University Daily Kansan
Friday, October 14, 1977
1
Ehrlich argues race myths
BY ALLEN HOLDER
Staff Writer
The notion that black persons are genetically inferior to white persons is ridiculous. Paul Ehrlich, population学家, wrote a lecture at the University of Kansas last night.
Ehrlich, who coauthored "The Race Bomb" with his wife, told more than 600 persons at the Kansas Union Ballroom that races are social, not biological units.
He said that a person who considered skin color as the measure of another person's worth was the same intellectually as a man whose intellectuals are a book's cover as the measure of its weight.
Because people are sight-oriented, the first thing most people focus on is skin color. Eyes are a key to this.
"The notion that people's skin color is an index to their innate intellectual qualities", he said, "is an ancient idea unsupported by an scientific evidence.
"The most pernicious notion of all is that some human groups — especially blacks — have genes that give them poor intellectual performance."
DENOUNCING intelligence quotient (IQ) tests, Ehrlich said that if blacks scored lower than whites on IQ tests, it was because of environmental conditions, not lower intelligence.
However, after one listener accused him of avoiding the real reason for blacks' lower IQ scores, Ehrlich said, "We live in a racist society."
Ehrlich, a biology professor at Stanford
City protests state utility bill in legislature
Several Lawrence city officials joined representatives from city utilities across the state in Topeka yesterday to protest a proposal to give the Kansas Corporation Commission (KCC) authority to regulate all municipal utilities.
City Manager Buford Watson, commissioner Jack Rose and Gene Gvojt, director of utilities sent to the hearing to explain how she was involved in Lawrence's municipal water system.
But, once there, they learned that the proposal would not apply to water systems.
However the bill, if passed, could affect Kaiser Permanente's Gas Co., a privately owned company.
The proposal to expand the powers of the KCC, introduced by State Rep. E. Richard Brewster, D-Topke, is being considered by a committee in the Kansas Legislature. The bill would bring municipal electric and gas system regulators to the Kansas companies under KCC administration. The commission now has limited authority to regulate those utilities.
Brewster, testing briefly in support of his proposal, said a drafting error had caused many local officials to interpret the proposal to mean that municipal water and sewer systems would also be placed under KCC control.
University, said IQ tests were very unloved because they did not measure qualities such as responsibility.
He noted that IQ tests developed for the Watts ghetto in Los Angeles had resulted in a decrease.
IQ tests are not indications of how well a person will do in life; they tend only to show weakness.
Ehrlich also said that racial problems hindered solving other world problems, such as overpopulation and mass starvation.
speech, Ehrlich had not totally unsympathetic with Allan Bakke's reverse discrimination case. He said he hoped universities were striving for racial balances and were not denying admission because of race.
In a question and answer session after the
Ehrlich, whose speech was sponsored by the SUA Forums Lecture Series, said individuals were important and personal action would be the only way to end racism.
"It is high time that people learn to value physical and cultural differences and stop believing in worn-out myths of racial inferiority," he said.
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