Roger Pearson (anthropologist)

For the literary scholar, see Roger Pearson (literary scholar).

Roger Pearson
Pearson in 1946
Born (1927-08-21) 21 August 1927 (age 97)
London, United Kingdom
OccupationAnthropologist

Roger Pearson (born 21 August 1927) is a British anthropologist, eugenicist, white supremacist, political organiser for the extreme right, and publisher of political and academic journals.

Pearson was a part of the faculty of the Queens University of Charlotte, the University of Southern Mississippi, and Montana Tech, before his retirement. It has been noted that Pearson was surprisingly successful in combining a career in academia with political activities on the far right.[1]

Pearson served in the British Army after World War II, and was a businessman in South Asia. In the late 1950s, he founded the Northern League. In the 1960s, he established himself in the United States for a while working together with Willis Carto publishing white supremacist and antisemitic literature.[2] He was a regular contributor to The Heritage Foundation's periodicals.[3]

Pearson's anthropological work was based in the eugenic belief that "favourable" genes can be identified and segregated from "unfavourable" ones. He advocated a belief in biological racialism, and claimed that human races can be ranked. Pearson argues that the future of the human species depends on political and scientific steps to replace the "genetic formulae" and populations that he considers to be inferior with ones he considers to be superior.[4][5][6][7]

Pearson was still alive as of May 2019.[8]

  1. ^ "Pearson has succeeded in combining such right-wing politics with a conventional academic career." – Kühl, Stefan (2001). The Nazi Connection: Eugenics, American Racism, and German National Socialism. Oxford University Press, p. 4.
  2. ^ Winston, A. S. (1996). The context of correctness: A comment on Rushton. Journal of Social Distress and the Homeless, 5(2), 231-250.
  3. ^ Cite error: The named reference carto was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  4. ^ Kohn, M. (1995). The race gallery: The return of racial science. London: Jonathan Cape. pp. 52-54
  5. ^ Tucker, W. H. (2002). Closer Look at the Pioneer Fund: Response to Rushton, A. Alb. L. Rev., 66, 1145.
  6. ^ Tucker, W. H. (2003). The Leading Academic Racists of the Twentieth Century. Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, 90-95.
  7. ^ Shared Eugenic Visions: Raymond B. Cattell and Roger Pearson. Andrew S. Winston, University of Guelph "ISAR - Shared Eugenic Visions: Raymond B. Cattell and Roger Pearson". Archived from the original on 18 August 2015. Retrieved 25 June 2015.
  8. ^ Saini, Angela (18 May 2019). "Why race science is on the rise again". The Guardian. London. Roger Pearson, who is in his 90s today (he declined to speak to me)