Heba Ai/Getty Images)

The world seems obsessed today with the idea of the “white genocide” of black people, a movement that is only just beginning to gain traction.

To a large degree, this belief is fueled by racial animus: an intense hatred of what the majority view as the superior intellects on certain continents. But there is also a more philosophical component to this myth, one that is more complex and less a reflection of an underlying racial animus than it is of a shared cultural bias.

Advertisement

The current obsession with black achievement on the other, darker continents has its roots in the Western-based belief in white superiority of thought and culture. Even in the earliest history of Western education, white Europeans were held responsible for the development of language, science, art, and history (there is no mention of black people in any of those disciplines). This is not to say that the white man was unaware of the racial reality inherent to his own species. There was plenty of evidence of African involvement in Europe’s culture and in science and technology, but the primary goal of the European mind was to further the interests of white Europeans.

As much as they love to read about this history, many of our best thinkers are still content to just read about it, rather than engage with it for themselves. They are so entrenched in this worldview that it makes it difficult, even nearly impossible, for them to see that their belief in it has little to do with reality. It’s an odd but effective fact that our best minds never seem to learn this: it is quite rare to be faced with the evidence that contradicts the core convictions of their beliefs. The best scientists and scientists of the past have not held this bias consciously, but they still failed to confront it on a deeper level—instead of attempting to disprove their theories, they simply tried to explain away the evidence when they were presented with it.

Advertisement

When asked to explain their view of black people as inferior, many scientists will use the following example:

One time I was reading a story about a black guy who had died of a heart attack. He and his daughter were in a car accident and the car’s windshield blew back and a man fell out and hit the woman. The man was so severely injured his bones were shattered, but the woman was so badly hurt she could not walk. She could not even open her hand. When I asked which of