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Scientific Racism Skulls, brains and Intelligence A/Prof Evan Poata-Smith

Image Source: Photograph by Robert Clark--Photographed at Penn Museum.

‘Race’ Thinking

‘Race’ has emerged as a commonsense category for

explaining and evaluating human differences only in more recent history.

The concept of ‘race’ is based on three key assumptions:

1. That human beings can be classified according to their physical features into discrete biological categories known as ‘races’.
2. That these biological features (in, and of, themselves) determine variations in intellectual capacity and positions in societal hierarchies.
3. That the distinctive biological features of an individual or group can be ranked according to their superiority or inferiority to each
   • ther.

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The cross-cultural and historical evidence demonstrates that…

The idea of ‘race’ is a relatively recent development in human thought.

1. The cultural or physical differences singled out as being significant were wide ranging.
2. The ideas that were used to justify the importance attached to those alleged differences –varied tremendously.
3. The causal explanations for those alleged difference have also changed considerably over time.

‘Race’ Thinking The idea of ‘race’

Historical examples

Slave societies of classical Greece and Rome.

§ While these societies were brutal, hierarchical

and oppressive, the idea of ‘race’ was conspicuously absent from representations of difference.

§ These societies were preoccupied with the notion

of “citizenship” and the importance of citizens discharging their public duty.

§ This was the basis by which they represented, categorized and justified their treatment of ‘outsiders’.

Terms to designate people outside the orbit of these communities:

• The Ancient Greek word βάρβαρος (barbaros), "barbarian", was an antonym for πολίτης (politēs), "citizen" (from πόλις - polis, "city-state").
• For the Ancient Greeks, it was the inhumani who lived in the frozen wastes to the north, the land of exile, who embodied, as the term suggests, the absence of human attributes.
• The Romans also used the term “barbarian” and handed on to post- medieval Europeans who then made good use of it in the development of colonial empires.

Septimius Severus

Septimus Severus

• Roman emperor from 193 to 211.
• Severus was born in Leptis Magna (present day Libya) in the Roman province of Africa.
• First African to hold the highest position in the Roman empire.
• His death marked the beginning of a succession of African emperors of Rome.

Central Issue

• Differences between human beings were not seen as inherent, fixed and inevitable.
• Human attributes were largely seen as being culturally acquired: i.e. a barbarian could become civilized and part of the Roman Empire; a ‘heathen’ could convert to Christianity.

Religion

Papal Bulls of the 15th century gave Christian explorers the right to claim lands they "discovered" and lay claim to those lands for their Christian monarchs.

§ Under various theological and legal doctrines formulated during and after the Crusades, non-Christians were considered enemies of the Catholic faith and, as such, less than human.

§ Any land that was not inhabited by Christians was available to be

"discovered", claimed, and exploited.

§ If the “pagan” inhabitants could be converted, they might be spared. If not,

they could be enslaved or killed.

‘Race’ Thinking The idea of ‘race’ 8

Etymology:

The word ‘race’ only entered Western languages in the period between 1200-1500 AD

Its meaning has changed overtime.

§ Ras (middle English): a trial of speed; swift course or

current of a river.

§ In the later Middle Ages it was sometimes used to refer to lineage or the continuity of generations in families (esp. royal or noble families).

It wasn’t until the late 17th century that ‘race’ came to

assume a new meaning different from the original ‘clan’.

Distinction needs to be made between earlier forms of prejudice and the coherent doctrines of racial inferiority that were to develop later.

Xenophobia and superstition was a characteristic of medieval village life.

The very words, ‘black’ and ‘white’ were heavily charged with meaning long before the English even met people whose skins were black.

Whereas these old forms of prejudice were merely scraps of irrationality and fear, racism developed as a coherent doctrine of inferiority from the 17th century onwards.

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Evolution of ‘Race’ Thinking The idea of ‘race’ ‘Race’ Thinking Image Source: Al Jazeera

Three crucial developments in the evolution of ‘race’ thinking.

The development of pseudo-science. The global expansion of European capitalism & the period of empire building that characterised the colonial era. The development and maintenance of the trans-Atlantic slave trade.

The idea of ‘race’ Slavery

The trans-Atlantic Slave Trade

§ From 1526 to 1870 between 12 and 15 million

Africans were enslaved in the Americas.

§ British ships transported about 2.6 million slaves

alone.

The largest forced migration of people in history.

• The death rate of the slaves was horrific.
• Unknown millions died in Africa before they even made it to the ships.
• It has been estimated that perhaps a fifth of the slaves died on the Middle Passage across the Atlantic.
• In the Americas, the death rate amongst the slaves was also very high. Some historians suggest that the death rate in the 'seasoning camps' was up to 50%.

Source: Plymouth Chapter of the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade - This image is available from the United States Library of Congress's Prints and Photographs division

The idea of ‘race’ The trans-Atlantic Slave Trade* Slavery § Followed a triangular route:

§ Traders set out from European ports towards the west coast of Africa where they bought and/or kidnapped people and loaded them into the ships.

§ The voyage across the Atlantic, known as the Middle Passage,

generally took 6 to 8 weeks. Once in the Americas those Africans who had survived the journey were off-loaded for sale and put to work as slaves.

§ The ships then returned to Europe with goods such as sugar,

coffee, tobacco, rice and later cotton, which had been produced by slave labour.

*See http://www.understandingslavery.com/

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Destinations for slaves § Over 55 per cent of the slaves were taken to Brazil and

Spanish colonies in South America.

§ About 35 per cent were taken to the West Indies. § Less than 5 per cent of slaves were sold in North America.

The idea of ‘race’ Slavery

§ Slavery predates the ideas of ‘race’. § About 60% of African slaves were taken in the 18th century. § Racist ideologies served a useful purpose in this context.

“It was their drive for profit that led English merchant capitalists to traffic in Africans. There was big money in it. The Theory [of ‘race’] came later. Once the English slave trade, English sugar-producing plantation slavery, and English manufacturing industry had begun to operate as a trebly profitable interlocking system, the economic basis had been laid for all those ancient scraps of myth and prejudice to be woven into a more or less coherent racist ideology: a mythology of race.”

Peter Fryer

(1984), Staying Power: The History of Black People in Britain, London: Pluto Press, p. 134.

The idea of ‘race’

The Age of Empire

The British slave trade ended in 1807; and slavery abolished officially in 1833.

However, racial ideologies became a convenient

rationale for the control of indigenous peoples under colonial rule.

The British Empire

§ In 1900, the British Empire covered one-fifth of the globe and

governed between 470 and 570 million people. § Most extensive empire in world history.

Colonialism The idea of ‘race’ What is Colonialism? Week Four

Colonialism The idea of ‘race’

§ “Britain’s ‘native policy’ was dominated by racism. The golden age of the British Empire was the golden age of British racism too.”

§ P. Fryer (1984), Staying Power, Pluto Press: London, p. 134.

The idea of ‘race’

Characteristics of Core

Inventiveness Rationality, intellect Abstract thought Theoretical reasoning Mind Discipline Adulthood Sanity Science Progress

Characteristic of Periphery

Imitativeness Irrationality, emotion, instinct Concrete thought Empirical, practical reasoning Body, matter Spontaneity Childhood Insanity Sorcery Stagnation

Source: J.M. Blaut, The Colonizers Model of the World, New York: Guildford Press, 1993, p. 17.

“Whether the ‘inferior races’ were to be coddled and protected, exterminated, forced to labor for their ‘betters’, or made into permanent wards, they were undoubtedly outsiders –a kind of racial proletariat. They were forever barred both individually and collectively from high office in church and state, from important technical posts in law and medicine, and from any important voice in their own affairs...”

P.D. Curtin

(1960), “ ‘Scientific’ Racism and the British Theory of Empire”,

Journal of the Historical Society of Nigeria, p. 50.

The Idea of ‘Race’

“From the 1770s onwards the empire and the pseudo scientific racism that served it developed side by side.”

§ The scientific revolution was seen as gradually replacing § P. Fryer (1984), Staying Power, Pluto Press: London, p. 134.

superstition, speculation and religious authority.

§ In reality, science merely added another level of justification

to pre-existing myths and concerns.

Human differences were now seen as being biological, and therefore inherent and unalterable.

The Enlightenment challenged, but

did not replace, the “Great Chain of Being”:

§ Every existing thing in the

universe had its "place" in a divinely planned hierarchical order, which was pictured as a chain vertically extended.

“All colonised peoples were inferior to all colonisers, but some were more inferior than others. Those with undeniable evidence of civilisation — Chinese, some Indians, a very few North Africans — were somewhat ‘higher’ on the cultural (and racial) ladder. Lighter skinned warriors — Maori, some Native Americans — could be respected enough to negotiate treaties. The darker the colour, the closer to savages. And right at the bottom, only just above the animals, were Hottentots and Australian Aborigines [sic].”

Tony Barta

(2001), “Discourses of genocide in Germany and Australia: a linked history”, Aboriginal History 21, p. 46.

“Morphological & Aesthetic Trees of The Human Race”

The Idea of ‘Race’

The advent of evolutionary interpretations of humanity

in the latter half of the 19th century did nothing to alter this notion of a hierarchy.

Examples:

§ Evolutionists viewed Indigenous Australians as living fossils who had

survived, through seclusion, in a remote part of the world.

§ Their allegedly lowly status, however, no longer simply signified their

ordained place in Creation, it now signified their backward stage of advancement along an evolutionary sequence.

Australia was viewed as a huge museum of antiquated life.

“Centuries ago, nature ‘side’ tracked a race in Australia. At the present time, despite some drawbacks or interference from outside, that race remains, to a large extent in primitive conditions. It is capable of casting light on the evolution of human races in a way and to an extent that probably no other can equal.”

W.R. Smith

(1913), “Australian Conditions and Problems From the Standpoint of Present Anthropological Knowledge”, AAAS 14 , p. 374.

Social Darwinism

§ Applies the biological concepts of

The Idea of ‘Race’

Pseudo-scientific Racism

natural selection to human societies.

§ Life is viewed as a struggle for

existence characterised by Herbert Spencer’s phrase the “survival of the fittest”.

§ The process of natural selection

would result in the survival of the best competitors and the elimination of the ‘unfit’.

Herbert Spencer, 1879 caricature by Francis

Carruthers Herbert Gould Spencer

Social Darwinism

§ ‘Natural selection’ was applied to the idea of ‘race’—i.e.

superior ‘races’ would flourish, while inferior ‘races’ would die out.

§ Used to justify inequalities in wider society as natural

phenomena that simply reflected the superiority of the powerful and the inferiority of the weak.

“It has become an axiom that, following the law of evolution and survival of the fittest, the inferior races of mankind must give place to the highest type of man, and that this law is adequate to account for the gradual decline in numbers of the aboriginal inhabitants of a country before the march of civilisation.”

J.Barnard

James Barnard (1809-1897)

(1890), “Aborigines [sic] of Tasmania”, Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science 2, p. 597.

‘Smooth the pillow of dying race’

Social Darwinism underpinned many policy regimes to regulate indigenous lives.

In Australia, it was widely accepted that “Full-blood” Aboriginal people were doomed to inevitable extinction.

“The romance of extinction” was firmly entrenched in the colonial discourse.

§ “A dying race”. § The last of his or her tribe e.g. “last of the Mohicans”.

Wide range of euphemisms were used: Indigenous people were described as ‘fading away’, ‘decaying’, ‘slipping away’, ‘melting away’ etc.

Eugenics Pseudo-scientific Racism The Idea of ‘Race’ 36

§ Based on the idea that one could improve the human population by carefully selecting those who could procreate and produce offspring.

This had particularly sinister applications:

§ Populations deemed ‘unfit’ were

subjected to lifelong segregation and sterilization programs to kill inferior ‘bloodlines’.

§ The grand plan was to literally wipe away

the reproductive capability of those deemed weak and inferior—the so-called “unfit”.

Sir Francis Galton

A.O. Neville (1875-1954).

§ “Chief Protector of Aborigines” in Western Australia from 1915 to

1936 and Commissioner for Native Affairs from 1936 until his retirement in 1940.

§ Articulated the belief that assimilation of Aboriginal people of mixed descent could only occur through the “breeding out the colour”.

§ The key issue for Neville was skin colour; once `half-castes' were

sufficiently white in colour they would become like white people.

§ After two or three generations the process of acceptance in the

non-Indigenous community would be complete, the older generations would have died and the settlements could be closed.

Source: A. O. Neville, Australia's Coloured Minority: Its Place in the Community, Sydney: Currawong Publishing, 1947.

Von Luschan's chromatic scale: a method of classifying skin colour.

Pseudo-scientific Racism The Idea of ‘Race’

Social Darwinism and Eugenics provided a justification for the subjugation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples by British settlers.

§ It demonstrated the inherent superiority of the colonising ‘races’

and the ‘inferiority’ of the colonised.

§ It provided a rationale for a range of colonial policies e.g. the establishment of a system of reserves, missions and other institutions that isolated, confined and controlled Aboriginal people.

§ It underpinned the ongoing and systematic kidnapping of

Indigenous children (see the “Stolen generation”).

The study of the human skull was also seen as crucial to ‘race’ science.

It was believed that:

§ Skull sizes varied according to distinct populations. § That bigger skulls must have contained bigger brains. § Bigger brains meant greater intellectual capacity.

Samuel George Morton (1799-1851) collected 837 skulls and spent most of his time in the 1840s filling those skulls with white pepper seed or shot pellets –to measure “cranial capacity”. He concluded that English skulls had a greater cranial capacity than African, Chinese and Indian skulls.

In the late 19th century, numerous

physical anthropologists subjected the skulls of Indigenous Australians to meticulous examination and minute measurement.

All claimed to have found archaic traits and low cranial capacity.

English biologist, T.H.Huxley, was

one of the first to claim that there was a similarity between Aboriginal skulls and fossil crania such as that from Neanderthal.

Thomas Henry Huxley (1825 1895) Known as "Darwin's Bulldog"

Pseudo-scientific Racism Craniometry The measurement of cranial The Idea of ‘Race’

features in order to classify people according to ‘race’, criminal temperament, and intelligence.

It was used to justify racist policies

towards Indigenous Australians, the Irish and those from Africa.

Week Three

Pseudo-scientific Racism Cesare Lombrosso (1835 1909) • Flattened or hawk-like nose. • High cheekbones. • Long arms. • Shifty eyes. • Large, protruding jaw. • Low, sloping foreheads • Large chin. • A reduced sensitivity to pain! Characteristics of criminals: Week Three faculties were located on the surface of the brain and could be detected by visible inspection. It was believed that mental

Racism

Summary

Racism was not confined to a handful of eccentric cranks on the periphery of society.

§ Most scientists and intellectuals accepted these doctrines of racial superiority and inferiority until well into the twentieth century.

§ There was a close connection between the attitude the ruling class

took to ‘natives’ in the colonies and the attitude they took to women and the working class and poor at home.

§ Nevertheless, the doctrines of racial inferiority were contested by a

minority.

§ Pseudo-scientific ideas underpined the Nazi eugenics program.

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The Idea of ‘Race’ Racism

What does the evidence tell us?

1. The idea of ‘race’ is a modern idea.
2. It has no genetic basis.
3. Human sub-species don’t exist.
4. Most genetic variation is within not between groups
   • ften classified as ‘races’.
5. Slavery predates the idea of ‘race’.
6. The idea of ‘race’ provided a powerful justification for social, economic and political inequalities as ‘natural’ and ‘inevitable’.
7. ‘Race’ isn’t biological, but racism is still real.

Racism The Idea of ‘Race’

https://www.pbs.org/race/000_General/000_00-Home.htm

Racism

The idea of ‘race’ has no objective genetic basis.

§ However:

§ Large numbers of people continue to believe that world’s

population is divided into ‘races’.

§ The concept of ‘race’ remains an important feature of

‘common sense’ views of human difference.

§ The ideology of ‘race’ is still a pervasive feature of our society. § While ‘race’ is not a valid biological category, racism is still

real.

§ “If men [and women] define situations as real, they are

real in their consequences…”

§ W.I. Thomas (1863-1947)