Steve Sailer: Still noticing after all these years

Bo Winegard reflects on the immense influence of Steve Sailer and reviews 'Noticing', a newly published anthology of Sailer's essays.

Written by Bo Winegard

When I was a young, closeted race realist in graduate school, I first began to read Steve Sailer’s essays—and I was impressed both by their honesty and by their elegant but unpretentious style. He wrote the things I wanted to say. And how I wanted to say them. But I was a social psychologist. And being a race realist in social psychology is like being a happy man at a funeral. You are certain that you are not alone but prudent enough to keep your views private. At least, until you really trust somebody.

Thus, I was a solitary Sailer reader. For a while. Eventually I tired of prudence. Race, IQ, immigration—these were topics too important to suppress. Therefore, I became more outspoken about my views—by which I mean that I broached the topic of race and IQ from time to time. What I discovered surprised me. I was far from the only Sailer fan around. This does not mean that psychology graduate programs are full of surreptitious race realists like resistance fighters in some occupied country. Far from it.

But I did find a loyal club of fellow dissidents.