Wesley Critz George (1888–1982) was an American academic. He was Professor of histology and embryology and Chair of the Department of Anatomy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill from 1940 to 1949. He was a eugenicist and a segregationist.
Early life
Wesley Critz George was born in 1888. He graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he received a bachelor of arts degree in 1911, followed by a master's degree in 1912. He received a PhD in Zoology from the same institution in 1918. He became Professor Emeritus in 1949. he became an internationally recognized researcher on the genetics of race. George is remembered for his 87-page pamphlet, The Biology of the Race Problem, printed for the Commission of the Governor (John Patterson) of Birmingham, Alabama, 1962.
Views on race
George argued that the division between Black and White races was founded on fundamental biological differences. He saved special venom for Franz Boas and the Boasian physical anthropologists who argued that race was of no biological consequence. George used some of the results of intelligence tests that Arthur Jensen and Charles Murray and others used later as evidence of lower average intelligence among Blacks.
A 1961 article in The Citizens' Council quoted George as saying, <blockquote>We badly need the states to establish and support offices to present the evil side of race amalgamation ... we have truth and virtue on our side.</blockquote>
George served on the Executive Committee of the International Association for the Advancement of Ethnology and Eugenics.
Death and legacy
George died in 1982.