richard_dawkins_-_the_god_delusion

266 T H 1- (• O V> I) F I. U s I O N
standards. Most white people believed that black people (in which
category they would have lumped the very diverse Africans with
unrelated groups from India, Australia and Melanesia) were inferior
to white people in almost all respects except - patronizingly - sense
of rhythm. The 1920s equivalent of James Bond was that cheerfully
debonair boyhood hero, Bulldog Drummond. In one novel, The
Black Gang, Drummond refers to 'Jews, foreigners, and other
unwashed folk'. In the climax scene of The Female of the Species,
Drummond is cleverly disguised as Pedro, black servant of the archvillain.
For his dramatic disclosure, to the reader as well as to
the villain, that 'Pedro' is really Drummond himself, he could have
said: 'You think I am Pedro. Little do you realize, I am your archenemy
Drummond, blacked up.' Instead, he chose these words:
'Every beard is not false, but every nigger smells. That beard ain't
false, dearie, and dis nigger don't smell. So I'm thinking, there's
something wrong somewhere.' I read it in the 1950s, three decades
after it was written, and it was (just) still possible for a boy to thrill
to the drama and not notice the racism. Nowadays, it would be
inconceivable.
Thomas Henry Huxley, by the standards of his times, was an
enlightened and liberal progressive. But his times were not ours,
and in 1871 he wrote the following:
No rational man, cognizant of the facts, believes that the
average negro is the equal, still less the superior, of
the white man. And if this be true, it is simply incredible
that, when all his disabilities are removed, and our
prognathous relative has a fair field and no favor, as well
as no oppressor, he will be able to compete successfully
with his bigger-brained and smaller-jawed rival, in a
contest which is to be carried on by thoughts and not by
bites. The highest places in the hierarchy of civilization
will assuredly not be within the reach of our dusky
cousins. 104
It is a commonplace that good historians don't judge statements
from past times by the standards of their own. Abraham Lincoln,
like Huxley, was ahead of his time, yet his views on matters of race