Racial Prejudice And Superstition During The Age Of Discovery Europeans

In this context, Audry Smedley’s Race in North America provides the reader with a chronological approach to the concept of race that explores its evolution and their implications in the configuration of societies among the world.

According to Howard F. Taylor ‘race’ is complex, therefore it cannot be defined by a single definition . The term is ‘multiply defined’; as a result, he has created a set of his own definitions which all coexist with each other meaning ‘no one definition takes precedence over another’ . They include the following categories: biological, social construction, ethnic group, social class/prestige rank, racial formation/society’s institutions and self-defined . These associations will be used to get an understanding of ‘race’ in accordance to the early nineteenth century in the USA by the ‘Christian Missionaries Oppose Removal, 1830’ and New Zealand in the extract from ‘The Letters and Journals of Samuel Marsden’ .

This article written by Mark Nathan Cohen, who is an anthropology professor in the State University of New York; talks about how race does not define human diversity. In the article, he also mentions that in school students learn the definition of race based on “biological variation” and not based on their culture. The professor Cohen says that studies on human family tree that were based on their genetic analysis of traits do not show any relation of who those traits belong to. He gives an example by stating that even skin color is not a god indicator of who it relates to because the “traits occur independently in several different branches of the human family.”

The PBS series “Race: The Power of an Illusion” effectively works to expose race as a social construct and deconstructs the false notions that race is a biological marker. The series first discusses that all human beings originated from Africa but dispersed about 70,000 years ago to various places in the world. As a result of this migration, people were spread to different locations throughout the world with different environmental conditions that affected their physical traits. It was many years after the migration in which people began to display these new physical traits such as slanted eyes, fair skin, and differing hair textures. While the series notes the physical changes that occurred during the migration it also emphasizes that race while it may seem apparent in skin color and other physical features has no real biological basis.

The article starts by describing different variations in biological features, such as skin color, and even some unseen variations. The author then goes on to say that race, how the current culture views it, is not correct- rather, that race in itself, is actually socially constructed. The author returns to the previously mentioned variations and elaborates that they are on a spectrum, rather than a binary system, with one or the other. Cohen goes on to say that the combinations of the spectrum of these different traits is vast among even different African places. Cohen then goes on to talk about how race in genetics is another way to prove that race is in fact a social construct by explaining that a very small percentage of gene pairs goes

Europeans found other races that were not like their own, and with this, ideas on who would be superior naturally arose. These races were clearly not like the Europeans, most of the time. The color of skin was a difference that basically no person missed. Those with fairer skin were surprised to find people with darker skin. These darker-skinned people’s culture was also unfamiliar.

Matt Cartmill, of Duke University’s Department of Biological Anthropology and Anatomy, describes the perception of race as “a divisive and emotionally charged topic among physically anthropologists.” Protagonists of the race theory concede the classification based on race can be utilized as a factor in discrimination. Most human populaces today are the result of interbreeding, therefore a genetic mixture of many geographically differential groups. As an example, North Americans’ many regional populaces have essentially developed due to massive immigration from a wide range of geographic locations over the span of several centuries (Cartmill 351-653,659).

The English term ‘race’ is believed to originate from the Spanish word raza, which means ‘breed’ or ‘stock’ (Race). People use race to define other groups, this separation of groups is based largely on physical features. Features like skin color and hair don’t affect the fundamental biology of human variation (Hotz). Race is truly only skin deep, there are no true biological separations between two ‘racial’ groups. Scientifically speaking, there is more variation between single local groups than there is between two large, global groups; the human variation is constantly altering (Lewontin). The majority of today’s anthropologists agree that race is a form of social categorization, not the separation of groups based on biological

Race in the ancient world is incomparable to the significance race takes on in the twenty first century. Race is most often used as a natural method to classify people; therefore it has never ceased to exist. The meaning behind race continues to evolve over time, as some physical, mental and social characteristics become more desirable than others. Gomez, in Reversing Sail explores the connection between race and slavery in the ancient world.

Benthien shows that the question of divergent skin pigmentation continues to puzzle the scientific community. However, the legacy of the ostensibly scientific findings of the past, the depersonalization of Blacks, the notion that skin color defines a person’s character and intellect, the alleged “bad smell” and the “oily texture” of Black skin, have informed racist discourse for centuries. And in the second part of the chapter, Benthien discusses the appearance of these themes in the literary work of two German authors, Heinrich von Kleist and Hans Henny August Jahnn. While the selected text passages echo central themes of scientific racism, Benthien uses that section deliberately to add some additional familiar racist themes to the discussion,

During the Imperialism period, there were numerous academic article with the aim to persuade that the white was the most advanced human race. Georges Cuvier was a renowned naturalist of the 19th century. Despite his disbelief in hierarchy, the idea greatly hovered him on the subject of human races. In the book The Animal Kingdom (1827 – 1835), Cuvier conducted a research to study the features of the “negroid races”. He pointed out

He provides no biological basis for casting Bushmen, Negroes, and Papuans people into Negroid and Americans, East Asiatics, and Malays into Mongoloid. Instead, Boas’ reasoning is similarities within the groups of pigmentation and facial features, a fault of the time he was in. He was deriving from the dated 17th century concept of race, based only off of people looking different, and classifications derived from phenotypic variations (K.E. Jaffe pers. comm.: 09/11/2014). However, the true basis for race is developed through natural selection, and the adaptation and variations that environments will select for when suited best for those individuals (Anth 300 Glossary). In On the Tendency of Species to form Varieties; and on the Perpetuation of Varieties and Species by Natural Means of Selection by Darwin & Wallace (1858), they are applying their ideas of surviving to mainly non-humans, however it can be understood that “in the struggle it would have a better chance of surviving; and those of its offspring which inherited the variation, be it ever so slight, would also have a better chance” (Darwin & Wallace, 1858: pp. 14). Therefore, race is merely a product of biological

Early in time nature and the environment played a unique role in classifying race. This was mostly due to the social Darwinist beliefs. In the beginning scientists began to speculate that different races had evolved from different species of chimpanzees. In addition to scientists relating an individual’s race to various species of chimpanzees, other scientists were looking at the size of an individual’s skull to determine the brain capacity. The brain capacity allowed scientists to determine the intelligence and ethnic background of the individual. Not only was brain capacity looked at as a possible characteristic to classify the human race, but during the early 1900’s other characteristics were looked at including, an individual’s facial structure and features. These characteristics were measured in order to classify and organize individuals into various groups. This was started and mostly used by the German people in hope to create the perfect race. Throughout history, scientists have been trying to figure out the solution to the human race. Scientists came up with theories to help explain how the various races came about and how to classify them. I believe this is affecting society today in a negative way. Since the beginning of Race, Racism and Science whites have been known as the superior race, while Africans, African Americans and Native Americans were viewed as the inferior race. Today

For many years race was to distinguish the different types of cultures and backgrounds of people but Anthropologist proposed to use the term ethnicity to better distinguish between the two terms. As it states in Essentials of Physical Anthropology, “ethnicity refers to cultural factors, but the fact that the words ethnicity and race are used interchangeably reflects the social importance of phenotypic expression and demonstrates once again how phenotype is mistakenly associated with culturally defend variables” (313-14). Although many still will confuse the two terms, human variation helps Anthropologists determine that all humans belong to the same polytypic species, Homo sapiens. Aside from physical differences, all humans fall within the

The term race was historically used to categorize plants and animals. It was not originally used to separate the human species regarding skin color at all. For example, in Charles Darwin’s Origin of the Species, the subtitle is The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, the word Races meaning species. Later, this term was used for classifying groups of people based on certain characteristics, such as people who share the same parent language. The shift from simple categorization to harsh discrimination began in the mid-1800’s when scientists were studying heredity, and differences within the Homo sapiens species were thought to be biological. Researchers found that members of humanity spread throughout the globe did not all