38 THE MISMEASURE OF MAN
nized this from the beginning. In fact, this recognition led me to be
especially vigilant and careful when I analyzed the data of my book.
But I remain capable of being fair with data and logical in argument,
and I believe that the available information supports my view. Be-
sides, I am not a conservative for capricious reasons. I believe that
the world does work in the manner of the bell curve, and that my
political views represent the best way to constitute governments in
the light of these realities." Now this argument I could respect,
while regarding both its premises and supporting data as false and
misinterpreted.) I wrote The Mismeasure of Man because I have a
different political vision, and because I also believe (or I would not
maintain the ideal) that people are evolutionarily constituted in a
way that makes this vision attainable—not inevitable, Lord only
knows, but attainable with struggle.
I therefore studied this subject with passion. I had participated
in the lunch counter sit-in phase of the civil rights movement. I had
attended Antioch College in southwestern Ohio, near Cincinnati
and the Kentucky state line—therefore "border" country, and still
largely segregated in the 1950s. There I had taken part in many
actions to integrate bowling alleys and skating rinks (previously with
"white" and "Negro" nights), movie theaters (previously blacks in
the balcony and whites downstairs), restaurants, and, in particular,
a Yellow Springs barber shop run by a stubborn man (whom I came
to respect in an odd way) named Gegner (meaning "adversary" in
German and therefore contributing to the symbolic value) who
swore that he couldn't cut a black man's hair because he didn't know
how. (I first met Phil Donahue when he covered this story as a
cub reporter for the Dayton Daily News.) I spent a good part of an
undergraduate year in England, effectively running an extensive
and successful campaign with another American (though we
couldn't be public spokespeople, given our "wrong" accents) to inte-
grate the largest dance hall in Britain, the Mecca Locarno ballroom
in Bradford. I had joys and sadnesses, successes and defeats. I felt
crushed when, in a wave of understandable though lamentable nar-
rowness, the black leaders of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating
Committee decided to remove whites from the organization.
All my grandparents were immigrants to America, and in the
group of Eastern European Jews whom Goddard and company
would have so severely restricted. I dedicated The Mismeasure of Man