Talk:Pioneer Fund

Uh, source notes for these additions? This article tilts unabashadly to the opinion that declares the Pioneer Fund to be knee deep in Nazis, without any of the refutations present on their official website. Please balance the article.

Do it yourself. StoptheBus18 15:18, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I did.

All these accusations seem to be the standard guilt-by-association stuff.. do you have anything that really indicates the Fund is actively pursing racist policies?

Ummm the incorporation papers actively state that the goal of the fund is to promote the white race. Also guilt by association is still guilt. If youre not racist you dont hang out with racists. Sorry. StoptheBus18 19:46, 8 Aug 2004 (UTC)

PS Please get a user handle.

Promoting a race doesn't imply racism automatically, the NAACP actively promotes the black race, and the National Council of La Raza promotes the Hispanic 'race'. Guilt by association is not an automatic guilt indicator. Erwin Rommel associated with Adolf Hitler, but was not in favor of Hitler's policies and indeed supported efforts to kill him. Racism is the modern day McCarthyism, and works as Red Channels did in the 50s and 60s. I am extremely cautious of labeling any organization that states it does not support racism to be racist, as a similar argument could be made for the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League being racist organizations.

Are you honestly making a comparison between the NAACP and say David Duke? You don't know any history do you? The NAACP was formed because back in the day Black people we're getting lynched and killed. No one is doing that to white people. So I'm sorry 99 out of 100 people would agree that anything caliming to further the white race would be racist. You're hesitancy to "label" something racist, sounds like a personal problem that I urge you to get help with. StoptheBus18 15:46, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)

PS NO TOLERANCE FOR INTOLERANCE

No I am not making a comparison between the NAACP and David Duke. I think I know quite a bit of history. What about the whites that were attacked during the Rodney King riots, the Cincinnati riots, and the Michigan riots solely because they were white? Just because 99 out of 100 people may agree with you does not make something right or true. Most people in the South opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964/5, does that make it a bad bill that shouldn't apply there? I hesitate to label something racist if it repudiates racism and says it is being smeared. I don't hesitate to label the Klan or similar organizations racist. Your cheap attack that I have a 'personal problem' appears to exemplify your lack of knowledge on race issues. Also, this is getting away from the issue of the article's neutrality.

This is the last thing I'm going to say on this and then I'm done. The attacks on whites during the riots were horrible yes. But there were not part of a larger systemic movement by black people to disenfranchise white people. So I'm sorry but your comparisons are stupid. White people have always had the upper hand in this country, their interests don't need furthering by a special group because white peoples interests are this society's dominant interests. White people never have to worry about racial profiling or anything like that. So I'm sorry but to say that one is furthering the white race is a racist statement. StoptheBus18 23:49, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)

This is also the last response I am giving. I'm glad you acknowledge the attacks on whites and others during these riots. There is a movement to disenfranchise white people, look at the establishment of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs in Hawaii (until recently only Native Hawaiians could vote and hold office in the OHA, an official government organ; such status was determined by blood content, if you can believe it) and the attempts to throw white farmers off their land in Zimbabwe and Zambia, causing chaos for the blacks who depend on the food they grow. Or what about racial preferences in college admissions, affirmative action and a forced commitment to ‘diversity’ in the business world? So it is ok for racial organizations like the NAACP and the NCLR to exist, simply because some whites previously subjugated other races? You imply that there is a white conspiracy to disenfranchise people of ‘color’ (I don’t consider any race to be without color, whites are just as ‘colored’ as blacks). Some whites may think so, but I doubt society as a whole is in this movement. Many white people favor racial quotas and reparations, so society is not an inherently pro-white construction. White people do have to worry about racial profiling. South America profiles white people quite a bit for immigration violations, stuff we can’t do in the U.S. To say that one is furthering the white race is no more racist than someone saying they are furthering the black race. If I had my way, racial organizations would not receive any money from the government and would be shunned by most everyone. Anyway, I’m moving on to other parts of the Wikipedia…

---

I incorporated the caveats placed in a comment by 204.152.47.133 about Shockley into the text, in a way that I hope captures the truth. Willmcw 23:58, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)

NPOV?

Someone placed an NPOV plaque on this article, which calls for edits to be discussed here. Well? Where's the discussion? -Willmcw 03:25, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)

There was already an NPOV warning at the top of the page when I first began editing this article, and there was nobody actively debating its neutrality on the talk page. Since there was no current debate, I began editing the article to make it conform to NPOV and replaced the NPOV heading at the top with more specific sectional NPOV plaques for the sections I've not yet had a chance to thoroughly research.

As for why the plaques are still there, many of the statements made look dubious. Most of the things that I've had specific objections to I've already corrected. The original article was very non-NPOV, in that it not only advocated unattributed controversial opinions (e.g., calling people White supremacists and Nazis) and misleading omissions (the HUAC dialog shocked me with the blatant racism -- until I read it in context), but also factual errors (e.g., that Draper was the sole founder of the Fund). Other factual errors remain: I'm positive that Jensen is not a co-author of The Bell Curve as this article claims. These errors, combined with the overall non-NPOV tone of the article, make me suspicious of some of its claims and I intend to do further fact-checking and research to see how much basis these criticisms have in reality.

That's not to say that disputed criticisms don't belong in an encyclopedia, just unattributed disputed criticisms. If anyone else would like to look for sources for these criticisms I would appreciate it.

I understand that I really should have more specific objections to warrant the NPOV notices and if you feel strongly about it feel free to remove them. -- Schaefer 04:09, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I think that your edits have been helpful in clearing away the POV detritus that has collected in this article. Thanks for taking the time to work on it. I raised the point simply to make sure that major edits are discussed. Cheers, -Willmcw 05:04, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I've reorganized the article to separate out the Responses to criticisms from the criticisms and to pull out the grantees and directors, who are neither criticisms nor responses. I also removed some of the POV descriptions of the grantees, and the associated NPOV plaque. I think the article makes more sense now. I also added a couple of books written about the Fund and some other details. -Willmcw 11:29, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I pulled this line: Though the founder supported segregation, other board members opposed it. I checked the PF website and the original line was taken almost verbatim from there, but the so-called opposition to segregation is not to be found (instead it gives a non-sequitor argument that because some grantees have found higher IQs among Orientals that they are not White supremacists). [1] (http://www.pioneerfund.org/Controversies.html) If someone can find a Draper-contemporary who spoke against segregation, then I'd be happy to see it go back. -Willmcw 11:48, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Also, I agree with you about the Walter/Robeson episode. If the link has an accurate account, it appears that Walters, a fervent anti-communist, was referring to political leanings and not race. I think that the paragraph should go entirely, unless someone finds some supporting information. In fact, the McCarran-Walter Act removed all the racial bars to immigration for the first time in US history. -Willmcw 12:23, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Agreed. Removing. Thanks for that factoid about the McCarran-Walter Act. I wasn't aware of that. -- Schaefer 20:12, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Is there anything else here that merits keeping the NPOV flag? If so let's clear it up. -Willmcw 08:31, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Removed NPOV flag. I was planning on removing it after I found proper attribution for the Nazi stuff but I never got around to researching it. Maybe someday I'll pick up on the books in the references section and try to attribute arguments to those works. The title of the Nazi film the Fund allegedly supported, "The Hereditary Detective", returns no hits on google other than this article, so this info is coming from print-only sources. -- Schaefer 09:58, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Here it is: [*Tucker, William H., The Funding of Scientific Racism: Wickliffe Draper and the Pioneer Fund. (University of Illinois Press,) Electronic copy (http://www.press.uillinois.edu/epub/books/tucker/toc.html)]. It's a typo - shoulda been "The Hereditary Defective", apparently. I just found the Tucker book myself - I'd heard of it, but the whole book is online. Cheers, -Willmcw 10:06, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for making that change. BTW, there is plenty of other documentary evidence for the films - many of Laughlin's papers are online. At some point the article should be reformed into a history rather than a list of controversies. Thanks for all of your contributions. -Willmcw 22:33, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Pseudo Science

If you read Phillipe Rushton's (head of the Pioneer Fund) online book, it immediately becomes clear that he is partisan, and that his output is "pseudo-science". He has not referred to ANY of the large scientific body of evidence against the idea that IQ is genetically linked to race (or, indeed, that it does not make sense to classify people by their race), and he has done no research of his own.

The Pioneer Fund relies on donations - and unless they produce material which rationalises racism, that funding quickly dries up. Their motto should accurately be, "The customer is king", because whatever they SAY they do, what they REALLY do is pander to racists of financial means. New Thought 08:08, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)