The Cultural History Behind Racial Science

"AAA Statement on "Race"" AAA Statement on "Race" American Anthropological Association, 17 May 1998. Web. 23 July 2015.

It is not easy, and it is unpleasant, to adduce statistics evidencing the cultural superiority of White over Negro: but it is a fact that obtrudes, one that cannot be hidden by ever-so-busy egalitarians and anthropologists.”(4)

The meaning, significance, and definition of race have been debated for centuries. Historical race concepts have varied across time and cultures, creating scientific, social, and political controversy. Of course, today’s definition varies from the scientific racism of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that justified slavery and later, Jim Crow laws in the early twentieth. It is also different from the genetic inferiority argument that was present at the wake of the civil rights movement. However, despite the constantly shifting concepts, there seems to be one constant that has provided a foundation for ideas towards race: race is a matter of visually observable attributes such as skin color, facial features, and other self-evident

Race matters! Race has been probably the most dominating factor beneath the eugenics movement and the pseudo scientific experiments the Europeans physicians and scientists conducted on people of African origin and other races since the 18th century. The foundation for these studies can be associated with ancient Greece, the roots of today’s western values of knowledge, civilized, and democracy which are considered to be the basis for human development. Similarly to today’s Europeans, Ancient Europeans mustered enormous armies and naval forces that conquered and destroyed more advanced civilizations in the Near East, Asia Minor and Africa during which they destroyed records and stole ideas from the conquered people. Hence, the Europeans rewrote the history books to advance their concept of race superiority, which have been essential in the Atlantic world for the last five hundred years.

All through history, the label that is associate with Black people have become a prevailing discourse that explicitly racialized black people, even today. There are specific characteristics that are related with being black and are disseminate to the public and are represented as truth. Williams Rose (2002) argues, “As the color white is associated with everything good … so Blacks has, through the ages, carried associations with all that is bad and low… the Negro is believed to be stupid immoral, diseased, lazy, incompetent, and dangerous to the white man’s virtue and social order “(p.181). Blackness have become objectified in public spaces, they are view as a threat on the street of Toronto, surrounding areas and even in the criminal

Samuel Morton measured the features and the capacity of human skulls; he concluded that there were five “races” or species and blacks had the smallest brain capacity. To support his argument he suggested that God must have’ intervened at the time of the flood to reshape mankind.” (Farrow p. 186) Josiah Nott published an article supporting an 1840 census and declared, “Slaves lived longer” and was less prone to lunacy than free northern blacks. (Farrow et al. p. 186-187) The most damaging research produced by Morton, Agassiz and Nott were their theories that declared “Caucasians and Negros” as different species and defined blacks as subhuman species. (p.186) Agassiz and Nott further warned against the mixing of races, claiming the purity of white race could be contaminated by the black race. “These influential scientists not only helped justify slavery, they helped solidify the myth of black inferiority” (Farrow, et al. p. xxviii)

The force of migration was unique in American history. In the mid 1500s, European mariners started bringing colored Africans to America as slaves. The Africans were brought over by ship where 1 out of every 5 captives died by time the ship got to the Atlantic seacoast. The slaves were chained below docks in very cramped spaces while they were being transported. When they reached America they were auctioned off to owners who used them primarily as plantation workers. Slave owners had the right to harshly punish them and break up families by selling off family members. Slavery was a tough time for African Americans but more so a significant event in the American history. Around the 17th and 18th centuries is when some blacks started

History has shaped the unequal treatment of African Americans by today’s society. Prudence Carter, Russell Skiba, Mariella Arredondo, and Mica Pollock’s (2014) declare history has set the foundation for the ideology race. Most problems of racial stereotypes began more than 100 years ago, but still plague minorities to this day. For example, in the 19TH century black men slaves that ran away were considered dangerous criminals and this lead to legislations policies to kill a runaway, planting the seed of the dangerous black man. Many biological and social anthropologists argue race is a cultural construct. We can’t define acts of injustice by examining race as independent of biological/genetic variations. Scholars discovered race didn’t exist in the 17TH century but race originated as a folk idea-it was a social invention, not a product of science. Stereotype and many others from history has become entrenched in the US.

J. Rushton argues that the stereotypical racial divisions are not only an accurate taxonomy of society but also serves as a key divider of human species into a hierarchical community (Rushton, 41). It was mostly during the 19th through 20th centuries that race was widely known as a biological construct, and this was often referred to as biological realism (Andreasen, 653). In today’s time theorists, such as Franz Boas (Boasianism) and Stuart Hall, argue to abolish racial segregation due to biological standards, rather they see race as a discursive and social construct. Templeton said during a panel discussion on National Public Television’s “Race: The Power of an Allusion“ that there are not enough genetic differences between groups of people to say that there are sub lineages (races) of humans…There is more and more hard generic evidence that all of humanity has evolved as a single unit…”(Fitzpatrick) This idea of race being a social construct has gained great notoriety among prestige theorists of our modern time. Brown writes that genetic elasticity proves that there are no specific traits distinct to one group (race), that throughout history the different traits have been embedded into our genetics through generations and have been far too intermixed to define specific races (Brown,

The Race Quagmire says race should only be brought up in science. It is a term to facilitate talking about genetic differences among groups. I was never taught to like a specific gender but what I was taught was that I should not like people not my color. I will admit when I see a black person I will tend to hold back from talking to them because that is what I was taught all throughout my childhood. I tend to hold back but that is all I do. I do not judge them and I hope they are doing well in life just like any other person.

In Olson’s (2001) article, “The Genetic Archaeology of Race,” he states, “people are too closely related— and have mixed too much throughout history— to differ in fundamental ways.” Although research continues to prove that race is a construct set by society, people continue to essentialize humans into various categories based off of race. Essentializing race is the act of assuming that “these categories have and inherent and unchanging nature” (Andrews, 2017, p.19). For example, throughout history African Americans have been classified as being primitive, promiscuous, violent, etc. While on the other hand, White Americans are described with positive characteristics such as, sophisticated, responsible, law-abiding, etc. These terms have served

In addition, I agree with the statement of the author’s friend when hearing the author’s assessment of the situation, in which he implied that he did not feel race played a part in the incident. The author interprets his words to mean ''Times have changed. The old racial paradigms don't apply'' (Spence Halperin, 2009, n.p.). I am inclined to agree with this statement. The person standing up to defend the child does not need to specifically be black or white. If a similar situation took place on a train with a white mother and child, would only certain people stand up? Would he still feel he needed the validation of the blacks then, or just the whites? It really should be irrelevant. The fact remains that among the silent witnesses on the train, none of them, either white or black, stood up to agree with

This essay discusses how 19th century racial science can be described as not being scientific, but as being racist. Scientific racism is the act of justifying racism through science by using empirical evidence, “science has often been used as a justification to propose, project and enact racist social policies” The idea of scientific racism began to emerge during the ‘Enlightenment’ era, and although not used today, it could be considered as significant in leading to other Historical events such as the Holocaust. I will be discussing how racial science should be considered as being racist, as it evidently aimed to further strengthen the ‘white’ position in society, by demeaning other races through scientific methods.I will do this by exploring different sources which outline the work of physicians, scientists and naturalists who were adamant in making it clear the caucasian race should be seen as being the ‘superior’ one. 19th century racial science can be described as being racist.

However, Western European nations such as England, France, Germany, Italy, Austria and the Netherlands firmly established the experimental and open-minded viewpoints used in today’s systematic practices. Historians have concluded, “Any region outside of Western Europe received modern science through military conquest, colonization, imperial influence, commercial and political relations, and missionary activity the nations of Western Europe,” but have yet to determine the reasoning behind the location. John A. Schuster states in his article, The Scientific Revolution, that there is a “Genuine problem in assigning definitive, ascertainable origins for the historiography of science.” The Scientific Revolution encourages those scientists to share their newfound discoveries and challenge the stagnant beliefs of the

Science has, for centuries now, been a way to answer unknowns and change questions into answers. From the cause of seasons, to the human genome, science has made a huge impact on the world, in the way we function and think. Science has allowed the expansion of life across the globe, and allowed the fears, such as those of falling off of the edge of the earth, to be eliminated. Science exists only to answer questions that are hypothesized by the human brain, but sometimes science can be flawed. To be more accurate one must state that the problem is not with science being flawed, the long standing issue is the flawed scientist, and the nature of the human brain. The flaw in the human brain is feelings, and for the purpose of this paper, bias. Bias is almost impossible to control in one way or another, bias can be as small as liking green over red. For the purpose of this papers argument the bias is racial. Scientific racism is the use of science, most commonly ostensible science, to substantiate and justify racist philosophies and positions. Often these pseudo scientists would ignore and fabricate results and conclusions, to correlate positively with their hypothesis. These skewed results were then shared through scientific journals, with other intellectuals and then the public. Multiple forms of scientific racism were used in the 19th century to justify the social, physical, and mental disparities and abuse of minorities in America.