Brain Damage and the Intellectual Defense of Inequality
Author(s)
Valentine, Charles A.; Valentine, Bettylou
Abstract
Our purpose is to expose the complicity of the human sciences in perpetuating inequality and to make a start toward ending this complicity. The learned debate about the nature of inequality in class and ethnically stratified societies is a spurious controversy. All major positions, ranging from biological determinism associated with conservative ideologies to environmentalism linked with liberal politics, are actually rationalizations for the status quo of intergroup relations. One key underlying idea shared among seemingly opposed experts is that the position of the oppressed stems from their own weaknesses. Another is that these alleged deficiencies are practically unchangeable. A consensus has been developing that low-status groups suffer from organic damage and dysfunction of the central nervous system. This consensus is approaching orthodoxy with the construction of theoretical formulations such as Montagu’s “sociogenic brain damage.” There is grave danger that this orthodoxy will be employed to justify extreme oppression ranging from mass drug programs to psychosurgery for controlling rebellious groups. The present paper refutes this line of thought and offers alternatives that are both more convincing and more humane. Our suggestions stem from five years of ethnographic research in an urban Afro-American community.
