“Practical men who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back.”
John Maynard Keynes
As we are living in a time where there is a whole lot of frenzy going on I thought I’d take a few words to connect some dots between those who are distilling their frenzy on the issue of race being a social construct or as not really existing with the academic scribbler of some years back.
I’d like to connect the idea of the Lockean blank slate theory of the mind with the notion that race is a social construction or that race doesn’t really exist. I would insist that one cannot get to insisting on this non-existence of race apart from some relation to blank slate (Tabula Rasa) theory of the mind. Further, it will be demonstrated that the modern post-enlightenment ideas of egalitarianism in both race and gender cannot exist apart from a Tabula Rasa type theory.
Blank theory popularized by John Locke (known as the ‘Father of Liberalism’) and which captivated the Western mind in the Enlightenment held that human minds start off empty, as blank slates, and are filled in by personal experiences. According to Locke, thoughts begin by absorbing sensation and become more complex through reflection on what is sensed.
This blank slate theory denied the idea of a set human nature as well as the idea that men have innate ideas. Further, the Tabula Rasa theory denies, by way of its implications, the reality that there are inborn genetic distinctions between the sexes as well as between men of different races and/or ethnicities. All is blank slate. Man is constantly becoming because man is constantly being written upon.
It didn’t take long for the worst kind of people to realize that if men are born as blank slates then those who controlled the experiences of blank slate men could control whole social orders. From this understanding grew up the whole social engineering movement that has defined the world from the Enlightenment onward. From this understanding also grew the attempt by elites to create “the new man.” This “new man” might be the “new Soviet man,” or it might be the “new fourth industrial revolution (4IR) man” or it might be any attempt to build a new kind of man by seizing control of the mechanisms upon which blank slates can be written upon.
One thing that needs pointing out here. The Tabula Rasa theory is a thoroughly anti-Christ anthropology. The Christian insists, quite to the contrary of the blank slate theory that man has a human nature and that man is not born morally neutral awaiting for software to be downloaded into the human mind hardware. However, another thing that must be noted at the same time is that the blank slate theory has been phenomenally successful in conditioning fallen man. The creating and building of particular types of men via social engineering has successfully animated and so formed men so that they have been willing to become drones against their own genuine interests for the social engineering elite.
The blank slate theory has been a special pet for proponents of psychological behaviorism. Behaviorist John Watson once said;
“Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own specified world to bring them up in and I’ll guarantee to take anyone at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select — doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-chief, and, yes, even beggar-man and thief, regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations, and race of his ancestors.”
–John Watson, Behaviorism, 1930
B. F. Skinner was much more succinct touching his embrace of blank slate theory offering;
“Give me a child, and I’ll shape him into anything.”
Another chap of the 20th century that embraced a Tabula Rasa anthropology was Franz Boas. Franz Boas was one of the most influential thinkers of the 20th century. His work made the civil rights movement possible. And yet, so few have heard of the man or realize that our whole social structure in the West with its conviction that race is a social construct can be traced back to a man whose research has been since proven to be errant by statistical evidence from other fields. However, once a narrative has been established in any field it is difficult to change directions.
Boas was an interesting bloke who seems to have somehow fallen through the cracks of the 20th-century floorboards of “most evil thinkers who changed the world,” completely re-oriented the field of cultural anthropology by a full-throated embrace of blank slate theory.
Boas (1858-1942), as a German Jew fled Nazi Germany not unsurprisingly since he had been vilified because he was a Jew. Boas, consistent with blank slate theory was keen to establish that there were no innate differences between races. Boas wrote,
“I claim, that, unless the contrary can be proved, we must assume that all complex activities are socially determined, not hereditary.”
Franz Boas
At the time this idea flew face-first into the predominant theory of cultural anthropology. However, the influence of Boas and his disciples eventually won the day against equally unfortunate Darwinian theories of cultural anthropology. Boas, with his theory of Tabula Rasa in cultural anthropology, was supported by a strong cast of influential disciples that included Margaret Mead (1901 – 1978) and Ashley Montagu (1905 – 1999).
Margaret Mead wrote, “human nature is the rawest, most undifferentiated of raw material.” Another Boasian disciple, Otto Klineberg wrote that the environmental explanation for behavior was always preferable “because it was more optimistic, holding out the hope of improvement.” Boasian Ashley Montagu was one of the ten scientists invited to serve on a UNESCO committee addressing race, later known as the “Committee of Experts on Race Problems.” The group wrote a series of Statements on Race to spread awareness that humans are all one species and that “race” is not a valid biological concept. Montagu himself would write,
“The idea of “race” represents one of the most dangerous myths of our time.”
It is not difficult to see where the origin of “race is a social construct,” or “race does not exist” or “race is only about melanin levels” originally stems from. This language is now on the lips of nearly every high profile “leader” in the conservative Christian church today and this thinking originates in the Lockean blank slate theory of anthropology which is anti-Christ to its core with its denial that humans have a fixed nature.
This popular motif also is embraced by the more epistemologically self-conscious Alienists. Alienism seems to necessitate a kind of “blank slate” theory of anthropology. The position of the Alienists, like Boas, Meade, and Montagu is that there are no inherent or genetic differences between races and peoples. Everyone is equal (the same) and because everyone is the same (equal) there is no reason to suggest that inter-racial marriage is not normatively a good idea. Indeed, given this Boasian blank slate type theory, inter-racial marriage is not even possible since races don’t exist.
What else can this be except blank slate (Tabula Rasa) anthropology? It is an odd world that men should be told that because they don’t believe in the sociological nonsense of John Locke that therefore they are “racist” because they insist that the best marriages are made from those who are joined who have the most in common — including their genetic heritage.
There is yet one more growing implication of this Boasian / Blank Slate anthropological theory and that is the rise of the notion of gender fluidity.
If we are going to insist that genetics has nothing to do with racial differences as it concerns behavioral traits, thus embracing the idea that race does not exist, then it is a short step from there to say that genetics has nothing to with gender as it concern behavioral traits thus embracing the idea that gender is fluid.
It seems these two rise and fall together so that if a Christian denies race as a genetic reality (race does not exist / race is a social construct/race is only about melanin levels) then only by felicitous inconsistency can a Christian affirm that behavioral traits associated with gender are anchored in genetics.
None of what has been said above should be construed as support for Darwinian anthropology. The refusal of Boasian anthropology does not mean that one has to embrace Darwinian anthropology. A Christian anthropology recognizes that man was created body and soul so that both genetics (body) and belief (soul) interact together to provide an anthropological understanding of man. Man can not be explained solely by nurture (Boasian/Tabula Rasa/Behaviorism theories), and neither can man be explained solely by nature (genetic determinism/Darwinianism). All of these lockout the reality of God from His world and the ability of God to affect men who turn from the sinful closed world thinking to trust Christ who by His Spirit can cause men to rise above both their nurture and their nature, both Boasian anthropological categories and Darwinian anthropological categories, and both innate ideas alone and empiricism alone.
Tabula Rasa theories and all the derivatives thereof need to be cast aside by Biblical Christians.
