Steven Pinker defends E. O. Wilson, claims calling Wilson a racist, in print, is "slander"

Michael Shermer wrote a post for his Substack to defend the indisputably racist E.O. Wilson, against the charge of racism, and Steven Pinker tweeted in support of Shermer - of course.

The evidence for Wilson's racism isn't about "spaces" or "thoughts" - it is based on Wilson's encouragement of racist J. P. Rushton.

As an author of the r/K model, one would have expected Wilson to have been outraged at Rushton’s proposal, which implied, as many nineteenth-century scientists did, that human “races” constituted different species—a view no reputable biologist, including Wilson, would have publicly defended. But Wilson immediately dashed off a letter to Rushton applauding his application of the r/K model as “one of the most original and interesting [ideas] I’ve ever encountered in psychology,” adding that the work was “courageous.” “In this country the whole issue would be clouded by personal charges of racism to the point that rational discussion would be almost impossible,” he wrote, urging Rushton to “press ahead!”

    ...

...one is bound to ask what, precisely, Wilson found so “important” or “brilliant” about an argument that, in essence, Black people have evolved to breed more and be less intelligent than white? Rushton, unabashed by public criticism, was unafraid to promote ideas that Wilson would not. But Wilson’s desire to see those ideas advanced is repeatedly made clear in his support for his colleague, to the extent that he even overlooked an obvious misapplication of his own theory.

It is clear that Wilson thought Rushton's conviction, that Black people are a separate species from other "races," was not a misuse of the Wilson's r/K concept, but rather a "breakthrough in psychology."

You have to wonder if Steven Pinker believes racism exists at all. He certainly never disavowed hardcore racist Steve Sailer, whose career Pinker promoted, in spite of an apparent public break with Sailer in 2011.

And Pinker continues to promote the career of Razib Khan, who is a long-time admirer of Rushton and who wrote in Quillette in the past year that Black Americans are an existential threat to the United States because of their peculiar racial difference from the rest of humanity.

In the Pinker tweet above, Pinker is promoting a claim by Michael Shermer that Wilson was not a racist.

  But Michael Shermer is a racist who does not believe that Ruston was a racist.

Some excellent responses by David Sepkokski on Twitter. Pinker's tweet doesn't show in my screen cap of Sepkoski's retweet because like so many other people, I am blocked by Pinker.

Sepkoski is co-author of one of two articles published fairly recently that highlight the fact that the papers that Wilson himself left for posterity demonstrate how racist E. O. Wilson was.

The evidence makes it clear Wilson took great delight in the racist speculations of J. P. Rushton, which used Wilson's own work as an inspiration. 

And the evidence also shows that Wilson understood just exactly how racist Rushton's work was. 

Only a promoter of race pseudoscience like Steve Pinker could be deliberately obtuse enough - or shameless enough - to claim this is no big deal. 

UPDATE

After I posted this on my blog, I saw that hardcore professional racist Steve Sailer jumped in to defend his buddy Steven Pinker, and his hero, E. O. Wilson. It's odd how much racists love Wilson and Pinker. 

I couldn't see the original tweets from Sailer of course, because, like Pinker, Sailer blocked me.