  Interesting, detailed, multifarious, wide-ranging, but inconclusive, April 2, 2011/ 17 Sept 2015/ 27 July 2018
Baker on 'Race' (1974) is a 600+ page book. It is very detailed and worth consulting even for those interested in only one or two subjects. It's difficult to review because much of the material isn't clearly to do with race, and the arrangement is a bit arbitrary. It's in four main parts: 1 The historical background; (writers on race—18th century to Hitler) 2 The biological background; (species, hybrids, race etc) 3 Studies of selected human groups; (mostly European and African) 4 Criteria of superiority and inferiority. It also has appendices, a long bibliography of 1200 or so items, an Index, and a very short 'table of races and subraces' listing about thirty. The index and bibliography are unusually well laid out, with selected keywords in bold text. Note that Baker commented on arrangements for tribal group reproduction; he concluded that most of these systems were in effect calculated or arranged to reproduce the gene pools of the various groups. However, these did not include polygamous groups of Muslim types, or the effects of inbreeding and caste (as far as I recall; I don't have the book in front of me as I type). Various Jews objected to publication, for example 'Ashley Montagu' (Israel Ehrenberg), though there is little or no comment within the book (as far as I recall). Probably reviews of the book included typical Jewish absurdities; perhaps Oxford University Press was threatened. I haven't attempted to test any of this. Some material doesn't easily fit the schema. 'Domestication' is an important example. Domesticated animals behave differently from the ways they do in nature; and this includes man himself. And no doubt plants, too, and other biological organisms. (I wonder whether belief in 'God' might be a result of domestication). 1 The Historical Background —is the history of writings on races, including Monboddo (an early speculator on man descended from non-man), Kant (who was more aware of geography and peoples than I'd realised), Voltaire and Rousseau, Gobineau and (later) Spengler, and Americans such as Lothrop Stoddard. Much of the material resulted from explorations of Africa and the new discoveries of gorillas, chimps, monkeys, and so on. Mostly this was a long time before photography, and before audio recording. Baker records that the sociologist Pitirim Sorokin, in 1928, was the last person to describe alternative views on race. 'Those who believed in the equality of races were free to write what they liked.' This outlook is often ascribed to, or blamed on, Franz Boas, but he is barely mentioned by Baker, except for his belief that the US environment changed immigrants' features. Some material—for example, Latin and Greek writers on Europe—is not included here, but put into the descriptions of race types. Moreover the whole book seems to emphasise Europe and Africa—there's not much on China or the Indian subcontinent; I'm at a loss to understand why this should be. Here's part of Baker's summary of the two chapters on 19th and early 20th century writers on race: Nietzsche and Spengler may be eliminated at once as irrelevant to the ethnic problem ... Nietzsche was primarily an anti-egalitarian, but he did not proclaim the inequality of ethnic taxa. Spengler was intensely interested in the Volk, and its capacity, in certain cases, to initiate a great culture (which would eventually become a civilization and decline) ... Of the thirteen authors already mentioned ... seven strongly proclaim the superiority of people described variously as 'Nordics', 'Germanen', 'Indogermanen', or 'Aryan'. These seven are Gobineau, Haeckel, Lapouge (especially), Chamberlain, [Gustaf] Kossinna, Grant, and Stoddard. ... however, none of [them] claims superiority for the whole Europid race. Only one of the authors, Lapouge, strongly condemns the Jews. Treitschke is moderately anti-Jewish; Chamberlain, Grant, and Stoddard mildly so; Gobineau is equivocal. ... No unprejudiced person ... would be likely to suppose there was no validity whatever ... in any part of their writings ... . Stoddard was obviously unimportant, Lapouge highly prejudiced; but one cannot lightly dismiss such men as Gobineau and Chamberlain ... and there are passages in most of the books of the others that provoke interest and thought. If one had to choose [Baker] would suggest Essai sur l'inégalité des races humaines but [it is somewhat out of date, and very long]. There seems to be a full translation into English online. Baker believed all the Jewish mythology of the 'Holocaust', writing, for example, nothing on the huge numbers of deaths in the Second World War. No doubt this is why he discounts many of his authors, and why he ignores many political 'anti-Semites'. 2 The Biological Background discusses 'race', in quite an extensive sense, including races of animals and plants and insects. He includes for example dogs, and several races or varieties of Anopheles mosquitoes, and certain butterflies. Anopheles has six species, more or less identical to the human eye and microscopes; no doubt if they could talk they'd be amazed the differences aren't obvious. It's a salutary warning against 'obvious' inferences. The herring gull and the crested newt illustrate geographical distributions. Baker has nothing on parasitism, I'd guess because many examples need careful observation to detect. Baker does not consider parasitism in man. Naturally he has to mention things like the 'ethnic taxon', and generally wrestle with the vocabulary: he invented or popularised the word 'stirps'. He discusses of course the interbreeding aspect. There are discussions on e.g. gorillas and assorted new and old world apes and monkeys. There's a long section on skull shapes, with some quite spectacular illustrations of differences: skulls give a lot of information, and of course can be preserved, as Cromagnon and other types illustrate. Size, shape, teeth, eye orbits, and other comparative parts, have been measured and listed and compared. (This sort of thing goes back to Albrecht Dürer; somewhat different from d'Arcy Thompson's regular grid, which is then deformed). Baker gives material on genetic differences—blood groups (including monkeys of course) are one rather unavoidable issue, despite the fact these seem purely empirical: I couldn't find anything in Baker giving sound reasons for blood group differences. It's just that they were discovered by 1974. Similarly with sickle cell anaemias. And with the substance phenylthiourea, which was found, purely by chance, to be perceived as tasteless by part of the population, bitter by the rest. However, races involve multiple genes, and Baker discusses the problems involved here. Many people believe, or at least quote, various factoids HOWEVER there is little on internal organs and biochemistry—hormones etc—nor is there a model for aggressions, emotions, in and out groups ... in fact all the really important stuff is omitted: we're interested in behaviour, both the autonomic sort, and the sort where the brain is involved and beliefs come into play. How are emotions inherited? If people with 'excessive' adrenalin can't sit down and concentrate, is it impossible for them to learn? Are hair-trigger tempers a product of uncertainty? Are some people naturally fanatic? What does it take for other groups to be treated as friends or foes? Baker doesn't have a working model of all the main emotions. Galton has quite a number of mentions (including on dog intelligence). All this of course has suffered from Jewish domination or research money and control of research topics. 3 Studies of Selected Human Groups is the longest section, about a third of the book. As I mentioned, for some reason China/ Mongolia ('Mongolids') etc and India and what's now Pakistan and Bangla Desh ('Indianids') are under-represented. Appendix 1 has two pages on 'Mongolian subraces', without even a map; the Indianids get more space, but not much. Hence I suppose 'Selected'. All the names are geographical, with 'white' names—I'm reminded of geology and mineralogy and the Linnaean scheme, where the oddest names get assigned to strata or rocks or plants. Thus we have Europids (with subdivisions—Alpids, Mediterranids, Nordids, Lapps). Jews. Celts. Australids. Sanids. Negrids—four separate sections on these. 'Sanids' are bushmen, who Baker mentions partly for their bodily constructions (there are some female genital pictures which appear odd) and partly for their rock face art, which he praises highly as work of genius though it seems the eroded sandstone with overhangs which they used is not very permanent. In each case Baker examines the name, the primary characters, and the secondary characters. His Europid material has a digression on how the name 'Caucasian' came about, and discusses hybrids of whites/blacks (Baker has noticed the journalistic use of 'black' in the US). He discusses Britain as a 'mongrel race'—'note that all these peoples were not only of one race (Europid) but of one subrace (Nordid).' He discusses Jews and 'Armenids' with some characteristics. He lists small groups of self-described Jews, and omits colonies. He sees that the 'definition' of a Jew as someone whose mother was Jewish is defective. It's striking how variable his source material is—classical authors or other ancient writings, explorers' notes, archaeologists, modern anthropologists. In this case Baker uses Biblical material (he seems unaware of the Talmud etc). Baker mentions the Khazar/ Cozar group, attributing the rediscovery to Joseph Jacobs, who regarded their kingdom as destroyed by Russians in the 10th century. (Jacobs also wrote on renowned Jews, though judging by Baker he had thin material to work on). The chapter on Celts relies mostly on archaeological evidence—Hallstatt, Danubian evidence, and for Britain Julius Caesar, Iron Age evidence including Maiden Castle, and discussions on migrations. Probably some of this material exists because anthropologists tend to use people whose languages they know to save them the effort of learning other languages. Baker's 'Sanid' (Bushman) chapter plus four 'Negrid' chapters rely largely on explorers' accounts—in fact he lists his main sources as Fynn, David Livingstone, Galton, Du Chaillu, Speke, S W Baker, and Schweinfurth. It's all interesting stuff—ghastly 'witch doctors', innocent tribes corrupted later by whites, human body parts for food, slavery as pretty much universal, unbounded faith in 'fetishes', cruel customs, executions—but one wonders how much is relevant to race. Of course Africa is a huge continent; 'Sudanids' and 'Aethiopids' appear, and Berbers and Moors and Nilotids and Nilo-Hamites. Baker doesn't seem to consider the general question of subdivisions—race, subrace, then maybe tribes? Perhaps because there seem to be endless complications. He barely mentions Nigeria, for example. He does his best to be even-handed and fair; he includes for example a list of plants domesticated by blacks—but these include maize and tobacco, which of course were introduced from the new world by whites—and looks at animal domestication. He does his best to check on and allow for hostile things such as bilharzia, though I don't think he considers geography in sufficient detail—vast plains are for example much harder to defend than regions split up by mountains and water barriers and snow. Section 4 Criteria of superiority and inferiority has several chapters on Race and Achievement. These include twin inheritance, IQ tests and so on, and sporting achievements (no surprise that some races are better at sprinting, high jumping, etc—though Baker doesn't seem to consider examining less socially approved behaviors). He has interesting material on languages; or example the Arunta language, in Australia, in which 'the notion of the object does not exist'. And the Akan language (West Africa) and one feels that Jews such as Chomsky must have wanted such material suppressed, since the idea of deep structure or of similarity between human languages is obviously missing. There's material on mixed races, mainly from the USA, and again one feels Jews would want this suppressed. 'It certainly appears that hybrids having a particularly large Europid element in their ancestry have played a dominant role in the struggle for advancement for Negroes in American society.' Jews would worry about that. Baker is critical of the US media description of hybrids as 'Negroes'; possibly this was a Jewish media construction. Baker goes on to try to assess civilisations, including the cruelty of the 'Andids'. None of this material is very satisfactory; what about wars, for example? Baker's conclusion is a bit flat—groups vary, but also overlap, so nobody can say entire groups are superior or inferior. And 'colour' is not much use as a category. Anyway... interesting, detailed, multifarious, wide-ranging, but inconclusive because it has no way to analyse behaviour differences. I should add that Baker assumes Darwin originated evolutionary theory—he doesn't know about Wallace. And he accepts all the post-World War II mythology (and pre-war) about Nazis, the 'Holocaust', and so on. Note added later: Baker, in chapter 27, part of the long section on 'race and achievement' suggests 21 criteria for 'societies ordinarily regarded as civilized...', which I've abbreviated here:- 1 ordinarily clothed 2 keep clean 3 don't severely mutilate or deform 4 build in brick or stone if available 5 many live in towns or cities 6 cultivate plants 7 domesticate animals 8 metals if available 9 wheels 10 use money 11 laws and peaceability 12 defence for accused persons 13 no torture 14 no cannibalism 15 religious systems include ethical elements 16 use script 17 at least a start in numbers 18 calendar accurate to a few days 19 instruction for young 20 some art appreciation 21 knowledge valued for itself This book was published 44 years ago. It is rather terrifying that Jew control over most aspects of study and research has harmed this most important topic. TREY [nickname] says:
Rerevisionist, What would you recommend as the best book you've read on this subject?
I don't know any book that covers the subject. Such a book would need, for example:
Maybe there's a book with contributions from many authors; maybe Russian, Chinese or Indian rather than 'western'. if you find one, let me know! |