The Smart Culture. Robert L. Hayman Jr.
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The Smart Culture
Critical America
General Editors: RICHARD DELGADO and JEAN STEFANCIC
White by Law: The Legal Construction of Race IAN F. HANEY LÓPEZ
Cultivating Intelligence: Power, Law, and the Politics of Teaching LOUISE HARMON and DEBORAH W. POST
Privilege Revealed: How Invisible Preference Undermines America STEPHANIE M. WILDMAN with MARGALYNNE ARMSTRONG, ADRIENNE D. DAVIS, and TRINA GRILLO
Does the Law Morally Bind the Poor? or What Good’s the Constitution When You Can’t Afford a Loaf of Bread? R. GEORGE WRIGHT
Hybrid: Bisexuals, Multiracials, and Other Misfits under American Law RUTH COLKER
Critical Race Feminism: A Reader Edited by ADRIEN KATHERINE WING
Immigrants Out! The New Nativism and the Anti-Immigrant Impulse in the United States Edited by JUAN F. PEREA
Taxing America Edited by KAREN B. BROWN and MARY LOUISE FELLOWS
Notes of a Racial Caste Baby: Color Blindness and the End of Affirmative Action BRYAN K. FAIR
Please Don’t Wish Me a Merry Christmas: A Critical History of the Separation of Church and State STEPHEN M. FELDMAN
To Be an American: Cultural Pluralism and the Rhetoric of Assimilation BILL ONG HING
Negrophobia and Reasonable Racism: The Hidden Costs of Being Black in America JODY DAVID ARMOUR
Black and Brown in America: The Case for Cooperation BILL PIATT
Black Rage Confronts the Law PAUL HARRIS
Selling Words: Free Speech in a Commercial Culture R. GEORGE WRIGHT
The Color of Crime: Racial Hoaxes, White Fear, Black Protectionism, Police Harassment, and Other Macroaggressions KATHERYN K. RUSSELL
Was Blind, But Now I See: White Race Consciousness and the Law BARBARA J. FLAGG
The Smart Culture
Society, Intelligence, and Law
Robert L. Hayman, Jr.
NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS
New York and London
Copyright ® 1998 by New York University
All rights reserved
Portions of chapter 7 originally appeared as Robert L. Hayman, Jr., and
Nancy Levit, The Tales of White Folk: Doctrine, Narrative and the Reconstruction of Racial Reality, 84 CALIFORNIA LAW REVIEW 377 (1996). Reprinted by permission of California Law Review, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hayman, Robert L.
The smart culture: law, society, and intelligence / Robert L. Hayman, Jr.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8147-3533-9 (alk. paper)
1. Mental health laws—United States. 2. Mentally handicapped—Civil
rights—United States. 3. Culture and law. I. Title.
KF480.H37 1997
323′.0973-dc21 97-29366
CIP
New York University Press books are printed on acid-free paper,
and their binding materials are chosen for strength and durability.
Manufactured in the Unites States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For my family, who taught me to know better
Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others.
—PHILIPPIANS 2.3-4
But, after all, nothing is true that forces one to exclude. Isolated beauty ends up simpering; solitary justice ends up oppressing. Whoever aims to serve one exclusive of the other serves no one, not even himself, and eventually serves injustice twice. A day comes when, thanks to rigidity, nothing causes wonder any more, everything is known, and life is spent in beginning over again. These are the days of exile, of desiccated life, of dead souls.
— Albert Camus, RETURN TO TlPASA
Contents
2 The First Object of Government: Creation Myths
3 In the Nature of Things: Myths of Race and Racism
4 A Neutral Qualification: Myths of the Market
5 Creating the Smart Culture: Myths of Inferiority
6 The Smart Culture: Myths of Intelligence
7 The Constitution Is Powerless: Myths of Equality under Law
Epilogue: The Next Reconstruction
Acknowledgments
I am indebted to many people who, in various ways, made this book possible.
This is, first of all, very much an interdisciplinary effort, and some of the disciplines are not my own. For the science in particular, I have depended on the work of those scholars who have made contemporary understandings accessible to the general public. Ned Block, Stephen Jay Gould, Leon Kamin,