The Ball Curve

Racism, according to Banton (in Kitano, 1985), refers to the efforts of a dominant race group to exclude a dominated race group from sharing in the material and symbolic rewards of status and power. It differs from the various other forms of exclusion in that qualification is contingent on observable and assumed physiological traits (Wilson, 1992). Said traits imply the inherent superiority of dominant groups; this superiority is then rationalized as the natural order of the biological universe (Minor & McGauley, 1988). In America, the most zealous proponents of racism profess that those of European descent are superior to African Americans as a matter of biological fact (Welsing, 1970). They postulate that those of European descent alone have been endowed with the capacities necessary to bring about civilization. So-called advancing civilization was a thinly veiled form of colonialism devoted to adjudicating the right of European Americans to embark on a nationwide mission aimed at subjugating African American men (Daly, Jennings, Beckett, & Leashore, 1995; Pinderhughes, 1982). By way of slavery and colonization, European Americans left no terrain of Western society untouched by their domination. After decades of domination, the mission to subjugate African American men has necessitated a universal, almost mystic belief in the power of race to elevate or taint (Hyde, 1995). Consequent to differences in racial heritage, racism has prevailed, at times, as one of the most subtle, but devastating, and tenacious social problems in the modern era (Hernton, 1965; Kovel,