Reflections on My Life as a Eugenicist

By Marian Van Court

Part 1 of 2

One Saturday afternoon when I was 12-years-old, I was at home in Memphis sitting in our den, staring into space, when my father walked into the room.

Marian, are you aware of the fact that intelligence is largely hereditary? he asked.

I frowned slightly, and paused for a moment to consider what he had just said.

Yes, I nodded. I agree.

I had never really thought about it, but in a normal world, long before political correctness, it seemed like common sense.

OK, so heres the problem, he said. Smart people have fewer children than stupid people have, which means that were all becoming more and more stupid with each new generation.

I just started at him, dumbstruck. Maybe he thought that I didnt even care, since I didnt say anything, but the reality is that I was horrified. If what he said were true, that was about the worst news imaginable. I can still remember very clearly looking out the window at a typical sunny suburban scene, with kids skating along and riding their bikes. I thought to myself, How can everybody carry on the way they always do, as if the world is just fine We should all stop what were doing and solve this problem immediately!

I think the reason the idea of dysgenics (genetic deterioration) struck me so forcefully is that my family and friends and teachers and acquaintances varied a great deal in intelligence, and I was quite sensitive to these differences. Some people were very bright, and some very dull, with all gradations in between. But it mattered a lot to me, just like kindness and honesty mattered to me. Intelligence is very valuable, and if, in fact, were losing it, this is a disaster. But gradually this conversation receded into memory.

University of California, Berkeley

Fast forward to UC Berkeley, 1970: I learned in psychology class that heredity is, in fact, extremely important in human intelligence, as it is in numerous other traits. Identical twins separated at birth are amazingly similar to one another in adulthood, and adopted children grow up to resemble their biological parents, but not their adopting parents. I overheard a classmate saying afterwards, Yeah, but I still think its better to believe everything is caused by the environment, because that way, you can do something about it.
I shook my head ruefully.

Despite having more than its share of radical, left-wing crackpots, I adored UC Berkeley. It was paradise, really. I had spent so many painfully boring years growing up in Memphis, and here was Heaven on earth for anyone who craved int
ellectual stimulation and had a quest for knowledge. Curiosity was the driving force, and there finally it could be satisfied! Praise be to God! This was a wonderful, exciting time in my life, with one gorgeous, sunny day after another, a beautiful campus, and so many brilliant professors.

Arthur R. Jensen

On campus at this time there was a big to-do about Arthur R. Jensens 1969 Harvard Educational Review article which stated that part of the black-white IQ gap may well be genetic.

When the student elections were held, there was a referendum on the ballot asking whether or not Jensen should be fired. I, of course, voted No, but the referendum was irrelevant because Jensen had tenure and couldnt be fired anyway. I thought the whole thing was ridiculous. Either theres a genetic component to the black-white difference in IQ, or theres not, but whatever is true, he didnt make it that way! So this was a classic case of attacking the messenger.

Of course, everyone in the South had always assumed that black people are less innately intelligent, even most black people. At any rate, the controversy began to pique my interest, so I decided to take an independent study course, and I found a psychology professor willing to sponsor it.
My topic was simply Jensen vs. his opponents, and my objective was to read both sides to see where the preponderance of evidence lay. So one day I visited Jensen in his office for the first time.

He was very friendly and helpful, and he gave me not only copies of his articles, but copies of his opponents articles, too. We had a very pleasant chat, and pretty soon he asked me about my Southern accent. I told him I was from Memphis, Tennessee.?
He tilted his chair back, and rubbed his chin.

Oh yeah, so youre from Tennessee, he said thoughtfully.?
Hmm, well did you know that Tennessee has got the absolute lowest average IQ . . . of any state . . . in the entire country?!

I was kind of at a loss for what to say to that, but I must have told this story 10 times, and it always gets a laugh.Jensen also told me that hed had a number of death threats, and that the campus police had to escort him across campus. He kept a buzzer in his pocket at all times to push in case of emergency he said that once he pushed it by accident in his office, and the police showed up almost instantaneously.

After reading numerous articles, my final conclusion was that the bulk of evidence was on Jensens side. The professor whod agreed to sponsor my study looked visibly disappointed when I told her. I had lunch with her one day, and she asked me why anyone even wants to study such things in the first place. She thought that Jensen should do some other kind of research because his results wounded the pride of black people. At the time, I felt intuitively that the truth must be told, even if its painful, but I couldnt really articulate that at the time. Now, however, I can.With the assumption that blacks and whites are exactly equal in average IQ, for example, how could anyone possibly explain the huge differences in academic achievement? In criminal convictions In income Is it because whites are evil, holding blacks down somehow But if white racism is the problem, who is holding blacks down in Africa Or maybe the teachers are at fault.Â
One study found that there arent enough books in the houses of poor black children it suggested that we should give them lots more books. Finger-pointing could go on indefinitely. To say that blacks and whites are exactly equal in average IQ is a lie, and it causes unrealistic expectations. Jensen told me that in high schools where courses are offered that teach a trade, the less-intelligent white kids take these courses, but the black kids dont because they feel like its beneath them they want to stay on the college track despite the fact that theyre failing. Its not some academics research in a scholarly journal thats hurting blacks, and maintaining the lie wont help them.
What hurts blacks is the day-to-day circumstances of their lives their poverty, their lack of achievement, and their disproportionate amount of time spent in prison (all of which could be helped by eugenics.)

In addition, this lie negatively affects our entire society. Its corrupted all the social sciences, where no one is permitted to utter the truth for fear of losing his job, being ostracized, or failing the course.?
The rationale for affirmative action derives, at least in part, from the assumption that the races are really equal in average ability, despite what the tests show, but the fact is that affirmative action is blatantly unfair to millions of individuals, almost all whites, and its also unfair, in a sense, to blacks, many of whom are put in situations where they lack the ability to succeed. Furthermore, it harms the entire economy any deviation from meritocracy causes inefficiency, and that means loss of money for the company, the organization, and for the nation.

Next semester, I went to my anthropology class one day, and the professor had brought in a woman guest speaker to give us a lecture (a warning, to be more precise) about Jensens ideas. It was strange because the issue of race and IQ was completely unrelated to anything we were studying. Anyway, the class was held in a huge lecture hall, and I got more and more nervous as she recited all the usual propaganda points: IQ tests were created by white men so they are inherently biased against blacks; Jensen is a racist; Race doesnt exist; IQ means nothing.

I knew I couldnt just sit there and listen to her spread lies to hundreds of students with no rebuttal from me. I was petrified at the prospect of speaking to an enormous crowd like this whereas most people experience fear of speaking in public, for me, it was more like abject terror. I can speak haltingly from notes, but I wasnt expecting this, so I had no notes. Extemporaneously, Im so nervous that by the time I get to the end of my sentence, Ive already forgotten the beginning (which is a serious handicap for anyone trying to make sense!) But in the end, my righteous indignation won out she was spreading lies, and I just couldnt let her get away with it! So I took a deep breath, commanded myself to focus, and I raised my hand.

Since this was long ago, I dont honestly remember exactly what I said. I could have babbled away incoherently (not really!), but I think maybe it went something like this: First of all, you say that IQ tests are biased against blacks in favor of whites, but if thats true, why do Chinese and Japanese children in the U.S. score better, on average, that everyone else??
Secondly, you say that blacks score low because theyve been culturally deprived, but low-class white kids average higher IQ scores than upper middle-class black kids. Third, IQ predicts success equally well for all races, and IQ predicts success better than anything else in fact, theres a correlation of about .6 with success in school and in life so how can anything that means nothing predict success so well? Just as I was finishing my last sentence, I was literally struck blind. My eyes were wide open, but all I saw was total blackness! I blinked 8 or 10 times, and then (thank God!) my vision returned. This never happened to me before or since, and I can only guess that it had something to do with the tidal wave of adrenalin that had washed over me.

Around this time, I heard about William Shockley, a professor at Stanford who became an extremely outspoken proponent of eugenics. He had won the Nobel Prize for invention of the transistor. As the story goes, Shockley first became interested in eugenics when he read an article in the newspaper about a woman on welfare who had 13 children, but couldnt remember all their names. I thought it might be a good idea to talk with him, so I wrote him a letter, and one day he called me on the phone. We talked for a while, and he invited me to visit him and his wife in Palo Alto, but somehow it never worked out.Â
I knew he was in communication with Jensen, who thought he was brilliant but quite eccentric, and seriously deficient in social skills. Jensens wife, Barbara, made a clever remark about him she said he had negative charisma. I remember Shockley used to say that hed debate any of his critics any time, any place as long as theyre hooked up to a lie-detector machine!

I invited my best friend since 4th grade to come out from Memphis and live with me in Berkeley. She was confined to a wheelchair after breaking her neck in a childhood accident, and she didnt have much of a life sitting in the backyard all day by the pool. In Berkeley, it was not uncommon to see disabled people riding around in electric wheelchairs. So I spent months helping my friend get established in her new home. She got an electric wheelchair, her parents bought her a house near campus and had it equipped with ramps, and she started taking classes. This was a great thing for her, enabling her to lead a much richer and more normal life. Wed been best friends for many years, but eventually her hoodlum-boyfriend heard about my politically incorrect views, an
d gave her an ultimatum it was either him or me, so she chose him. I didnt cry myself to sleep, because losing friends was starting to become a common occurrence.

Without thinking about it, I just naturally tried to form my beliefs based on facts and evidence, and I assumed that other people did the same.
But gradually I came to realize that many people care only about which beliefs are socially acceptable, and others form their beliefs about what is true based on what they wish were true (a.k.a. wishful thinking), and whats worse, they assume everyone else does this, too. So from their viewpoint, if I believe part of the black-white IQ difference is probably genetic, that means that I wish that were true, ergo, Im mean and hateful! In addition (and what may be even more damning), Im terribly uncool!

Looking back, there were ominous early warning signs of my free-thinking, non-conformist, iconoclastic tendencies, even as a little girl. In the elementary school I attended, girls always wore dresses, with no exceptions. But each year, once a year, on an especially pretty day in April or May, I wore Bermuda shorts to school in my own personal celebration of Spring. Nobody said a word. Then when I was 14, I refused to go to church any more because I just didn
t believe what I was supposed to believe. I decided I could never be a Christian (although I believe in God), and I wasnt going to pretend to be one. Nearly everyone in the South goes to church, so this didnt go over well at all. Later, in high school, we were supposed to give a speech about which candidate we supported for president, Goldwater or Johnson. This presented me with quite a dilemma. The problem was that I honestly could not have cared less, so that became my speech about exactly, precisely how much I did not care! (The teacher liked me, so I got an A for originality.)

University of California, Santa Barbara

In 1975, I was excited to begin the doctoral program in Psychobiology at UCSB. It was a far cry from the excellence of Berkeley, but then so were the vast majority of other places. I had always been interested in sex differences, so I began studying the effects of pre-natal hormones on masculine and feminine behavior.

Things got off to a good start. The campus was nice, and my course work was interesting. The weather was gorgeous, and there were lots of bike paths, so I had fun cruising around on my 10-speed. But I had two problems. First, my academic advisor was a tall, thin, 60-ish, rather eccentric guy whose behavior didnt bode well for my future. He played footsie with me under the table when a bunch of us went out for beer, and when we were sitting alone together in his office, he would put his hand on my knee. I had long blonde hair, and I was young, but I wasnt a child, and I had fended off unwanted advances before, but that was always on a date.Ã
This was different. I should have pushed his hand off, and if he put it back again, I should have done something, maybe stomped on his foot, or at least walked out. But the problem was that his eyes glazed over, and frankly he looked insane, so I just sat there in a state of paralysis.

My second problem was even worse. All doctoral students had offices in the psychology building which they shared with one other student, and my office-mate was a rather unattractive guy Â
? lets just call him Rat-Bastard. We got along fine, but we didnt talk much because I worked really hard. Then one day he asked me the source of my income, which wasnt exactly polite. I was trying to be nice to him even though he was a creep so I told him I had a National Science Foundation fellowship and I also got financial aid. He said, Oh, you cant have both. Its not allowed.Â
I wasnt worried because Id been totally honest on my application, and they had given me both, and even added together it was still a modest sum. Two days later, however, I got a call from the Financial Aid Office, and they told me that henceforth, I would get no more financial aid on account of the fact that I had a NSF fellowship.But the fellowship is so small, I protested, its not enough to live on! It doesnt matter, she replied. Those are the rules.

Rat-Bastard! So, after two semesters, I was forced to drop out of graduate school. In retrospect, I realize that he might have been a sadist, or maybe he was angry at some perceived slight, but by far the most likely explanation is that he overheard me say something in defense of Jensen, so I guess he decided hed do the world a favor by ruining the career of a
?racist. I hardly ever talked about Jensen, but if the subject came up, I knew enough about the controversy to make one or two points on his side. And (silly me) I thought we were supposed to be scientists, not ideologues! At any rate, as I cleaned out the desk in my office, R-B sat there and watched me with a look of smug satisfaction on his ugly face. I remember wishing that pesky law against assault and battery could be suspended for just one day, so I could go get my cast iron frying pan! Kaa-pow!!

Interregnum

My advisor at UC Santa Barbara had suggested I take a leave of absence instead of dropping out entirely, so when I got back home to Berkeley, this made it possible for me to take a few graduate classes at UC Berkeley, including one with Jensen. I was glad to see him again, and I was kind of relieved, too, because I was beginning to feel like the rest of the world had gone berserk. The controversy raged on, and the campus paper, The Daily Californian, ran an article about Jensen, along with his picture, and they asked him how he was reacting to all the fuss. He said he was doing fine, and that he was pretty much unflappable.

My boyfriend and I got married during this time he had been my teaching assistant for one of my psychology classes. He was funny, and very smart, and we played tennis every day.We got along well, except that he believed what were all supposed to believe, whereas I did not, but it didnt seem like a big thing. I remember telling Jensen that Id recently gotten married, and he asked me how my husband felt about my beliefs I replied that he tolerated them.
But now this conversation seems more significant to me than it did at the time, because Ive come to realize that holding unpopular beliefs can be a source of friction, sometimes very serious friction, not only between friends, but within families as well. I know that his wife, Barbara, was very supportive of his work, but his mother never forgave him. I ended up divorcing my husband several years later for other reasons, but it probably didnt help that he often referred to me as the Nazi.

I worked at part-time jobs while I continued to read and study. I applied to the University of Minnesota so I could work with Thomas Bouchard on the famous Minnesota Twin Study, which united identical twins from all over the world who had been separated at birth. All the people involved in the study including the twins and the researchers themselves were surprised at their striking degree of similarity. The twins were delighted to meet their co-twins, and they became instant friends. Of course, they were very similar in IQ. But what also captivated my interest was that identical twins separated at birth had the same laugh, the same gestures, the same phobias, similar taste in clothes, the same favorite subjects in school, similar vegetable aversions, and similar (but not identical) religious and political beliefs. The fact that the twins often shared minutely specific traits and idiosyncracies filled me with a sense of wonder. Its almost as if a baby is born, and he is who he is. He grows, he matures, he learns (and what he learns matters), and gradually he becomes an adult, with full adult consciousness.Â
But the Minnesota Twin Study really brings home the fact that a baby is hardly a tabula rasa [blank slate], as political correctness would have us all believe.

I was looking forward to starting the Fall semester at the U of Minn, but I got sick with recurrent sinus infections, so I wrote to the Psychology Department and asked if I could begin the following year, and they agreed. For that entire year, I took broad-spectrum antibiotics repeatedly, and then one day, I got really sick. The doctors couldnt figure out what it was, so they concluded that it must, therefore, be psychological. So for the entire next year, I saw one doctor after another after another about this new mystery illness, and they all gave me the same bogus diagnosis. ?
Their assumption was that if they didnt know what it was, it must, therefore, be nothing! In fact, it was more of an insult than a diagnosis (and for this theyre supposed to get paid money?) I never doubted for a second that I was sick, but I finally went to a psychiatrist just so I could tell the doctors I went. In retrospect, I realize that I was extremely lucky that the guy I saw was honest and had common sense. He told me I was definitely not crazy, and that I was obviously sick. He said that psychological is just a convenient, face-saving way to get rid of patients when doctors reach a dead end diagnostically. I agreed with him, but it seemed like such an unenlightened thing to do, both arrogant and unkind. Instead of saying, Im sorry, I can
t figure out whats wrong with you, they prefer to say, You must have some kind of mental problem. By this time, I was beginning to seriously wonder if physicians will be over-represented in Hell. The psychiatrist also predicted that I would eventually diagnose myself, which turned out to be prescient.

I had already started going to the medical school library at the University of California, San Francisco. After 1 ½ years of the new mystery illness, Id lost 40 pounds. (I lost 40 pounds, yet I wasnt on a diet! That should be a clue to those deadbeat doctors that something was wrong!) At this point I was 5'8" tall, and weighed less than 100 pounds. I knew Id have to figure it out myself, and that I didnt have forever to do it, because I was wasting away. Finally, after several months of searching, I figured out what was wrong with me and how to treat it. (It was extremely rare, and didnt even have a name.)
I mailed a copy of the journal article to my Berkeley doctor, with the relevant passages highlighted in yellow. He ordered the blood test, the results confirmed my diagnosis, he prescribed the recommended drug, and I was completely well again in a few weeks.

Then with a very bony finger, and vengeance in my heart I dialed a famous malpractice lawyer in San Fra
ncisco. After a lengthy discussion, he concluded that we could have nailed them for malpractice, except that I sustained no permanent damage. I did, however, waste 2 years of my life.

A word of explanation about my overall health is necessary at this point. All my life, Ive had a very marked lack of physical stamina, and far more illness than most people.Ã
Eventually, I was diagnosed with a minor heart defect and an immune deficiency (both of which I predicted as far back as junior high school based on my experiences). (Both are genetic.) When I was an undergraduate, I took classes on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday so I could stay home and rest on Tuesday and Thursday. My grades were good, but I didnt always make all As. I was already working at my full capacity, which was kind of like having 2-3 fewer usable hours per day than everybody else had, or like being a 4-cylinder car when everybody else is a 6-cylinder or 8-cylinder car. Once I had a regular 40-hour/week job in an office, and I called in sick almost every single Wednesday because it was just too exhausting. So the point is that poor health has been a life-long problem for me, and a constant source of anxiety.

Nathaniel & Sylvia Weyl

I read several interesting articles about eugenics by Nathaniel Weyl in the Mankind Quarterly, and then I read his book The Creative Elite in America. I wrote him a letter, and we struck up a fascinating correspondence. Nathaniel and his wife Sylvia invited me to visit them at their home in Boca Raton, Florida, so the next time I went to Memphis to visit my family, I decided to fly down to see them. They had all the same heretical beliefs that I did, such as eugenics, and race differences in IQ, so it was a celebration of kindred spirits We had so much fun together, and when it was time for me to go, we all hated to say good-bye.

Thank you so much for inviting me, I said. I really had a fabulous time.

Its been wonderful having you, Sylvia said. Weve had a marvelous time, too.

Yeah, Nathaniel concurred. Were really gonna miss you!

And Im gonna miss you, too! I exclaimed

I looked up at the ceiling as I processed a thought.

Say, Ive got an idea, I suggested, only half facetiously. Why dont I go home to Berkeley, get all my stuff, move in, and live here indefinitely?

Great! they exclaimed in unison.

So I did!

The year I lived as Nathaniel and Sylvias house guest was one of the best times of my life. They were in their late 60s, and both of them were fascinating, wonderful people.
Living with them was peaceful emotionally, and stimulating intellectually. We often went to the beach in the afternoon, and then sat out in the garden drinking champagne, talking about everything under the sun. Sylvia was a Jew, and Nathaniel ½ Jewish, but he identified with Jews. Despite being Jewish herself, Sylvia actively disliked Jews, and found them physically ugly. Her mother had changed their last name to Castleton, and Sylvia always made it a point to sign her name Sylvia Castleton Weyl.

Nathaniel was a raconteur with a treasure trove of interesting stories. Both Nathaniel and Sylvia had been card-carrying Communists in fact, thats how they met until they learned about the secret treaty between Stalin and Hitler, when they renounced Communism and told the FBI everything they knew. Nathaniel testified at the famous treason trial of Alger Hiss. He told me once that a Jewish organization had approached him about assassinating Hitler, but he declined. I asked him why, and he replied quite candidly, I didnt want to do it cause I might have gotten hurt!

I remember one typical sunny afternoon in Boca I had just gone to the grocery store, and I was pushing the shopping cart out to my car. I noticed this very old car creeping slowly along, circling the parking lot. Two black men, both very dark and somewhat sinister-looking, seemed to be checking out the situation, and I felt an instinctive wave of fear. Then they came right up beside me, about 3 feet away, and the man on the passengerÃ
?s side stuck his head out of the window, and he shouted at me:

Why dont you get out the street, white bitch?!

In an instant, knee-jerk reaction, I turned and shouted right back at him:

Why dont you drop dead, greasy nigger?!

Jesus Christ!! I thought to myself. What have I done now?!

Immediately the two men got into a heated argument. I can only guess what they were saying: Im gonna kill that f-ing bitch!
Listen to me m-f, I aint going back to the joint, so if you gonna shoot the bitch, then you can get the f- out my car!

I put the groceries in the trunk with a sort of controlled alacrity, because I was trying to get the hell out of there, but without looking terrified. Soon I was in my car, and then back home to safety. Whew!
Note: I do not recommend this to anyone! If I had thought it over for two seconds, I would have kept my mouth shut like any normal, sensible person would