ELITIST MAKES SUPERIOR CASE AGAINST EGALITARIAN VOGUE:

The following article appeared in the Houston Chronicle on Sunday, January 21, 1995.  It is a review of a book called In Defense of Elitism by William A. Henry, III  (Doubleday, $26.95)

I am reproducing the review here because it says things that no one likes to say these days, but nevertheless these things NEED to be said.  Hopefully the reader will see the truth in Henry's words. Parents of GT students sometimes realize that their children are much more academically superior than is recognized, and oftentimes that lack of recognition comes from the lack of appreciation for their  race, their status economically, or their gender.

The review is by Lynwood Abram, a long time journalist in Texas.

In today's world, no two ways about it, elitism is a dirty word.

William A. Henry, III calls elitism "the foremost catchall pejorative of our times...a label (that) seems to be considered enough for today's rhetoricians to dismiss their opponents as defeated beyond redemption."

He defines elitism as the belief that some people are smarter and more talented than others and that some civilizations have accomplished more than others.  A corollary is that people should be measured by absolute standards of ability and achievement and rewarded accordingly.

Elitism's opposite is egalitarianism, which has -- for the time being at least -- triumphed over elitism, its former partner.

Partner?  Very much so, according to Henry, author of In Defense of Elitism.  "Both (concepts) are deeply American ... the chief contending tenets of the 18th century Enlightenment that in turn was the wellspring of American identity."

Egalitarians, according to Henry, believe that humans are and ought to be equal, whatever the differences in their performance and contributions might be in the competitive world.

Egalitarianism, however, has run amok, "celebrating every arriviste notion, irate minority group, self-assertive culture and cockamame opinion as having equal cerebral weight, and probably superior moral heft, to the reviled wisdom and attainments of tradition," Henry says.

For example, school curricula have been enlarged by such courses as Afrocentric studies in Baltimore public schools, and gay studies in San Francisco State University.  For what purpose?  Mainly, Henry says, to help students feel good about themselves, as though there were no differences between a classroom and a counseling service or cheering section.

Animosity toward "dead white males" is one of the most repellent manifestations of misguided egalitarianism and feminism, consigning to the dustbin such boneheads as Shakespeare, Columbus, Dante, Milton, Aristotle, and Homer, to name only a few of those thus demonized.

Why? Because they fail by the moral and political standards, so much in vogue at present.

Henry acknowledges that every culture may have something worthy of study and respect.  That does not mean, however, that all cultures are equal.

For the record, Henry does not subscribe to the idea that some races are intellectually more capable than others.  He rejects the notion, for example, that people of African descent cannot compete on equal footing with those of European heritage, saying only that the ancestral culture of Africans gives them little in the way of tools and opportunities to do so.

The big mistake of the egalitarians, Henry argues, is swallowing the Marxist dogma that the unaccomplished are invariably blameless for their condition and that ability is equally distributed along class, racial and educational lines.

If these unexamined ideas are accepted, then any differences in performance of individuals must be explained by social injustice.

"Schools exist to teach, to test, to rank hierarchically, to promote the idea that knowing and understand more (are) better than knowing and understanding less.  education is elitist," he says.  "Civilization is elitist.  Egalitarianism celebrates the blissful ignorance of the Garden of Eden, where there were no Newtons to perceive the constructive use of an apple."

Henry could have used the caucus-race chapter in Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland as a devastating parody of egalitarian nonsense:  The creatures run in a circle, beginning when they like and quitting when they like.  Suddenly the Dodo cries, "The race is over." and the animals crowd round, panting and asking, "But who has won?"  After pondering the question for a long while, the Dodo answers, "Everybody has won, and all must have prizes."

Carroll might have been amused to learn that in some schools today, something resembling the caucus-race has surfaced:  Pupils are divided into numerous teams to prevent the children from noticing who is better or worse at games.  Scores have been abolished.  Basketball hoops are adjusted in height to fit each pupil's capacity.

The idea is not to excel but to feel good about oneself and to have a good time.  What better way to prepare for the competitiveness of the real world?

In defending elitism, Henry says, the chief problem is coming to terms with the inequities of life.  But, as John F. Kennedy asked, "Whoever said life was fair?"

JFK knew what he was talking about.  He seemed a favored child of fortune:  intelligent, well-educated, handsome, charming, wealthy and a war hero.  He married an attractive, cultured woman who gave him handsome children.  To crown it all, he was elected president of the United States.

But, as Henry points out, Kennedy's father was a philanderer and both parents were unloving and often away.  "His older brother was killed in the war.  A sister died in a plane crash.  Another sister was mentally retarded.  He endured severe back pain and kidney problems.  He and his wife lost a newborn child. A taint of alleged vote fraud in Chicago will forever cloud his greatest triumph, being elected president.  And he had his brains blown out in front of a watching world at the age of 46.

In putting the kibosh on affirmative action and multiculturalism, Henry poses another question.  No culture is more distinctly non-European than the major cultures of East Asia.  Why, then, do Asians in the United States adapt so easily to open competition for educational opportunities.

There are, Henry says, four possible answers:  Asians are genetically superior, Asian communities teach their people better values than the other communities; Asians are more willing to work hard, make sacrifices and defer gratification, or finally Asians are simply not victims of racism in the way that blacks and Hispanics are.

To egalitarians, the only acceptable answer is the last.  And, Henry argues, only those ignorant of the realities of American history could possibly accept it as a legitimate answer to the question.

Affirmative action, he says is profoundly anti-elitist, unfair not only to white candidates who lose out but also to the ablest blacks.  "The practical effect of affirmative action is to give places to mediocrities while causing white (and, for that matter, nonwhite) colleagues to view with suspicion the talents and credentials of all blacks."

Feminist scholars are among the fiercest and most numerous enemies of elitism, Henry contends.  And not surprisingly, he says, since few women "merit being studied at all on the basis of the quality of their work."

"The unvarnished truth is this:  You could eliminate every woman writer, painter and composer from the caveman era to the present moment and not significantly deform the course of Western culture."

That doesn't mean women are inferior, Henry say, merely that they lacked opportunity.

Henry died shortly after this book was published.  His challenging, thoughtful volume, however, gives Americans much to think about.

Its unspoken message is that if elitism and egalitarianism joined forces as partners in providing equal opportunity for everyone to excel, free of quotas and favoritism, a new age of enlightenment might be at hand.

Lynwood Abram is a free-lance reviewer and writer.  He lives in El Paso, Texas.