So much fail

[kaberett]

• Lois McMaster Bujold: kind of racist
  
• Jared Diamond: kind of racist

Ugh. Things I am kicking myself for not having been aware of, and passing on for those of you as are also likely to care. :-(

Comments

[gerald_duck]

Mmm. I think the last two paragraphs of that article mis-represent the tone and thrust of the book. I can see how some of the less pleasant factions in US politics might take that message from the book, but I don't think it's actually there.

As I recall it, the question Diamond was answering was not why the European colonials behaved the way they did, but why they were in a position to. There have been plenty of bloodthirsty prejudiced ideologues throughout history who've not managed to project force throughout the world anything like that effectively.

I'm entirely willing to believe there are problems in Diamond's actual science, but how much do they matter? His objective was to demonstrate how anthropological history could have come to a point where Europeans were in a position to sail across the Atlantic and wreak havoc in the Americas not vice-versa without the Europeans being innately superior in some way. Even if he got some of the details wrong, even if he got a few big details wrong, his book still stands as a popular-science sketch of how such a thing could have happened.