The New York Review of Books
Volume 17, Number 11 · December 30, 1971
The Case Against B.F. Skinner
By Noam Chomsky
Beyond Freedom and Dignity
by B.F. Skinner
Knopf, 225 pp., $6.95
A century ago, a voice of British liberalism described the 'Chinaman' as 'an inferior race of malleable orientals.'[1] During the same years, anthropology became professionalized as a discipline, 'intimately associated with the rise of raciology.'[2] Presented with the claims of nineteenth-century racist anthropology, a rational person will ask two sorts of questions: What is the scientific status of the claims? What social or ideological needs do they serve? The questions are logically independent, but the second type of question naturally comes to the fore as scientific pretensions are undermined. The question of the scientific status of nineteenth-century racist anthropology is no longer seriously at issue, and its social function is not difficult to perceive. If the 'Chinaman' is malleable by nature, then what objection can there be to controls exercised by a superior race?
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