Agnes Elizabeth Benedict, Progress to Freedom: The Story of American Education, 1942—
Whenever someone speaks with prejudice against a group—Catholics, Jews, Italians, Negroes—someone else usually comes up with a classic line of defense: “Look at Einstein!” “Look at Carver!” “Look at Toscanini!” So of course, Catholics (or Jews, or Italians, or Negroes) must be all right.
They mean well, these defenders. But their approach is wrong. It is even bad. What a minority group wants is not the right to have geniuses among them but the right to have fools and scoundrels without being condemned as a group.
