Whether the Jews comprise a religion, a nation, an ethnic group,
or a race (or a combination of these) has always been central to
the Jewish Question. The recently published Jews & Race —
Writings on Identity and Difference 1880–1940 (edited by
Mitchell B. Hart) is an anthology of Jewish writing which offers
a fascinating insight into Jewish racial thinking during a
period when hierarchic social-Darwinian race theory was
generally accepted throughout the West. Before the rise of
Boasian anthropology in the 1920s and 1930s, Western
anthropologists posited a direct correlation between external
racial traits and internal psychological traits. Skin color was
regarded as not just a physical attribute, but an external
racial marker tied to a correlative set of intellectual,
political, and cultural capabilities. Given the consistent
results from over 90 years of IQ testing of different racial
groups (as defined by external traits like skin color) and other
race-based life history statistics, we know this methodology