In 1987 a sweeping revision of the social studies program in New York State public schools gave the curriculum a strong multicultural slant. It was not strong enough, however, for a task force on minorities appointed by Thomas Sobol, the state education commissioner, in 1989. This task force rendered a report that included an immediately notorious assertion: “Afro-Americans, Asian-Americans, Puerto Ricans/Latinos and Native Americans have all been the victims of an intellectual and educational oppression that has characterized the culture and institutions of the United States and the European American world for centuries.” This “Eurocentric” approach had allegedly instilled an ugly arrogance in students of European descent.

The task-force report provoked a great deal of publicity when one of its authors, Professor Leonard Jeffries of the City College of New York, who is a zealous promoter of an “Afrocentric” curriculum, became known as the author of the hypothesis that the pigment melanin is the source of intelligence and creativity. Jeffries divides humanity into “sun people” and “ice people,” the latter being not only melanin-deficient but militaristic, authoritarian, and possessed of a host of other racially determined defects.

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