The Trojan Horse Is Very White


THE TROJAN HORSE IS VERY WHITE

The Trojan horse is very white

when Cassandra sings,

and the Tribe of Trump sweats

to clip your intellectual wings.



You may regret, sooner rather than later, the deadly effects and affects of so-called news, the flooding of our minds with spectacles, conservative and liberal cursing, and a spectrum of pure nonsense.  Do not say I did not warn you if you awake in what you believed was the bed of democracy only to discover you have been sleeping in the cage of fascism.  The signs are clear, but you must know how to read and how to read critically.



Do not dismiss Kathryn Paige Harden's New York Times op-ed "Why Progressives Should Embrace the Genetics of Education" (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/24/opinion/dna-nature-education.html).  Harden, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Texas-Austin, may be a Cassandra despite herself, a Cassandra speaking in tongues.  Consider her pause-inspiring conclusion:

"Genetic differences in human life are a scientific fact, like climate change.  Many progressives resist acknowledging this when it comes to education, fearing that it will compromise their egalitarian beliefs. But just like acknowledging the reality of climate change is necessary to ensure a sustainably habitable planet, acknowledging the reality of genetic differences between people is a necessary step for us to ensure a more just society."  Have we just read an example of how Trump-rhetoric, disguised as neutral or bias-free discourse, packages bad science in nicely executed social science prose? Does the word "ensure"  mask the word "enforce"?  Is a blurred fallacy present in equating the subject of climate change with the subject of genetic differences?  Who are progressives?  Who are regressives?  Is "egalitarian" a vulgar, micro aggressive word? What is SNP (single nucleotide polymorphisms)?  How is it used by SSGAC (Social Science Genetic Association Consortium)?  Can research on a population of  1.1 million individuals be replicated in identical research on a different population of 1.1 million people and yield the same information about gene discovery and polygenic prediction?  We ought to put the feet of science in its own fire!



Do not dismiss Professor Harden.  Ask instead whether through an invisible gesture she rejects Karl Marx in order to better embrace Leo Strauss.  Harden makes a cloaked reference to the report "Gene discovery and polygenic prediction from a genome-wide association study of educational attainment in 1.1 million individuals from Nature Genetics (July 23, 2018 ------https://doi.org/10.1038/541588-018-0147-3 ), a report that provokes interest in the resurrection  of  eugenics and Social Darwinism in 2018. Don't panic.  Connect dots.  You may see a global graph, which for all we don't know, may be posted on the walls of the U.S. Department of Education.  Don't panic.  Just bring social science and science to justice in the blacksmith shop of Esu Elegbara Aeschylus.  Walk in the light of T'ai Chi. A sufficiently beautiful mind acknowledges where the epic narrative Sunjata is coming from and where the tragic drama of the Oresteia is going.



Jerry W. Ward, Jr.            July 29, 2018


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