https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2021/01/jaques-barzun-and-the-tragedy-of-race-thinking/
“This anxious wrangling which goes on about books and plays seems at times trivial but it is in fact fundamental. If democratic culture yields on this point no prospect lies ahead but that of increased animosity among pressure groups…”
The 1965 quote above is from Jacques Barzun (1907-2012), who made a very important contribution to the debate about racism and affirmative action. He issued a warning that went unheeded, and the explosive emergence of Black Lives Matter underlines the value of his advice.
Barzun grew up in a French household, where his parents conducted a modernist salon, and he completed high school in the US. He entered Columbia College in 1923, graduating four years later at the top of his class, then he taught at Columbia University and became a full professor in 1945, Dean of the Graduate Faculties in 1955, and the inaugural Dean of Faculties and Provost of the University in 1958. In his long career as a teacher, scholar and administrator he wrote, edited or translated some 40 books.
His first serious research was a dissertation on class and race in pre-revolutionary France, published some years later as Race, A Study in Modern Superstition (1937). This was not written as a tract for the times because it grew out of research on cultural history that started long before Hitler became a significant figure. Barzun claimed the protracted dispute in France over the “race” of the nobility versus the bourgeoisie became one of the divisive factors that contributed to the French Revolution. Moreover “race-thinking” persisted after the Revolution as a component of the struggles between nations, political parties, religious faiths and social groups. For Barzun, “race-thinking” is one of the ways to justify collective hostility and it is most dangerous and powerful when it operates in partnership with other motives such as the nationalism of the Nazis, the socialism of the communists and, nowadays, the radicalism of Black Lives Matter.