explain anthropology with a related film
beyzagu
RaceandPostColonialism.pptxRace and (Post) Colonialism: There are multiple conceptions of race and these conceptions also change in time, in acc. with historical conditions and events. => Different types of racisms: American=> African American comparison with Africans in Latin America.
Lee Baker: Franz Boas, W.E.B. du Bois, earlier examples of civil rights movements and legal structures => drastic changes: Undoing scientific racism. Refuting its scientific claims.
Early 18th century, racism had religious and moral philosophical basis (missionaries’ White man’s burden)
Late 18th century, racism acquired a scientific basis, measuring of skulls etc. Black people as “subhumans” became a scientific fact, proven by scientific methods!
Evolution (Darwin) => Social Evolution (Spencer): Polygenesis, multiple origins of human species vs. monogenesis, one origin, different mutations. Civil war in the US, over the abolition in slavery, cotton fields in the South required slave labor, traditionalist, religious. Social separation (apartheid) vs. integration? Having their own schools, hospitals, neighbors, allocated places in public transports etc. Avoid close contact, like illness (waiter example). “Do they even deserve education, proper jobs, right to vote, own a property?”
Different opinions and debates. Racist imagery and stereotypes. “Singing and dancing negroes”. Similar to apes. They can’t learn anything. Routine violence and lynching, slaves as properties. Quentin Tarantino’s “Django Unchained”
American Anthropology before Boas: Irreconcilable differences between the two races. Polar opposites. Civilization vs. barbarians. Machines, bureaucracy, laws vs. randomness, hedonism and chaos.
Franz Boas W.E.B Du Bois Rosa Parks
Franz Boas: Late 19th-Early 20th centuries. Born in a wealthy Jewish family, suffered from anti-semitism and prejudices against Jews. Escape to the US, sensitive over race issues, systematic combat against scientific racism. Race does not determine culture and personal character. In his research, he showed what “Negroes achieved so far in civilized world” One race is not necessarily superior than the others. Relativistic, different characteristics. Collaboration with African American civil rights leaders and intellectuals, W.E.B. Du Bois.
Emphasis on principles of democracy, human rights and freedom. Addressed the American needs to be freed from the British influence. (Empathy). Anti-racist research: Advanced military organizations, economic and judicial systems in Black tribes (Nuer). New York: Columbia University vs politicians in Washington.
Leith Mullings: Racism today in the postcolonial and global context. Race as a social construct: “Race does not beget racism, but rather racism generates races”. (1990s). Antiracist anthropology especially after WW2. Racism is genocidal! Racism is related with “culture of poverty” in 50s and 60s, racism in cultural terms. “They” do not benefit from the social and cultural opportunities the American cities offer them. Prefer not to work, have a cultural tendency to be violent.
Biological determinism => Cultural determinism. One- drop rule, black and white polar opposites vs. the spectrum in Latin America, less separation, European descendants have cultural and social supremacy. Comparisons of different conceptions of race and racisms in different countries. Postcolonial world: Source of cheap labor, higher associations with single motherhood, crime and addictions. Cops killing African American “suspects”. Colonial traces-different racisms- still exist.
