suggested Reading Black TikTok Has Theories on Whether Taraji’s Daughter in ‘Straw’ Was Dead the Whole Time The Unbelievable Reasons Jury Deliberations in Diddy Trial Got off…

Salon's Alex Pareene says that National Review may have fired two bigots, but we shouldn't expect the conservative publication to part with the idea that race determines intelligence.

Video will return here when scrolled back into view
Trump’s Tariffs Might Stick Around. What Should We Buy Now?
Trump’s Tariffs Might Stick Around. What Should We Buy Now?

The National Review this month is having one of its semi-regular โ€œpurges,โ€ in which formerly welcome members of the conservative establishment are declared distasteful and relegated to the โ€œfringes.โ€ It began when self-declared racist and longtime National Review contributor John Derbyshire wrote a piece (not for the NR but for โ€œTakiโ€™s Mag,โ€ an online magazine devoted to lighthearted racism) that went well beyond the bounds of โ€œacceptableโ€ race-baiting. He was canned. Shortly thereafter, another National Review contributor, Robert Weissberg, was fired for having given a presentation at a conference devoted to white supremacy last month.

These two were not fired for suddenly revealing some hitherto unknown and successfully buried racist attitude โ€” these were not out-of-left field outbursts, like Michael Richardsโ€™ onstage meltdown โ€” but for beliefs they had always had and had always expressed. This is what makes it a purge โ€” a decision that this sort of modern โ€œracialismโ€ is no longer considered an acceptable mainstream Conservative attitude.

Thatโ€™s good! Though it took a while. The National Reviewโ€™s rejection of the overt racists is actually a fairly new phenomenon. Joan Walsh recently wrote of how the magazine was a strong supporter of racial segregation in its early days, and while that support didnโ€™t last long, prejudice against black Americans and crank โ€œracialistโ€ beliefs were welcome in the magazine long after the 1960s ended.

Read Alex Pareene's entire piece at Salon.

Straight From The Root

Sign up for our free daily newsletter.