By Roberta Russell
I recently asked my former Greenwich Village tenant-friend and Trump-authority, Michael Wolff, why there are so many Trump supporters and zealots.
Amazingly, even after the year in the White House he spent writing the groundbreaking Fire and Fury (2018), followed by Siege (2019) and most recently, Landslide (2021), the third in a Trump exposé trilogy, Wolff did not have an answer to my question.
“I have no answer! And no explanation how so many people could remain so enthralled by a crazy man—and such a hopelessly distracted and incompetent crazy man…,” he replied.
There are reasons, though. For one, there’s the sticky issue of political correctness.
People are sick of it. The zeal to correct the cruel prejudices and unjust persecution of minorities that we see live and historically on TV, with remedial racial quotas that override merit, has a basic flaw. It pre-assumes that all racial inequalities stem from lack of opportunity and the life-eroding prejudice that deprives people of color of their right to thrive.
Racial quotas erroneously assume that there are no racial differences.
Many of those displaced by this intended remedial adjustment object. Thy feel alienated and muzzled. This topic is taboo!
While in office, Trump re-directed Justice Department resources—those intended to fight racial discrimination against minorities—to fight, instead, for the rights of those qualified people, whose places are taken up to fill quotas at universities. The Trump government sued Yale for reverse discrimination against Asians and Whites. Biden subsequently dropped the case. Nevertheless, there are those who find that Trump’s politically incorrect stance speaks to them, even if they do not admire the man.
Yes, there is real discrimination and real prejudice, but there are also real racial differences. Has the equalizing pendulum swung too far?
According to Nicholas Wade, author of A Troublesome Inheritance, Genes, Race and Human History (2014) at every Olympic game since 1980, every finalist in the men’s 100-meter race had West African ancestry. No one is correcting this total racial imbalance by making quotas for Caucasians and Asians, nor should they be.
To make racial adjustments even more damaging and absurd, this year in the 2021 Olympics in Japan, authorities decided that two African female athletes with too much testosterone, apparently a racially correlated hormonal difference that occurred naturally, had an unfair advantage. That “advantage” bizarrely had to be corrected by such means as birth control shots, hormone pills or surgery or they were not eligible to run. They did not run.
According to Wade, the idea that human populations are genetically different from one another has been actively ignored by academics and policy makers for fear that such inquiry might promote racism.” (p. 248)
“It is not necessarily racist to consider racial categories as a possible explanatory factor.” (p.221)
Jews make up .2% of the world’s population, but despite social discrimination and the Holocaust, “as of 2007 they received an amazing 32% of the Nobel Prizes awarded in the 21st century.” By testing the genome at 550,000 sites, researchers were able to distinguish with complete accuracy between Ashkenazim and non-Jewish Europeans. Apparently, individuals with an Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry carry a discernable signature of their Jewish heritage.
We, as a human race, are still evolving.
We should learn what is true, in order to do what is right.
Roberta Russell is the author of R.D. Laing & Me: Lessons in Love with R.D. Laing, Hillgarth Press, 1992) and the author of Report on Effective Psychotherapy: Legislative Testimony (Hillgarth) Press, 1981, 1994), Report on Permanent Weight Loss (Columbia Academic Commons) 2017 and has been a contributor to various international magazines and journals including: Psychologie Heute (Germany), Japan Times (Japan), The Psychologist (U.K.), Human Potential Magazine (U.K.), Changes (U.K.), Clinical Psychology Forum (U.K.), Psychoanalytic Studies (U.K.) Bottom Line (USA). She occasionally hosts a New York City cable television show called Lifetalk, which has featured interviews with movers and shakers in controversial areas of psychology, weight loss, nutrition, medicine, environment, and population growth.
