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The Origins of Scientific Racism
Author(s): John P. Jackson, Jr. and Nadine M. Weidman
Source: The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, No. 50
(Winter, 2005/2006), pp. 66-79
Published by: JBHE Foundation, Inc
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25073379
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The Origins of Scientific Racism
John P. Jackson Jr. and Nadine M. Weidman
Editor's Note: After the publication of Darwin's Origin of the
Species, scientists promptly developed theories of genetic racial
inferiority.
Scientific racism, which was widely accepted, led to the field of
eugenics which ultimately resulted in the sterilization of
thousands of
black Americans and culminated in the murder of 6 million
European Jews.
DESPITE CHARLES DARWEN's idea that there
were no fixed divisions between species, let alone
races, polygenist notions of race, which assumed
that the divisions between races were ancient and fixed,
| thrived in the new evolutionary thought. Moreover; the idea
articulated by Herbert Spencer, that evolution was a struggle
between races rather than between individuals, became a

dominant fixture of twentieth-century racial thought. Finally,
the notion that there were several European races, such as
those sketched by William Z. Ripley, would begin to ^^|H
loom large in the twentieth century. Jf
Evolutionary thought grew into a significant ̂ HL^j?B
ideology that can be called "scientific racism" ^^^H
at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of ^^^^^^^H
the twentieth century. Scientific racism was ^^^^^^^H
the result of two Unes of scientific thought ̂ ^^^K||9H
merging. First, new ideas about heredity pro- ̂ ^^Hs|^9
vided an explanation of the way traits could ^^^|^h|H
be held stable for generation after generation. ̂ ^^^^^^|
Second, ideas flowered about the supremacy of ^^^^^^H
the north European races
? what was called
^^^^^H
Aryanism or Teutonicism in the nineteenth century ^^^^H
and Nordicism in the twentieth. These two Unes of ^^^
thought were conceptually distinct. That is, one
ares
could firmly beUeve in the notion that heredity was fixed and
immune from environmental influences while rejecting the
idea that the Nordics were the supreme race. Alternatively,
one could beUeve in Nordicism and reject the findings of
modern science regarding heredity. However, among some

thinkers these two ideas joined in the eugenics movement
and changed how the Western world thought about race.
The Problem of Heredity
After the pubUcation of On the Origin of Species, Charles
Darwin needed to answer a strong objection to his work:
how were the characteristics that allowed organisms to sur
vive transmitted from generation to generation? Natural
selection turned on the idea that tiny advantages could accu
mulate in an organism's Une of descent, but Darwin had no
mechanism that could explain this process. Indeed, most
ideas about heredity argued that it would be impossible for
characteristics to be transmitted down the generations.
There were two fundamental problems. The first was
"blending" inheritance. Darwin's theory depended on a ben
eficial trait in a parent generation being transmitted, more or
less intact, to the offspring generation. The problem was that
the dominant theory of inheritance did not allow for the sur
vival of a trait in this fashion; rather, in succeeding genera

(tions a favorable trait would eventually be obliterat
L ed by other traits over time. So, if tallness of a
^L plant
was a beneficial trait, and two tall plants
^^k
crossed to produce offspring, the offspring
^^A
would not be as tall as the taller of its two
^^B parents
but would be midway in height
^^^B
between the two. In artificial selection, the
^^^1
breeder could control crosses to ensure that
^^B
a specific trait was selected for. However,
^^V
Darwin's natural selection did not allow for
^^?
a guiding hand in this manner. Hence, it was
^m
not clear exactly how an advantageous trait
^ could be passed down without being swamped by
random crosses with inferior types.

Darwin j^ a famo^ review of Darwin's On the Origin of
Species, Fleeming Jenkin put the case for blending inheri
tance in explicitly racial terms. Jenkin argued that a white
man who was shipwrecked on an island inhabited by
Negroes would naturally rise to become their king.
However, his natural superiority over the savages would not
last through generations as the superior white qualities
would be swamped by the inferior Negro stock. "Can any
one believe" asked Jenkin, "that the whole island will grad
ually acquire a white, or even a yellow population, or that
the islanders would acquire the energy, courage, ingenuity,
John P. Jackson Jr. is an assistant professor in the department of
commu
nications at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Nadine M.
Weidman is a
lecturer in history of science at the Harvard University
Extension School.
This essay is excerpted from their book, Race, Racism and
Science: Social
Impact and Interaction, published by Rutgers University Press.
Reprinted

by permission.
66 WINTER 2005/2006
2015 08:47:15 UTC
THE ORIGINS OF SCIENTIFIC RACISM
I patience, self-control, endurance, in virtue of which quaUties
our hero killed so many of their ancestors, and begot so
many children; those quaUties, in fact, which the struggle for
existence would select, if it could select anything?"
To deal with the problem of blending inheritance, natural
selection needed a mechanism that would allow for benefi
cial traits to be passed to succeeding generations intact and
there was no clear idea what that mechanism could be.
The second problem natural selection faced was the inher
itance of acquired characteristics. In the late twentieth centu
ry and continuing now into the twenty-first,
the accepted idea is that heredity is largely
isolated from environmental influences. In
the nineteenth century, most ideas about

heredity did not distinguish so sharply
between heredity and environment. Indeed,
such a distinction made little sense given
widespread ideas about how an organism's
characteristics were formed by the environ
ment and passed along to subsequent gen
erations. Most learned people of the nine
| teenth century believed in the doctrine of
"inheritance of acquired characteristics."
Most often associated with the French evo
lutionist Jean Baptiste de Lamarck (1744
1829), the doctrine taught that environ
mental pressures change the physical nature of an organism
and that these acquired characteristics were inherited by sub
sequent generations.
In this view, an organism acquired traits through interac
tions with the environment and passed those changes to off
spring. Thus, there was no sharp
-
distinction between heredity

! and environment. Even Darwin
I argued for a version of the doc
| trine of the inheritance of
ae- -
quired characteristics when he put forth "pangenesis" as the
mechanism by which characteristics were passed from gen
eration to generation. Darwin argued that there were tiny
particles that cells dissipated through the body and passed
into the offspring. Because each part of the body manufac
tured its own particles, the environment could directly affect
heredity as changes in bodily form that owed to the environ
ment would be transmitted to the offspring. Darwin's theory
j
of pangenesis gained few adherents and quickly disappeared
/
Francis Galton
"Galton believed that Negroes were at least
two grades below Anglo-Saxons in ability
and intelligence.
"

as a mechanism for heredity after Darwin's death; however,
most scientists continued to accept that traits acquired through
environmental influences could be inherited biologicaUy.
Francis Galton
Most British inteUectuals in the 1830s dismissed the Utopian
schemes of Wilham Farr and others who argued for controUed
breeding, but they were taken up by Darwin's cousin, Francis
Galton (1822-1911). Galton coined the phrase "nature versus
nurture" and he came down strongly on the side of nature.
Galton's early Ufe and upbringing was
much like his cousin's. He was born into a
wealthy family and expected to become a
physician. Also like Darwin, he was miser
able at medical school. He was spared from
completing his medical education by his
father's death in 1844. Upon inheriting the
family fortune, Galton was free to pursue
his interest in natural history.
The kind of science Galton produced
exemplified a widespread understanding in

Great Britain about what counted as good
science. Galton claimed to be a strict adher
ent to induction, the form of reasoning that
moves from specific instances to a general
rule. Following the philosophy of science
laid down by Francis Bacon (1561-1626), most nineteenth
century British scientists argued that a good scientist proceed
ed by induction, gathering as many facts as possible without
any theory or general principle that might prejudice a neutral
and objective view of these facts. Darwin, for example, made
much of his inductivist principles
in On the Origin of Species
although historians have shown
that Darwin clearly had his theo
ry of natural selection in mind
and he set out to find examples to help him prove it.
Galton, however, seemed to be an avid inductivist who was
convinced that the road to science was collecting and tabu
lating as many examples as possible. For Galton, the induc
tivist method helped him sidestep the central problem of the

mechanism of heredity. Galton argued that we did not need
to know the mechanism of heredity to see its effects. We
could observe and enumerate how traits passed from gener
ation to generation while remaining agnostic on the actual
WINTER 2005/2006 67
2015 08:47:15 UTC
THE JOURNAL OF BLACKS IN HIGHER EDUCATION
mechanics of how this occurred. In other words, as long as
we could see the effects of heredity, we could control its
deleterious social impacts.
The most gifted prot?g? of Galton, and a key figure in pro
moting Galtonian views of heredity and science, was Karl
Pearson (1857-1936), who set out his views about science in
an influential work, The Grammar of Science (1882). For
Pearson, a good scientist avoided all speculation about unob
servable entities and focused only on directly sensed evi

dence. Pearson argued that there was no point in trying to
uncover the "real" causes of anything in science; they were,
in principle, unknowable.
However, the scientist could
apply mathematics, in partic
ular statistics, to scientific
phenomena without actually
committing to the existence
of an underlying causal
agent. In other words, if sta
tistics showed that heredity
worked in a particular man
ner, then the scientist's work
was done.
The idea that the scientists should focus only on biological
traits that could be directly measured and tabulated became
known as biometrics. Pearson founded the journal
Biometrika in 1901, which became the main outlet for sta
tistical studies of the physical traits of organisms. This view
of the sufficiency of statistical constructs to explain scientif

ic phenomena would continue on into the twentieth century,
particularly in psychometrics and IQ testing. Galton and
Pearson are correctly seen as the founders of this approach
and both contributed key ideas to the science of statistics.
One of Galton's most famous works makes his approach
clear and underscores the social motivations of his work. In
Hereditary Genius, pubUshed in 1869, Galton undertook a
statistical analysis of "men of genius" in the United
Kingdom. His book attempted to rank the geniuses in the
country in order to determine if mental ability was inherited
and concluded that it was. For Galton, society should take
steps to ensure the emergence of more geniuses and fewer of
lower inteUectual abiUty. Galton beUeved that improving the
race meant that the government should encourage breeding
among the best people and take steps to keep the superior
stocks from mixing with inferiors. The death of classical
In the nineteenth century cranial measures were used to
establish that Negroes
were at least two grades below Anglo-Saxons in ability and
intelligence.

Greek civilization, for example, owed to the lax morality
that discouraged marriage and to women of high ability
refusing to become mothers. Additionally, "in a small sea
bordered country, where emigration and immigration are
constantly going on, and where the manners are as dissolute
as were those of the Greeks ... the purity of a race would
necessarily fail."
Galton did not shy away from racial interpretations of his
data. He believed that Negroes were at least two grades below
Anglo-Saxons in ability and intelligence. "Every book allud
ing to Negro servants in America is full of instances" of the
half-witted nature of the race,
he wrote. "I was myself
much impressed by this fact
during my travels in Africa."
Like Spencer, Galton be
lieved that the inferior races
were losing the evolutionary
battle for existence in the

face of their superior Eur
opean conquerors. Galton
also argued for a social pro
gram that would prevent the
same fate for England, and he was very concerned about the
low level of the common EngUsh population. "It seems to
me," he concluded, "that the average standard of abiUty of the
present time should be raised" because "the needs of central
ization, communication, and culture caU for more brains and
mental stamina than the average of our race possess."
Heredity Genius drew mixed reviews from the English
press in the 1870s. Many scientists appreciated Galton's
sophisticated statistical technique but many religious
reviewers objected to his unapologetic naturaUsm, which
seemed to leave no room for God's grace or people's control
over their own salvation. Many reviewers criticized Galton's
assumption that heredity and not environmental factors was
the cause of genius, an idea that cut against most of the com

mon thinking of the time. Galton argued that the numbers
showed that the hereditary material was somehow immune |
from environmental influences, an idea that beUed widely
held ideas about the inheritance of acquired characteristics.
But evidence for Galton's view would soon be forthcoming
from German cytologists
? scientists who study cells.
However, Galton and Pearson would not necessarily appre
ciate the new evidence.
68 WINTER 2005/2006
2015 08:47:15 UTC
Hard Heredity
The move from "soft" heredity, which drew no sharp dis
tinctions between heredity and environment, and "hard"
heredity that did, had two scientific components. First, by the

1880s, advances in the microscope led cytologists, particu
larly German ones, to many new scientific discoveries: the
nucleus of cells, for example, and the process of mitosis,
wherein cells divide. In the 1880s several German cytolo
gists, including August Weismann, Moritz Nussbaum, Oscar
Hertwig, and Albeit Kolliker put forth a number of new
ideas that joined these discoveries A
in cytology to inform scientific T*h
understanding of Vererbung or f^
heredity. ^Jk
Although most late-nineteenth-
-
r-^Hl
century Germany cytologists had <^^^^^%fck mIM
similar findings and arguments, W Jj?I W^^?|B
the most famous contribution was
^^Jg^/ ^?|H
that of August Weismann, who <SBf 1
argued that the body actually con- BTT m
tained two kinds of cells. Most of ?lBP 11
the body was made up of somatic | /1
cells. Germ cells, by contrast,
were found only in the gonads and produced the sperm and

egg. Germ cells were the units of heredity and, unlike somat
ic cells, were immune to environmental influences. This sep
aration of germ cells from somatic cells required a drastic
reorientation of the common attitudes toward the body and
reproduction. In Weismann's view, the body and all of its
somatic cells were merely the conveyors of germ cells. The
body did not really produce germ cells, it just transmitted
them, unaltered, from generation to generation. This
Weismann called the continuity of the germ plasm.
Weismann believed that his theory meant the death of the
theory of acquired characteristics. In a rather grisly experi
ment, he cut the tails off mice, generation after generation.
Yet each time a new generation of mice was born from muti
lated parents, they were born with tails. Weismann pointed
to this as proof that germ plasm was immune from environ
mental influences and acquired characteristics could not be
transmitted from generation to generation.
The second major contribution to the new notion of hered
ity came from the work of the Austrian monk Gregor
Mendel (1822-1884). In the 1860s Mendel published a paper
that argued that characteristics of pea plants were preserved

as they passed down through generations. When he crossed
tall pea plants with short pea plants, the resulting offspring
were not medium in height but were almost uniformly tall.
Mendel could calculate the ratio of tall with short pea plants
and found that inheritance was always in a 3:1 ratio. Mendel
argued that this could be explained by supposing that the
units of inheritance, what he caUed "factors," existed in pairs
in the plants. Crossing these factors brought mathematicaUy
precise and very predictable patterns of inheritance. Mendel
pubUshed his work but it was ignored in the 1860s and for
three decades afterward. But on
the eve of the twentieth century,
^^T
when many scientists were look
?rf^g%? ing
for a new theory of heredity,
uirfl /mm ^k ^y
f?un<? Mendel's explanation
yjj|l X?f flfel wery promising-
Mendel's ideas
BMii^^r ^^Bl
('ea*t a sefious ?i?w to me meory

IjjF JBL
?f "blending" inheritance just as
ipR ftlWI?PI
Weismann's work had to the theo
^ft 1^1
TBHHT ry of acquired characteristics.
^B S |J% ^^nl
There was no firm consensus
^B y | I
over these issues at the dawn of the
;^^ twentieth century. The biometri
cians, Galton's followers, did not immediately appreciate
MendeUsm because biometrics focused on continuous rather
than discontinuous variations. Pearson, in particular, object
ed to MendeUsm because of its focus on discontinuous vari
ations. It also violated his views on the place of unobserv
able entities in science with its talk of unobservable "factors"
that caused these variations. Additionally, Lamarckians, par
ticularly in France, resisted Weismann's theories of the con
tinuity of germ plasm.
Nonetheless, the new scientific ideas had important imp?
cations for the development of racial ideologies. The notion

that heredity was everything and environmental factors
could not change the essence of a person's talents and abi?
ties certainly resonated with racist notions that there was
some inherited racial essence that could not be erased by
education or civi?zation. To see how racial themes blended
with the new ideas about heredity, we first need to look at the
developing ideas about race among social thinkers.
The Rise of Nordicism
Wil?am Z. Ripley's tripartite division of Europeans into
Teutonic, Alpine, and Mediterranean races in 1899 was wide
WINTER 2005/2006 69
2015 08:47:15 UTC
ly accepted even though no one could find a pure example of
any of these races. A significant group of writers believed the
most superior of the three was the Teutonic race, which was

also called the Aryan race in the nineteenth century and came
to be called the Nordic race in the twentieth.
The Nordicists added several important ideas to racial ide
ology. First was the notion that civilization itself was the
product of race, and many Nordicists devoted their work to
discovering the Nordic nature of all great civilizations of the
past. The belief in Nordic superiority was not new at the end
of the nineteenth century. Many
writers in the United States
before the Civil War trumpeted
the superiority of the Teutons.
The ancient Roman historian,
Tacitus (ca. 55-120), expressed
admiration for the Teutonic
tribes who lived north of what
Tacitus considered a decadent
Rome. Many writers in the United States in the early nine
teenth century took Tacitus' writings as proof that democra
cy as a form of government was actually an ancient practice
that began in the woods of ancient Germany. These writers

used this theory of the 'Teutonic origin" of democracy as
proof against conservative critics who argued that democra
cy was an inherently unstable form of government. Not so,
they argued: democracy originated in the German tribes with
their primitive parliaments and protorepresentative govern
ment and was therefore an ancient form of governance rather
than an untested theory. The Teutonic tribes of Angles and
Saxons brought this heritage to England; it then crossed the
Atlantic to the United States. Hence, democracy was in
some sense part of the racial heritage of the Germanic peo
ple who settled in the United States.
"The best remedy for whatever is amiss in America
would be if every Irishman killed a Negro and be
hanged for it.
"
The second contribution of the Nordicists to racial thought
was the claim that race, not nation or political alliance, was
the basis of social order. In the late nineteenth century, the
defense of democracy became deemphasized in favor of

more general arguments that the very capacity for civiliza
tion was racial in nature. In the 1880s, during a lecture tour
of the United States, writer Edward A. Freeman argued that
there were three homes of the Teutonic race: the United
States, England, and Germany. These nations, Freeman
argued, should put their differences behind them, for they
could surely rule the world. The division between superior
Anglo-Saxons and inferior Celts as well as other lower races
was succinctly stated by Freeman: "The best remedy for
whatever is amiss in America would be if every Irishman
killed a Negro and be hanged for it."
Comte Joseph-Arthur de Gobineau (1816-1882) gave one
of the most widely read and elab
Gobineau was from an aristocrat
and honor as had the ancient
Teutons. In the modern age, the
masses had risen and destroyed the natural order. Gobineau
pointed to the political turmoil of the French Revolution
wherein the ruling classes had been overrun by the masses.

Both the central ideas of Nordicism ? that race was the
basis of all civilization and that race must be the basis of
political order
? came together in Gobineau's most extend
ed treatment of race, the Essay on the Inequality of the
Races, published in four volumes between 1853 and 1855.
Gobineau was not concerned with biology as much as histo
ry and linguistics. He affirmed the widely accepted division
of the races into white, black, and yellow, and introduced the
idea that civilization itself was based on race. The white
race, which Gobineau called the "Aryan" race, was the only
one capable of creative thinking and civilization building.
The downfall of such great civilizations as Egypt and Greece
owed to the commingling of Aryan blood with that of the
lesser races.
The Supremacy of Nordics
Houston Stewart Chamberlain (1855-1927) followed and
extended Gobineau's theories. Although he was English by
birth, Chamberlain was a fervent admirer of Germany, mov

ing to Bayreuth, Germany, at the end of the nineteenth cen
tury. In 1899 Chamberlain published Foundations of the
Nineteenth Century, which laid out his racial ideas in full.
Like Gobineau, Chamberlain believed that race was the key
70 WINTER 2005/2006
2015 08:47:15 UTC
to all of history and the only truly creative race was the
Aryan. Much of the Foundations is devoted to showing that
all great historical figures were, on close examination,
Aryan. For example, Marco Polo, Copernicus, GaUleo, and
especially Jesus Christ were Aryans in Chamberlain's
account.
"Man can breed from the best, or he can eliminate the
worst by segregation or sterilization.
"

Both Gobineau and Chamberlain were, in some significant
sense, "racial mystics." Their discussion of the great
Teutonic race was shot through with talk of German blood
that mystically bound all Teutons together with a racial soul.
Although Chamberlain accepted all the anthropological evi
dence for the existence of the Teutonic/Aryan/Nordic race,
for him the reahty of race turned on a spiritual sharing of the
"race-soul." Hence, the importance of Chamberlain placed
on the supposed Aryan identity of Christ can be understood
as an embrace of a mystical racism that had a spiritual, not
materiaUstic, core.
The Founding of Anthroposociology
A French writer, Vacher de Lapouge (1854-1936), firmly
and forcefully rejected racial
mysticism. Lapouge was the
founder of a science he dubbed
"anthroposociology." He was a
tireless correspondent and organ
izer within the scientific commu
nity (he provided William Z.

Ripley with photographs for
Ripley's Races of Europe, for
example). Lapouge was one of the first to successfully
develop a full-blown version of scientific racism. Lapouge
grounded his theories of race firmly in Darwin rather than in
some mystical "racial soul" and this would have profound
influence on twentieth-century racial theories.
Lapouge's theories were developed most fully in two
works: Social Selection (1896) and The Aryan and His
Social Role ( 1899). For Lapouge, they key racial marker was
the cepha?c index, which anthropologists had used to divide
the European population into different races based on the
shape of their heads. Lapouge tied the index not just to head
shape but also to a range of socially desirable characteristics.
He was the champion of the dolichocephalic Aryans, long
headed, blond, blue-eyed, creative, strong, and natural lead
ers. By contrast, brachycephalic types were round-headed,
dark-skinned, and timid. "Brachies," as Lapouge called

them, were natural followers who did not have the imagina
tion necessary to create and lead. Lapouge's "Dolichos"
dominated northern Europe, England, and Germany.
Additionally, Lapouge followed Gobineau in arguing that
the French Revolution had destroyed the ancient aristocra
cies, which, according to Lapouge, had been dominated by
Dolichos.
An outspoken atheist, Lapouge had no patience for Cham
berlain and Gobineau's emphasis on a "race soul." Anthro
posociology was completely materialist and rejected any
and all appeals to any sort of quasi-religious mysticism. For
Lapouge, the science spoke for itself and had no need for
any other concepts
?
certainly not for any religious or
moral ideas. He called for the elimination of all moral senti
ment that would stand in the way of a massive breeding pro
gram that would eliminate racial inferiors. In his writings,
Lapouge demanded that sentimentality, especially religious
faith, blocked the necessary social reforms for the elimina

tion of racial inferiors through selective breeding. Like Ernst
Haeckel in Germany, Lapouge rejected all religion and all
^^ft^f^i of his fellow French scientists still
embraced versions of the inheri
tance of acquired characteristics, Jean Baptiste Lamarck
being something of a national hero. Not so Lapouge, whose
strict breeding program left no room for environmental
improvements. For Lapouge, the only solution to the racial
crisis would be the elimination of the inferior races. This
cavalier attitude toward human Ufe would be one of the key
"contributions" that Darwinism made in Germany. By the
dawn of the twentieth century these ideas were in the air: the
notion of a heredity immune from environmental influences
and a notion of Nordic supremacy. These two views would
be combined in the early twentieth century in the United
States and Germany as part of a larger eugenics movement.
WINTER 2005/2006 71
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The Rise of Eugenics
Between 1900 and 1945 nearly every modernizing society
had some form of eugenics movement. Recent work on the
history of the eugenics movements underscores how diverse
the ideologies and policies were that went under that name.
Popular understanding of eugenics is often restricted to the
horrors of Nazi Germany, but, in fact, leftists proclaimed
their adherence to eugenic doctrines as much as those on the
poUtical right. In many countries, eugenics was confined to
what we might think of as prenatal care, focusing on the
"future generations" carried by pregnant women. In other
countries, particularly those where Lamarckian doctrines
were still scientifically respectable, eugenics focused as
much on environmental improvement as it did on selective
breeding.
Still, despite the diversity of eugenic doctrines, there were

some commonaUties. Eugenics was the idea that good peo
ple should be encouraged to reproduce and bad people
should be discouraged from it. Taken in this light, eugenic
thinking was a way to think about social problems in scien
tific terms. The decades between 1870 and 1939 were con
fusing and exciting times. IndustriaUzation spread through
out Western society; the focus of Ufe was no longer the small
town or the farm. The dawn of the twentieth century brought
with it large, industrial cities and attendant labor unrest,
urban poverty, and slums. The worldwide economy experi
enced a number of economic shocks the largest of which
was the Great Depression that began in 1929. This new
social order included a new beUef in the responsibi?ty of the
government to take an active part in solving social problems.
The old, laissez-faire, free-market solutions proposed by
writers Uke Herbert Spencer were seen as increasingly inad
equate, even while many accepted his notions concerning
racial struggle.
Eugenics and Race in the United States
In the United States, for example, the idea of an activist gov
ernment in the early part of the twentieth century is often

caUed "Progressivism." In the Progressive era, an increasing
number of leaders caUed for the government to take action
to regulate a capita?sm that could no longer be controlled by
Adam Smith's invisible hand. This view led to many gov
ernmental interventions such as the Sherman Anti-Trust Act
( 1890), the Food and Drug Act (1906), and the Federal Trade
Commission (1914). The aim of legislative acts like these
HI ? JVly^W:#Pef^iPsi^BHi^Hfc
'
I i^ssa?^ ? JHPIpf
was to put issues of public concern under expert control so
that the deleterious effects of industrialization could be pre
dicted and the impacts minimized. If food, water, housing,
and healthcare could be put under governmental control to
make them safer, why not our breeding as well?
"Under existing conditions the most practical and hopeful
method of race improvement is through the elimination of
the least desirable elements in the nation by depriving
them of the power to contribute to future generations.
"

Although not all eugenicists in the United States were
racists, certain key figures certainly were. In the United
States the doctrine of Nordic superiority had one of its most
eloquent and forceful voices in Madison Grant (1865-1937).
Much like Charles Darwin, Grant was not a scientist by
training. Trained as an attorney, Grant was wealthy and had
no need to practice his profession in order to make money
and could therefore indulge his passion for natural history.
Like his close friend, President Theodore Roosevelt, Grant
was very active in the nascent conservationist movement.
He was a great organizer of causes for the environment and
was an active member of the Save the Redwoods League
and president of the Bronx Parkway Commission which cre
ated the Bronx Zoo. Grant was instrumental in saving from
extinction the American bison, whales, pronghorn antelopes,
I and bald eagles. He
was a key figure in preserving pristine |
72 WINTER 2005/2006
2015 08:47:15 UTC

wilderness for future generations to enjoy. Just as he wanted
to preserve the environment, Grant wanted to preserve the
race; for him these were two sides of the same coin. Grant's
racial magnum opus was pubUshed in 1916 as The Passing
of the Great Race or the Racial Basis of European History.
"Whether we like to admit it or not, the result of the mix
ture of two races y in the long run, gives us a race revert
ing to the more ancient, generalized and lower type.
"
Like Lapouge, Grant offered his racial theories as ground
ed in materiaUst science rather than on race mysticism. This
was no accident, since Lapouge had read the entire book and
offered his advice to Grant before pub?cation. Grant cele
brated the Nordic stock that made the original colonial pop
ulation of the British colonies. The Nordics created the
United States, according to Grant, but were in danger of

being swamped by the inferior races in what he called the
"survival of the unfit." Grant
blamed "sentimentalists" who
held the "fatuous behef in the
power of environment... to alter
heredity." Not so, Grant declared:
"Speaking EngUsh, wearing good
clothes, and going to school does
not transform a Negro into a
white man."
Immigration was a similar
threat. "We shall have a similar
experience with the PoUsh Jew," Grant warned, "whose
dwarf stature, pecuhar mentaUty, and ruthless concentration
on self-interest are being engrafted upon the stock of the
nation." The danger, Grant warned, was allowing more than
one race in the same geographical area under the common
"melting pot" notion that the environment would erase racial

differences. Grant argued, "Whether we like to admit it or
not, the result of the mixture of two races, in the long run,
gives us a race reverting to the more ancient, generahzed and
lower type. The cross between a white man and an Indian is
an Indian . . . and the cross between any of the three
European races and Jew is a Jew." The solution, Grant
declared, was twofold: man "can breed from the best, or he
can eUminate the worst by segregation or steriUzation."
Grant believed that it would be very difficult to increase
breeding of the best types, so, "under existing conditions the
most practical and hopeful method of race improvement is
through the eUmination of the least desirable elements in the
nation by depriving them of the power to contribute to future
generations."
Grant's call for a eugenically pure United States merged
with wider concerns about the degeneration of inferior social
types. This view was cast in terms of the new thinking about
heredity, epitomized by Richard L. Dugdale's 1874 The
Jukes: A Study in Crime, Pauperism, Disease, and Heredity.

Dugdale's work on the Jukes was a family study in which
the researcher studied an impoverished family in order to
discover how social problems were transmitted through gen
erations. Dugdale found that the family of Jukes, a fictional
name for a real family, was predisposed toward a Ufe of
crime and poverty. But, in keeping with commonly held
views of heredity of the time, Dugdale argued that by pro
viding education and medical care, this heredity tendency
toward crime in the Jukes family would be reversed. In other
words, Dugdale argued that
?environmental changes could
lead to changes in an inherited
condition.
In 1915 eugenicist Arthur
Estabrook pubUshed a second
edition of Dugdale's classic
work, The Jukes in 1915, which
reflected the new thinking
about heredity. Estabrook called

for eugenic segregation and
steriUzation as the solution to the problem of the Jukes,
claiming that environmental changes would do nothing to
change their inherited tendency toward crime. This change
in the evaluation of the Jukes family indicated that the
eugenic proposals of the late nineteenth century differed
from those of the early twentieth century, which came in the
wake of MendeUsm and Weismannism.
The first eugenics organization in the United States was the
Eugenics Committee of the American Breeder's Association
(ABA) formed in 1906. The ABA was dedicated to the
development of American agriculture, fostering cooperation
between farmers and ranchers, who had been developing
their stocks of animals and crops through selective breeding
for some time, and the growing number of academic biolo
gists interested in developing the mathematical and theoret
ical understanding of heredity.
WINTER 2005/2006 73
2015 08:47:15 UTC

The Eugenics Committee of the ABA was chaired by
David Starr Jordan, the president of Stanford, and included
| a number of prominent biologists: Vernon L. Kellogg,
William E. Castle, and Luther Burbank. Eventually the work
of the committee became so wide-ranging that the ABA
reorganized into the American Eugenics Association in
1913, and they began pubUshing the Journal of Heredity that
same year.
Among those involved with the Eugenics Committee was
Charles B. Davenport (1866-1944). Davenport had been
trained as an engineer as an undergraduate and ^^^k
received his Ph.D. in biology from Harvard in ^^^HH
1892. He was a professor at the University of ^P^^^l
Chicago until 1904, when he convinced the ^KJ^^^I
Carnegie Institution to underwrite a biological ̂ m?^^^^m
laboratory at Cold Spring Harbor in New ^^^^^^^M
York. The laboratory was the Station for the ^^^^^^^|
Study of Experimental Evolution and leaped ̂ ^^^^^^|
to the forefront of the scientific study of hered- ^^^^^^^|
ity with Davenport firmly in control. ^^^^^^H

Davenport was an established scientist; he had ^^^^^H
served on the editorial board of Karl Pearson's
^^^^H
Biometrika and had pubUshed some of the ^^^
first papers by an American scientist on D ., .aiic. , r v J
President of Stan]
Mendel. Davenport embraced both the bio- chair of the euge
metric approach and MendeUsm, even
the American Bn
though the two schools of thought were in the midst of a
feud over the nature of continuous versus discontinuous
variations. This reflected Davenport's plan for Cold Spring
Harbor, where he aimed to unite theories of heredity, evo
lution, and cytology. Davenport himself contributed stud
ies of heredity in mice, poultry, canaries, and horses using
both biometrical and Mendelian approaches. But Daven
port was also interested in human heredity. He published
papers on the Mendelian inheritance of human eye color
and a paper on the complex inheritance patterns in human
skin color.
Davenport's interest in human heredity translated into a

branch of the Station at Cold Spring Harbor. Davenport peti
tioned Mary Harriman, heir to her husband's railroad for
tune, to underwrite the Eugenics Records Office (ERO) at
Cold Spring Harbor in 1910. Davenport chose Harry H.
LaughUn (1880-1943) as the administrator of ERO. Laugh
lin was teaching biology in the agriculture school of the
Missouri State Normal School and had been corresponding
with Davenport on matters of heredity since 1907. In 1910
Davenport hired Laughlin to overtake the administrative
needs of ERO. Laughhn was dedicated to the twin purposes
of the ERO: to undertake serious research in human heredi
ty and to educate the public about eugenics.
Unlike researching heredity in farm animals or insects, sci
entists could not experiment on human beings, and the long
generations of humans made tracing lineages difficult with
in the lifetime of a researcher. To avoid these problems,
Laughlin and Davenport set out to collect family histories by
I sending specially trained eugenics fieldworkers out to
k question famiUes about their history of disease,
^^

feeblemindedness, or other eugenic disabiUties.
^^k
The fieldworkers would visit famines with
^^A questionnaires
and try to collect information
^^H
relevant to the goals of the ERO. They would
^^H
then take the collected information and create
^^H family
histories that could yield useful infor
^^m
mation for inherited traits. Some traits actual
^v ly
followed a strict pattern of MendeUan inher
^m
itance. By the mid-1910s researchers at the ERO
^ had discovered a number of them including poly
dactylism (having more than 10 fingers or
j?T
n
*, j toes) and Huntingtons chorea, for example. ora university
and
' ? r

nies committee of But the family histories went far beyond
eders Association mese physiological traits and included char
acteristics such as "feeblemindedness" ? a catch-all phrase
that covered not only what we might consider mental retar
dation but also any failure in scholastic performance
?
pauperism, alcoholism, criminality, musical ability, and
other social traits interpreted as owing entirely to heredity.
One famous example was a 1919 report Davenport pre
pared for the Navy on "thalassophilia" or love of the sea.
Davenport argued that the tendency for naval officers to
come from the same family owed to a Mendelian trait for
the love of the sea. Ignoring possible environmental pres
sures for sons to follow in their father's footsteps,
Davenport reasoned that since the "tendency to wander"
was a racial trait, as it appeared in Gypsies, Comanches,
and Huns, the tendency to wander on the sea must also be
an inherited trait.
Eugenics, however, was never just a science destined for
the ivory tower: another part of its mission was to translate

scientific truths, like thalassophiha, into pubUc policy.
Eugenicists caUed for two different kinds of social pro
74 WINTER 2005/2006
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grams. A 1926 popularized pamphlet, "A Eugenics
Catechism," published by the American Eugenics Society,
spelled out the two approaches. Negative eugenics dealt
"with the elimination of the dysgenic elements from socie
ty. Sterilization, immigration legislation, laws preventing
the fertile unfit from marrying, etc., come under this head."
By contrast, positive eugenics dealt "with the forces which
tend upward, or with the furtherance of human evolution.
Encouraging the best endowed to produce four or more
children per family, encouraging the study of eugenics by
all, etc., are positive eugenics." These policy options had

no greater champion in the United States than Laughlin,
who tirelessly promoted eugenic policies throughout the
nation.
Although both positive and negative eugenics were possi
ble, Laughlin, like his friend Madison Grant, concentrated
on the negative aspects. As the "Eugenics Catechism" ^^?k
made clear, there were three policy choices for ^^MBjij
proponents of negative eugenics: sterilization, ^^^H|H
immigration control, and laws preventing mar- ^^^^^^H
riage of eugenic undesirables. Eugenicists had ^^^^^^H
various degrees of success with these pro- ̂ ^^^^^H
grams of action. ^^^^^^H
As far as race was concerned, the option of ^^^^^^|
preventing eugenically undesirable marriages ̂ ^^^^|
was a nonissue. Marriages between whites and ^^^^B
blacks were legally prohibited long before Harry H.
eugenics became a popular doctrine. Laws
Director of the E
. ^ . . . . , . Office at the Stat
against miscegenation, interracial marriage,
Experimental E
were a mainstay of American legal culture Spring Harl
beginning in the eighteenth century and were not declared
unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court until 1967. Even
the authoritarian Madison Grant admitted that "in a democ

racy" it would be "a virtual impossibility to limit by law the
right to breed to a privileged and chosen few."
Although eugenicists had limited impact on the racial
aspect of marriage laws they were much more successful in
limiting immigration, mainly because their concerns dove
tailed with widespread anxieties about increased immigra
tion into the United States after World War I. Although the
United States has long proclaimed itself a nation of immi
grants, such a view waxed and waned according to econom
ic and social concerns. In the late nineteenth century, for
example, concerns that cheap labor from China was swamp
ing out "white" jobs in California led to the Chinese
Exclusion Act of 1882, which cut off all immigration from
China. Beginning around the same time, the nature of immi
gration from Europe began changing as more and more
immigrants arrived from southern and eastern Europe, many
of them Jewish and Catholic.
"Speaking English, wearing good clothes, and going
to school does not transform a Negro into a white

man.
"
By the 1910s immigration had touched off a reaction from
many circles. Labor leaders worried about the new immi
grants taking jobs from their traditional constituencies, and
many conservative Americans were concerned that the new
immigrants were political radicals espousing Marxist ideas.
Many Americans worried that the immigrants were Jewish
ior Catholic, and thus unable to assimilate into the tra
L ditionally Protestant United States.
^k Eugenicists expressed
concern that the new
^A immigrants
were from inferior racial stock and
^M
would bring with them the biological degrada
^H
tion of the United States. Madison Grant was
^V especially
concerned with the influx of eastern
^m
and southern European immigrants, for exam

W pie, the "swarm of PoUsh Jews" who were com
ing to New York City. "While he is being elbowed
Laughlin
out ?f ms own home," Grant despaired, "the
ugenics Research American looks calmly abroad and urges on
Z?utio%St^ld?f
others to suicidal ethics which m extermi"
or, New York nating his own race." His chief disciple
Lothrop Stoddard agreed: "Even within the white world,"
Stoddard wrote in The Rising Tide of Color in 1921, "migra
tions of lower human types Uke those which have worked
such havoc in the United States must be rigorously curtailed.
Such migrations upset standards, steri?ze better stocks,
increase low types, and compromise national futures more
than war, revolutions, or native deterioration." f
The eugenicists presented their concerns about immigra- f
tion before Congress in the early 1920s. Representative f
Albert Johnson, who chaired the House Committee on |
Immigration and Naturalization and was also an honorary %
president of the Eugenics Research Association, brought f

Harry LaughUn before the committee's 1922 hearings on 1
immigrant reform as an "expert eugenic witness." Laughlin g
came prepared with an elaborate statistical analysis that |
WINTER 2005/2006 75
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tracked the relationships between social ills and race. As
i early as 1914 Laughlin had worked with Judge Harry Olson
! of the Psychopathic Laboratory of the Municipal Court of
Chicago on a study that showed that immigrants were hered
itarily predisposed to crime; over 75 percent of the juvenile
delinquents in Chicago had foreign-born parents, predomi
nantly Slavic or Italian. Pointing to poverty as the cause of
crime was mistaken, Laughlin and Olson argued, because
poverty was created by poor genetic constitution.
In his testimony before the House committee, Laughlin

extended this kind of analysis to include not just
crime, but a host of "inadequacies" such as fee
blemindedness, insanity, epilepsy, tuberculosis,
blindness, deafness, deformity, and pauperism.
"The outstanding conclusion," Laughlin de
clared for the committee, "is that... the recent
immigrants, as a whole, present a higher per
centage of inborn socially inadequate qualities
than do the older stocks."
In 1924 Laughlin added another arrow to his
quiver: the intelligence test. Alfred Binet had
developed intelligence tests in France in 1904 as
a way to help the French government educate
children, especially those who had trouble learning in the
regular curriculum. In 1908 psychologist Henry H. Goddard
brought the tests to the United States. As the director of the
Vineland Training School for Feeble-Minded Boys and
Girls, Goddard sought a tool to help him classify his charges
I to provide them with an education fitting their abilities.

I Goddard eventually published a eugenic family study of his
j own,
The Kallikak Family: A Study in the Heredity of
Feeblemindedness in 1912.
Intelligence testing received an enormous boost during
World War I when Stanford psychologist Robert M. Yerkes
and others developed a series of tests to help the Army with
the induction process. The aim of the Army tests was not to
detect the feebleminded but to sort draftees into appropriate
positions in the military. The Army did not want to have
highly intelligent applicants assigned to ditch-digging and
dull draftees sent to Officer Training School. After the war,
intelligence testing generally, and the Army tests in particu
lar, took on new Ufe. The Army tests showed that black sol
diers were far less intelligent than white soldiers. This sur
prised no one and created little stir in the academic commu
nity until these conclusions were challenged in the 1930s. Of
Henry H Goddard
Director of the Vineland
Training School for Feeble

Minded Boys and Girls
more immediate importance during the 1920s and the great
immigration scare were the results that pointed to racial dif
ferences among the white inductees. One of the staff psy
chologists who had worked with the Army, Carl Brigham,
pubUshed a volume in 1923 from the Army data. Brigham
declared that only app?cants from the Nordic countries fared
well on the intelligence tests and recommended strict laws
forbidding race mixing and radically curtaiUng immigration
of Alpine and Mediterranean stocks. In the meantime, Henry
H. Goddard gave a series of intelligence tests to recent
immigrants on Ellis Island and declared that two
out of five were feebleminded.
The result of this widespread intelligence test
ing together with all of Laughlin's other data and
the enormous political popularity of immigra
tion restriction caused Congress to pass the
Immigration Restriction Act in 1924. Under the

1924 act, immigration quotas would be set
according to the 1880 census. The reason for
choosing the census from four and a half
decades before the act was passed was explicit
ly racial: that year predated the waves of immi
gration from southern and eastern Europe.
Hence, immigration was encouraged from the Nordic coun- I
tries and discouraged from the Alpine and Mediterranean
countries, just as Madison Grant had hoped.
The 1924 Immigration Restriction Act had an important
effect on racial theorists in the United States. Madison
Grant's Passing of the Great Race paid almost no attention
to "the Negro Problem" in the United States, instead focus
ing on the dangers of inferior white racial types overtaking
the heroic Nordics. However, the 1924 act solved the prob
lem of inferior white races coming into the country.
Additionally, World War I brought with it the "Great
Migration" of blacks from the rural South to the urban North
as they attempted to leave the authoritarian Jim Crow sys

tem, the crushing poverty of the tenant farming system, and
systematic disenfranchisement. Grant, and others, despaired
at the growing number of dark faces they saw on the city
streets and declared that something must be done about it. In
his last book, Conquest of a Continent, pubUshed in 1933,
Grant declared that, "The Negro problem must be taken vig
orously in hand by the Whites without delay. States which
have no laws preventing the intermarriage of white and
black should adopt them." Consequently, beginning in the I
76 WINTER 2005/2006
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1930s American scientists lost sight of the different white
races and focused increasingly, if not exclusively, on the
"black" and "white" races.
"The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is
broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes

Three generations of imbeciles are enough.
"
The third program of negative eugenics was sterilization.
Madison Grant had proposed mass sterilization, "beginning
always with the criminal, the diseased, and the insane, and
extending gradually to types which may be
called weaklings rather than defectives, and
perhaps ultimately to worthless race types."
However, unlike immigration restriction, in the
United States sterilization was not targeted
racially as Grant had urged. The involuntary
sterilization of individuals who had become
public charges, especially those institutional
ized, was a patchwork affair in the United
States, varying widely from state to state and
from institution to institution. The first law
? requiring compulsory sterilization of crimi
I nais, idiots, rapists, or imbeciles was passed in 1907 in i
j

Indiana. By 1922, 17 other states had similar statutes on the i
books. These laws were not racially targeted but were aimed
[
at institutionalized people who had, for one reason or anoth
er, become charges of the state. The reasons for these laws,
! moreover, were not exclusively eugenical: some physicians
believed that sterilization lowered the sex drive, making it
easier to manage people under institutional care. Others sim
ply did not want those who had shown a propensity to
become public charges to have children for whom they
could not care.
As with immigration reform, the champion of compulsory
| sterilization was Harry Laughlin, who believed that at least
10 percent of the population was defective and needed ster
ilization. He published a number of works between 1914 and
I 1922 that outlined the legal aspects of involuntary steriliza
tion. The key legal problem was that sterilizing people
against their will faced the constitutional objection of deny
| ing people their rights without due process of law. Laughlin
drafted, and urged states to adopt, a "Model Sterilization

Law," designed to withstand constitutional challenges.
| In 1927 Laughlin played a key role in the Supreme Court
decision in Buck v. Bell, which held that involuntary steril
ization was constitutional. The state of Virginia had
attempted to sterilize Carrie Buck, feebleminded mother of
a feebleminded child, under a sterilization statute based on
Laughlin's Model Sterilization Law. At the trial to deter
mine the constitutionality of the measure, Laughlin served
as an expert witness, testifying that Carrie Buck's im
morality and feeblemindedness were hereditary in nature.
In 1927 the Supreme Court decided that Virginia's actions
were constitutional. The renowned jurist, Oliver Wendell
Holmes Jr., in issuing the court's opinion, wrote, "It is bet
ter for all the world if, instead of waiting to
execute degenerate offspring for crime or to
let them starve for their imbecility, society
can prevent those who are manifestly unfit
from continuing their kind. The principle
that sustains compulsory vaccination is

broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian
tubes_Three generations of imbeciles are
enough."
Despite the triumph in Buck, sterilization
in the United States remained a haphazard
affair. The nature of the American federal
system left the enactment of sterilization statutes in the
hands of state governments, which meant there was no
central authority for making sterilization decisions.
Moreover, despite Buck, there were legal concerns as
laws needed to be carefully drafted in order to pass con
uThe Negro problem must be taken vigorously in
hand by the Whites without delay. States which have
no laws preventing the intermarriage of white and
black should adopt them.
"
stitutional muster. Moreover, the guarantees of freedom
of speech meant that involuntary sterilization was al
ways open to public criticism. The Roman Catholic Church

was a powerful critic of involuntary sterilization and
many scientists, including geneticist Herbert Spencer
Jennings and political scientist Joseph Gilman, took pub
lic stands against Laughlin's policy recommendations.
Despite the controversies surrounding involuntary steril
ization, however, between 60,000 and 90,000 Americans
were sterilized under various state programs in the twen
tieth century.
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The Nazis' "Racially Valueless" People
For many, the very term "eugenics" is equivalent to Nazi
racism and the genocide of Jews, Gypsies, and others under
the Nazi regime. However, it bears repeating that nearly
every industrialized country embraced eugenic doctrines in

the early twentieth century. Only in Nazi Germany, howev
er, did eugenical thinking play a substantial role in genocide.
There was no inevitable rela
tionship between eugenics, even
racist eugenics, and genocide,
but this does not change the fact
that under the Nazi regime,
genocide was the result.
Historians have conceptual
ized the app?ed biology of the
Nazis in two ways. The first is
the "selectionist" metaphor,
which viewed the world as
engaged in a struggle of race
against race, and the survival of
the fittest demanded racial puri
ty and the elimination of racial
inferiors. This view is clearest in
Nazi propaganda calling for the
elimination of Jews, Gypsies,

and Slavs as a Darwinian imper
ative. The second is the "organi
cist" metaphor in which society
is like an organism and each
group within society needed to
keep in its place for the organ
ism to function correctly. In
Nordicist terms, this meant that
the Nordics would be the lead
ers, the brain, and the Alpine and
Mediterranean races would be the workers, the hands or feet.
This view accounts for Nazi propaganda that painted Jews as
"parasites" on the Aryan body. Rats were a common Nazi
metaphor for Jews; the Nazis argued that such parasites
needed to be eliminated.
Eugenic laws came quickly under the Nazi regime. A few
months after coming to power, the Nazi government passed
the Law for the Prevention of Genetically Diseased
Offspring, aimed at sterilizing those carrying hereditary
defects. The Nazis instituted an elaborate system of "Genetic

Oliver Wendell Holmes
"Three generations of imbeciles is enough!"
Health Courts" to ensure that all whom they sterilized had
adequate legal protections. Across the Atlantic, American
eugenicists were deUghted. Harry LaughUn boasted that the
German law was based on his own Model SteriUzation Law.
Indeed, LaughUn received an honorary doctorate from the
University of Heidelberg in 1936 for his work in eugenics.
Paul Popenoe editorialized in the Journal of Heredity that
the German law was not racist in
origin and the legal safeguards in
place would prevent any possi
ble abuse. A few months later,
American eugenicists greeted
with joy the extension of the ster
ilization laws to cover "habitual
criminals." American eugeni
cists admired the German system
which, unlike the frustrating
patchwork state-by-state system

in the United States, enjoyed a
strong central authority to guar
antee the eugenic purity of the
country. Further laws followed
the SteriUzation law. In 1935
Hitler signed into law three
measures often called the "Nur
emberg Laws." These laws
stripped non-Aryans of citizen
ship, prohibited the marriage of
Jews and Aryans, and required
all couples wishing to marry to
submit to medical examinations
to ensure the purity of the race.
By 1939 the urge to purify the
race would take another step
beyond preventing the concep
tion of inferior children: the elimination of children whose
lives the Nazi government deemed not worth living.

In 1939 Hitler signed an order directing physicians to
determine if institutionalized patients who were incurably ill
should be granted a mercy killing by the state. This would
relieve the state and the German people of carrying the load
of "racially valueless" people. By 1941 the Nazis had euth
anized over 70,000 hospitalized people under this program.
The Nazis tested and improved many of the technical
aspects of the Shoah, or Holocaust, in the medical elimina
i
i SL
78 WINTER 2005/2006
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tion of lives deemed not worth Uving: the gassing, the trans
port of prisoners so as to not induce panic, and the use of
these deaths to advance medical knowledge. The Nazi re

gime, of course, culminated in the paroxysm of destruction
called the Shoah. Scholars have written literally thousands of
books on the Nazi genocide of Jews, Gypsies, and others in
the search for an explanation for these atrocities. Scientific
ideas about race certainly were not solely responsible for all
the horrors produced by Nazis, but it is worth noting two
aspects of science that were significant and tell us something
about the relationship between science and society. One of
the lessons of Darwinian racism was that not all lives were
equal in value and hence society should not fear the death of
some inferior individuals. Certainly that was the lesson of
Lapouge and Haeckel. Ploetz and Schallmayer argued that
the eugenic imperatives of Darwinism trumped traditional
moral inhibitions against kilUng because these were inferior
lives. This view was not Umited to European Darwinists.
"The laws of nature," Madison Grant declared, "require the
obliteration of the unfit, and human life is valuable only
when it is of use to the community or race." The United
States, however, never wed this ideology to political power

as happened under Hitler.
"It is better for all the world if, instead of waiting to
execute degenerate offspring for crime or to let them
starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who
are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind.
"
|
The second way that science contributed to the Nazi geno
cide was by providing the appearance of a value-neutral
judgment on the worth of some human lives. Science report
ed "the facts" about human inequaUties, and to object to "the
facts" on sentimental grounds was foolish. As an illustration,
consider the fates of the two chief ideologues of the Nazi
| regime:
Alfred Rosenberg and Hans F.K. G?nther. Rosen
I berg was part of the Nazi inner circle and his racial writings,
I notably Foundations of the Twentieth Century, echoed the
! race mysticism of Houston Stewart Chamberlain. After the
! war, Rosenberg was hanged as a war criminal. G?nther, by
| contrast, lived
a full life after the war and continued to pub

|
lish until his death in 1968. Because he was a scientist, and
science was divorced from poUtical concerns, he was im
I mune from the ramifications of his writings. A more chilling
i example is that of Otmar von Verschuer, the direct benefici
ary of the immense human suffering at Auschwitz, who con
tinued to serve on the boards of scientific journals until his
death in 1969.
"Sterilizations should begin with the criminal, the dis
eased, and the insane, and extending gradually to types
which may be called weaklings rather than defectives,
and perhaps ultimately to worthless race types.
"
After World War II the science of race would undergo a
stunning transformation. Science, which had provided a
substantial underpinning for racist doctrines before the
war, would be enrolled against racist concepts afterward.
Even as the Nazis rose to power in the 1930s, the funda
mental doctrines of scientific racism were under attack.

After the war the objectivity of science would be dedicat
ed to denying the truth of racial differences, a complete
reversal of orientation. IJBHEI
Winston Churchill on the Racial Danger
of Feeble-Minded People
Winston Churchill used opprobrious
terms like blackamoor, chink, wop,
and baboo and distinguished be
tween the white race and others. For
'
example, he wrote that at a Septem
ber 1944 conference, he was glad to
record that "the British Empire was
still keeping its position, with a total pop
ulation, including the Dominions and Colonies, of only 70
million white people."
Churchill as Home Secretary advocated the forced ster
ilization of "mental degenerates." In a 1910 letter that
reads as if drafted by a Nazi, he argued, "The unnatural
and increasingly rapid growth of the feeble-minded and
insane classes constitutes a national and race danger
which it is impossible to exaggerate."
He never outgrew his views. His doctor recalled that in

1955, Churchill asked whether black people got measles.
When he was told that there was a very high mortality
among Negroes from measles, he growled, "Well, there
are plenty left. They've a high rate of production."
?
Gretchen Rubin
Forty Ways to Look at Winston Churchill
(Ballantine Books, 2003)
I i
I
I
I
i
i
I
i
I
I
C? (a 'D 0
76 co
E 10
E .2

.2
WINTER 2005/2006 79
2015 08:47:15 UTC
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jspArticle
Contentsp. 66p. 67p. 68p. 69p. 70p. 71p. 72p. 73p. 74p. 75p.
76p. 77p. 78p. 79Issue Table of ContentsThe Journal of Blacks
in Higher Education, No. 50 (Winter, 2005/2006), pp. 1-
144Front Matter[Dedication: Daniel Hale Williams] [p. 1-
1]Letters [p. 5-5]News and ViewsDoctoral Degree Awards to
African Americans Reach Another All-Time High [pp. 6-
10]William B. Bryant. 1911-2005 [p. 10-10]A Solid Percentage
of Black Students at U.S. Colleges and Universities Are Foreign
Born [p. 11-11]Since 1980 Black Enrollments Have Increased at
All but a Few of the Nation's Highest-Ranked Colleges and
Universities [pp. 11-14]JBHE's Annual Citation Ranking of
Black Scholars in the Social Sciences [pp. 15-16]Classic Films
on the Black Experience [p. 16-16]The Golden Age of Howard
University Who's Who among Black Intellectuals, 1950 [p. 17-
17]Almost No Black Economists at the Nation's Highest-Ranked
Universities [pp. 18-20]Close up in Black: University Professor
Assembles a Major Collection of Movie Posters of Black Films
[p. 20-20]Let's Not Forget: Colin Powell's Huge Contribution in
the Struggle to Save Affirmative Action [p. 21-21]Ironies in a
Perfect Storm: Larry Summers' Gaffes Brought Greater Racial
and Gender Diversity to the Harvard Corporation [pp. 22-
25]Harvard without Summers: Harvard's New President Will Set
the Stage for Black Opportunities at America's Leading
Colleges and Universities [p. 25-25]Why Black Voters Need to
Defeat the Public Referendum to End Affirmative Action in
Admissions at the University of Michigan [pp. 26-29]Reduced
Cigarette Smoking May Be a Side Benefit of Higher Education

for African Americans [p. 30-30]The Worsening Racial Scoring
Gap in SAT II Subject Test Results [pp. 31-33]High-Ranking
Universities That Hold Classes on the Martin Luther King Jr.
Holiday [pp. 34-35]When Black High School Students Fear for
Their Safety, Preparing for College Has a Low Priority [p. 35-
35]In 2005 Harvard Was Shut out of Rhodes Scholarships: But
Two Black Students from the United States Won Awards [pp.
36-38]Why JBHE Is Not JAAHE [pp. 38-39]Berea College:
Where the Black Graduation Rate Exceeds the Rate for Whites
[p. 40-40]The Wealthiest Universities Are Enrolling the Fewest
Low-Income Students [pp. 40-41]Black Women Now Hold a
Large Lead over Black Men in Enrollments at the Nation's
Highest-Ranked Law Schools [pp. 42-44]The Growing List of
Colleges That Have Rejected the Use of the SAT [pp. 45-
46]Checking on the Progress of Blacks at the U.S. Military
Academies [p. 46-46]The Wall Street Tycoon Who Keeps on
Giving to Black Higher Education [p. 47-47]The First Woman
Elected Head of State in Africa Holds a Master's Degree from
Harvard University [p. 47-47]Ranking the Black Colleges and
Universities by the Average Overall Quality of Their Teachers
According to RateMyProfessors.com [pp. 48-49]Savage
Declines in Black Enrollments at Community Colleges in
California [pp. 50-52]At Most Black Colleges the Application
Essay Is a Piece of Cake [pp. 52-55]The States Are Being More
Generous to Black Colleges than Is Uncle Sam [p. 54-54]When
Georgia Tech Made a Decision on Race That Changed College
Football Forever [p. 55-55]Paul Wolfowitz's Early African
Challenge: New Policy in Chad to Reduce Funds for Education
Programs [pp. 56-57][Illustration] [pp. 58-59]Coretta Scott
King: The First Lady of the Civil Rights Movement, (1927-
2006) [p. 60-60]Vital Signs [pp. 61-65]The Origins of Scientific
Racism [pp. 66-79]Glenn Loury's Arduous Journey to Brown
University [pp. 80-83]Blacks Show Progress in Enrollments at
Predominantly White Dental Schools [pp. 84-87]Black Student
College Graduation Rates Remain Low, but Modest Progress
Begins to Show [pp. 88-96]There Is Both Good News and Bad

News in Black Participation in Advanced Placement Programs
[pp. 97-101]Applicants to Selective Colleges Show Increasing
Reluctance to Disclose Their Race [pp. 102-106]Nellie McKay.
1930-2006 [p. 105-105]A Black Republican with a Georgetown
Law Degree Aims to Become Maryland's Next U.S. Senator [p.
106-106]The Unsung Heroes of the Montgomery Bus Boycott
[p. 107-107]Opinions on Current ReadingReview: The Personal
History of America's Great Historian [pp. 108-111]Fort Worth,
Texas: A Half-Century Ago [p. 111-111]Opinions on Current
ReadingReview: The Black Nobel Laureate in Economics [pp.
112-113]Review: Black Pioneers in the Field of Architecture
[pp. 114-115]Black College Board Games [p. 115-115]Notable
Honors and Awards [p. 116-116]Appointments, Tenure
Decisions, and Promotions of African Americans in Higher
Education [pp. 118-119]Race Relations on Campus [pp. 120-
121]Scholarly Research on Blacks in Higher Education [p. 122-
122]Black Digest of Literature [pp. 123-125]Notable Minority-
Related Grants to Institutions of Higher Education [pp. 126-
127]Scholarly Papers [pp. 128-144]Back Matter
Variable descriptionDescription of variables in the Rent-a-Car
data setPownEAverage daily rate Rent-A-Car charged for its
economy cars in a given weekPownLAverage daily rate Rent-A-
Car charged for its luxury vehicles in a given
weekPcompAverage daily rate of the only competitor across all
vehicle categoriesSessionBinary variable with 1 indicating
weeks when college is in sessionData are in the next
worksheetWeatherNumber of days in a week with severe
weatherUnemploymentNumber of unemployed workers in the
county as of Tuesday each weekFlghtWkNumber of flights (in-
and outbound) serving the local airport that weekCancWkTotal
number of flights cancelled that weekHolidayBinary variable
with 1 indicating weeks of national holidays (long
weekends)WrecksNumber of major accidents that
weekDiscountNumber of customers in a given week using the 15
percent discount off the base rate offered through our affiliate

partner, a credit card companyUpgradeNumber of customers
who received a free upgrade to a luxury vehicle due to the
unavailability of economy vehiclesTotalAdAmount spent on
local advertising each weekAdBlbdWeekly spending on
billboard adsAdPaperWeekly spending on ads in local
newspapers, including the online versionAdTVWeekly spending
on ads placed with local TVQENumber of rental contracts
initiated each week in the economy categoryQ_lengthNumber of
paid days of rentals, grouped by the agreement starting
dateAge<25Number of rental agreements in a given week for
which the person listed as the primary driver on the rental
agreement was less than 25 years oldAge25_50Number of rental
agreements for which the person listed as the primary driver on
the rental agreement was between 25 and 50 years of
ageAge51+Number of rental agreements in a given week for
which the person listed as the primary driver on the rental
agreement was 51 years of age or olderFleetAgeAverage age of
our fleet measured in weeksBedTaxAmounts collected from the
1% local hospitality tax in the county - this information is
reported only on a monthly basis
VariablesWeekPownEPownLPcompSessionWeatherUnemplFlght
WkCancWkHolidayWrecksDiscountUpgradesTotalAdAdBlbdAd
PaperAdTVQEQ_lengthAge <25Age 25-50Age
51+FleetAgeBed'Tax129.9937.9937.75047014190221284304300
0873349641450.3104025.67229.9941.9941.50173941201670430
430007632713461751.3324.9926.9935.25028144130126543043
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727524421153.3524.9936.9924.51088147001010043043000763
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0783011559455.3728.9944.9934.5118574700203181581500813
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1057.3926.7648.9929.5108704700121081581500772602040175
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491360.31225.9937.9930.2510911482045025208151705075350
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822361062.31424.9938.9928.5009094800511081581500894813
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06826121351264.31623.9934.9928.25109884800850815815006
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1030.583166.361926.9941.993110939620010181581500783141
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6932.52126.9945.9932.510902640074049658156403510702481
9341733.52229.9945.99310288864101753432581503510862872
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195359005504018508035108026917481544.5182486.483330.99
39.9937.250098959306354018508035108533215561445.53431.
9946.9938.250010315900131004018508035107730322371846.5
3530.9946.9931.251010425900580485350883535106729723281
647.53627.9938.9932.2510102359012923477508835213481478
14511648.556038.773728.9940.99371010456100761448550818
4321348426321481549.53829.9937.9938.751010656100116026
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101145610078012371237007234914421638.24525.9941.9937.5
1011576100634311712370188010144114711639.299591.43463
4.9946.9931.5101136610090012371237005221516241240.2472
5.9937.9933.2512114061211525123712370010338817741241.2

4828.9942.9939.51011465820129012371237007535412491442.
24927.9945.993712115658401410385212370261595372771174
3.270942.705034.9940.9930.51011665300181121237123700734
529531144.25134.9939.993001117553002127123712370089362
15551945.25226.9941.9935.25001155530167012371237008235
314511746.2
"Race" and the Construction of Human Identity
Author(s): Audrey Smedley
Source: American Anthropologist, Vol. 100, No. 3 (Sep., 1998),
pp. 690-702
Published by: Wiley on behalf of the American Anthropological
Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/682047
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AUDREY SMEDLEY
Department of Sociology and Anthropology
Virginia Commonwealth University
Richmond, VA 23284-2040
"Race" and the Construction of Human Identity
Race as a mechanism of social stratification and as a forrn of
human identity is a recent concept in human history. Histori-
cal records show that neither the idea nor ideologies associated
with race existed before the seventeenth century. In the
United States, race became the main form of human identity,
and it has had a tragic effect on low-status "racial" minorities
and on those people who perceive themselves as of "mixed
race." We need to research and understand the consequences
of race as the premier source of human identity. This paper
briefly explores how race became a part of our culture and con-
sciousness and argues that we must disconnect cultural features
of identity from biological traits and study how "race"

eroded and superseded older forms of human identity. It
suggests that "race" ideology is already beginning to
disintegrate
as a result of twentieth-century changes. [race, identity,
history, ethnicity, culture]
Scholars in a variety of disciplines are increasingly
holding that "race" is a cultural invention, that it
bears no intrinsic relationship to actual human
physical variations, but reflects social meanings imposed
upon these variations. If such a perspective is to be widely
accepted, we are challenged to explore its ramifications
and consequences. "Race" emerged as the dominant form
of identity in those societies where it functions to stratify
the social system. Scholars in psychology, anthropology,
and other social fields need to examine in much greater
depth the reality of"race" as identity in our society. We
need to explore not only the consequences but the parame-
ters and social correlates of"racial" identity.
Within the last several decades we also have seen nu-
merous studies on "ethnicity" and "ethnic" differences.
Most often we see titles of publications that cover both

"race" and"ethnicity." Some studies treat the two as if
they are similar phenomena, perhaps differing only in de-
gree. Others, such as Stephen Steinberg's The Ethnic
Myth, and Ronald Takaki's various publications (1987,
1993) make a clear distinction between the two. My pur-
pose in this paper is to do several things. One is to drama-
tize the significance of"race" as distinct from "ethnicity"
by referring to historical data on human interactions in the
past. The second is to raise to greater clarity the reality of
race as a form of human identity by delving into some con-
temporary issues seldom confronted either by the public,
the media, or the scholars who write about them.
P>blems and Issues of Identity: Ethnicily and Race
Reading the histories of societies in the ancient world
can be very enlightening for those of us who do compara-
tive studies in history and anthropology. These histories
reveal an extraordinary amount of interaction among peo-
ples of different ethnic groups who occupied city-states,
villages, and towns. Throughout the known Old World,

trade was extensive, much travel was undertaken despite
enormous hardships, battles were fought among neigh-
boring and distant groups, alliances were established, and
treaties of peace were made. During the expansion of im-
perial states, armies marched on foot or rode on camels,
asses, horses, or elephants over tremendous distances.
The image of Alexander of Macedon marching his arrny to
the plains of Afghanistan, or sailing nearly halfway
around the world to India, in the absence of steam engines
and air power, seems an astonishing accomplishment. In
times of relative peace, some individuals traveled widely
and for many different reasons and they were received in
alien lands with hospitality. They traded with one another,
intelmarried, and spread cultural knowledge from region
to region.
All of this attests to the fact that interethnic interaction
has a long history. We humans are not new to the challenge
of trying to get along with "alien" others. What strategies

were used in ancient times to accommodate or transcend
differences? How did ancestral societies perceive and
deal with humans who differed from themselves, both cul-
turally andlor physically? In contemporary times many
areas of the world are reeling with "ethnic" conflicts, and
"ethnicity" seems to be a relatively new notion about hu-
man identities encumbered with elements of exclusivity,
opposition, competition, and antagonism. Some groups
define themselves in terms that appear rigid and unyield-
ing and in opposition always to "the others." In many
American Anthropologist 100(3):690-702. Copyright (C) 1999,
American Anthropological Association
2017 20:25:41 UTC
SMEDLEY / RACE AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF HUMAN
IDENTITY 691
cases we have seen populations assert an almost perma-
nent attachment to an ethnic or religious identity, as if such

features of our social selves are determined by our DNA
and cannot be transformed or diminished by any social
mechanisms. We have seen the hardened nature of ethnic
boundaries in places like the former Yugoslavia and
Uganda traIlsform neighbors and even kinspeople into
hated enemies, subjected to unimaginable brutalities. At
the same time more societies than ever before have be-
come seemingly much more multiethnic since World War
II as various peoples from largely Third World countries
began searching for job and educational opportunities in
the nations of Western Europe and the United States. In
some cases, populations that were once deemed generally
ethnically homogeneous are now unambiguously and ir-
revocably heterogeneous.
The media portrays a popular conception of these phe-
nomena as if they were something new in the human expe-
rience, and many scholars in the social sciences treat mlll-
tiethnicity as not only a modern phenomenon or a novel

condition, but one that inevitably creates problems and
potential, if not real, hostilities. Two broad categories of
problems can be identified: one having to do with how
people of different groups get along with one another; the
other is the problem of how individuals and groups per-
ceive who they are-the problem of"identity." The sets of
problems are clearly interrelated but not identical.
In the f?st categoly, there seems to be an underlying
premise or assumption that people of different ethnic
groups are in competition with one another so that conflict
and hostility are inevitable. Another related and often un-
stated assumption is that different ethnic groups can have
no common interests which makes any form of unity or
even amity impossible.
It is the second problematic that this paper addresses,
the one involving identity, an arena of problems that may
be more peculiar to Americans, in terms of their individual
conceptions of who they are, than to peoples of other na-
tions. There seems to be a psychologically based assump-

tion in our society that people must know who they are,
that a solid and positive sense of one's individual selfness
(or "identity") in a wider world of other "selves" is a nec-
essary condition for good psychological health. We hu-
mans are apparently the only animal that anguishes over
the question, "Who am I?" Perhaps the question arises be-
cause in industrial societies we lack a sense of bonding to a
kinship group, a village, or other more limited territorial
entity, and because our heavy focus on individualism dis-
connects us from others and fosters an abiding sense of
isolation and insecurity. Whatever the cause, some les-
sons from history might provide a broader context in
which to comprehend the dilemmas of human identity that
we experience in the modern world.
Historical Constructions of Identity
Historical records, including the Old and New Testa-
ments of the Bible, evince scenarios of interethnic interac-
tion that suggest some very different principles in opera-

tion throughout much of human history.' Ethnic groups
have always existed in the sense that clusters of people liv-
ing in demarcated areas develop lifestyles and language
features that distinguish them from others and they per-
ceive themselves as being separate societies with distinct
social histories. Although some conflicts among different
groups have been characteristic from the earliest recorded
histories, hostilities were usually neither constant nor the
basis on which long-term relationships were established.
One factor separates many in the contemporary world,
at least some of our understandings of it, from earlier con-
ceptions of human identity. That is that "ethnic" identity
was not perceived as ineluctably set in stone. Individuals
and groups of individuals often moved to new areas or
changed their identities by acquiring membership in a dif-
ferent group. People of the ancient world seemed to have
understood that cultural characteristics were external and
acquired forms of behavior, and that "barbarians' could
learn to speak the language of the Romans or the Greeks

and become participants in those cultures, and even citi-
zens of these states. Languages were indeed avenues to
new social identities, and ethnic identity itself was fluid
and malleable.
Until the rise of market capitalism, wage labor, the Prot-
estant Ethic, private property, and possessive individual-
ism, kinship connections also operated as major indices
that gave all peoples a sense of who they were. Even in the
technologically and politically most advanced societies of
the ancient world such as in Rome, kinship was the impor-
tant diacritic of connectedness to the social system. In all
of the mostly patrilineal societies of the Middle East, Af-
rica, and the Mediterranean, the norrnal person was identi-
fied by who his or her father was. The long list of names of
who begat whom in the Old Testament (Book of Genesis)
attests to the importance, especially at the tribal and chief-
dom levels, of genealogical identity.
Another important diagnostic of identity was occupa-
tion. Whether one was a farmer, carpenter, fisherman, tan-

ner, brass worker, herdsman, philosopher, government of-
ficial, senator, poet, healer, warrior, or harlot, was
significantly salient in the eyes of the ancient world to re-
quire the label. Occupations determined to some extent
how people were viewed and treated, as well as under-
scored their contribution to the society.
Throughout much of the period of the early imperial
states, numerous groups were in contact with one another,
and individuals often traveled from one region to another
as traders, warriors, craftsmen, travelers, geographers,
teachers, and so forth. From one end of the Mediterranean
2017 20:25:41 UTC
692 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST * VOL. 100, NO. 3 *
SEPTEMBER 1998
to another, in spite of the lack of modern forms of transpor-
tation, many men and women were interacting in an inter-
ethnic melange that included a wide range of cultures and

peoples. From time to time, a conquest state would expand
outward and incorporate some or most of this great vari-
ety. Populations did not necessarily lose any form of eth-
nic identity, but change was clearly understood as virtu-
ally inevitable as each society learned something new
from the cultures of others. Judging from the Greek histo-
rians such as Herodotus, Strabo, and Thucydides, the
Greeks were conscious of their borrowings from other
cultures (see Godolphin 1942).
When Alexander conquered peoples and lands all the
way to the Indus Valley in India, interacting with "civi-
lized" populations, nomadic pastoralists, settled villagers,
and a variety of hunting and fishing peoples, he exhorted
his warriors to intermarry with the peoples they conquered
in order to learn their languages and cultures. Garrisons of
military men were stationed all over the Roman world,
from Brittany to the Danube and the Black Sea, from Gi-
braltar to the Tigris/Euphrates valley and the Indian
Ocean, and soldiers often took local women as wives.
When the arrnies of the Moroccan king brought down the
Songhai empire in 1591, his soldiers stayed on in the
Western Sudan frontier area and intermarried with the lo-
cal people. Most of northern Africa, including Egypt of
the Delta, has been periodically invaded and ruled by out-
siders for the last three thousancl years or so. Hittites and
Hyksos from the mountainous areas of Turkey, Assyrians,
Persians, Syrians, Phoenicians, Greeks, Babylonians, Ro-

mans, and various more recent Turkish and Arabian
groups have settled in the towns of the coasts and inter-
acted with the indigenous Berbers and other peoples like
the Libyan groups, the Garamantes, the Carthaginians,
Syngambrians, and many others. Less well known is the
fact that both the Greeks and the Romans used mercenar-
ies from inner Africa (Nubians, Ethiopians, Kushites,
among others) in conflicts such as the Persian and
Peloponnesian wars (Herodotus, in Godolphin 1942).2
Peoples of different cultures coexisted for the most part
without strife, with alien segments often functioning in
distinct roles in the larger cities. One-third of the popula-
tion of Athens were foreigners as early as the Classical pe-
riod, five hundred years before the Christian era (Board-
man et al. 1986:222). And the city of Alexandria was (and
still is) a heterogeneous, sophisticated, and complex com-
munity under the Greeks, Romans, Christians, and Arabs.
Carthage was founded in North Africa by Phoenicians, but
peoples from all over the Mediterranean world and other
parts of Africa made their residence, or served as slaves, in
this great trading city. Moreover, men and women of dif-
ferent ethnic groups intermarried frequently, largely be-
cause malTiage was often used as a political or economic
strategy. Men gave their daughters and sisters to other
men, the historians tell us, because they desired political
and/or economic alliances with powerful and wealthy

men, without regard to ethnic origins. Timotheus was the
son of a Jewish mother and a Greek father. Samson mar-
ried a Philistine woman; Moses married an Ethiopian
woman; and many leaders, and lesser men, of the Greeks
and Romans married women not from their own societies.
Different societies and localized segments of larger so-
cieties were known either by their ethnic name for them-
selves or by the region, town, or village of their origins.
That identities of tlliS type were fluid is indicated by the
depictions of individual lives. Paul of Tarsus traveled and
preached extensively throughout much of the known
Mediterranean world during the early Christian era and
encountered individuals of different ethnic backgrounds.
He even identified himself as a Roman on occasion when
it was useful to do so. There are other examples of indi-
viduals in ancient writings who changed their ethnic iden-
tities for personal or private reasons.
Scholars who have studied African societies, especially
African history, have also been aware of the malleability
of ethnic identity on that continent. New ethnic groups
have emerged out of the colonial period, and individuals
have been known to transform themselves according to
their ethnic or religious milieus. One may be a Christian in
one context, and a Muslim in another, with no sense of am-
bivalence or deception. I have encountered this phenome-
non myself. Most Africans spoke several different lan-
guages, and this facilitated the molding of multiple
ethnicities by providing immediate access to cultural
knowledge. In situations of potential or real conflict, alle-
giances could be fly established without denial of the
extrinsic nature of sociaVethnic identities (Connah 1987;
Davidson 1991).
In addition to identities that are predicated on place of

birth, membership in kin groups, or descent in the male or
female line from known ancestors, language spoken, and
lifestyle to which individuals have been conditioned, an-
other feature critical to individual identity in the state sys-
tems was social position. Aristocrats seemed to have been
recognized even beyond the boundaries of their immedi-
ate societies. And certain men were widely famed for their
specialized skills or crafts that set them above others.
Every society had its large body of commoners and usu-
ally a great number of slaves captured in war or traded in
when this enterprise became a common regional feature.
Slaves were usually outsiders, but slavery was not consid-
ered by law and custom a permanent condition as slaves
could be manumitted, redeemed by kinspeople, or could
purchase theirown freedom (Smedley [1993]1999: ch. 6).
While enslavement was considered an unfortunate cir-
cumstance and most slaves did the menial and onerous
tasks of society, the roles of slaves varied widely. There
are numerous examples of slaves rising to political power
in the ancient states of the Mediterranean and in the Mus-
lim world. Often they held positions as generals who led
2017 20:25:41 UTC
SMEDLEY / ' RACE" AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF
HUMAN IDENTITY 693
armies of conquest and were frequently rewarded for their
successes. Whole slave dynasties like the Mamluks in
Egypt reigned in various areas of the Muslim world (Hitti
1953).

With the appearance of the proselytizing universal re-
ligions, Christianity and later Islam, that became competi-
tors with one another for the souls of all human groups, a
new focus of identity was gradually and increasingly
placed on membership in a religious community. During
the Middle Ages of Europe, Christians and Muslims were
competing not only for land and souls, but for political
power and influence. And various sects that developed
within each large religious community complicated mat-
ters by fostering internal dissension and even warfare inter
alia. Whether one was Sunni or Shiite, Protestant or
Catholic, was a critical determinant of one's identity lo-
cally and in the wider world. As with other aspects of eth-
nicity and ethnic differences, individuals often changed
their religious affiliation under circumstances prompted
by self-interest, or self-preservation, as in the case of the
300,000 or more Jews who were forced to convert to Ca-
tholicism in Medieval Spain during the Inquisition (Cas-
tro 1971). Yet Christians, Jews, and Muslims had lived to-
gether in relative amity, and even intermarried, for several
hundred years after the Muslim conquests and before the
rise of the Christian kingdoms to challenge Muslim
power.
What was absent from these different forms of human
identity is what we today would perceive as classifications
into "racial" groups, that is, the organization of all peoples
into a limited number of unequal or ranked categories
theoretically based on differences in their biophysical
traits. There are no "racial" designations in the literature
of the ancients and few references even to such human fea-
tures as skin color. Frank Snowden has demonstrated that
ever since at least the second millennium B.C., the peoples
of the Mediterranean world have interacted with other
groups having a variety of physical traits that differed
from the Italians and Greeks. Artistic depictions of Afri-

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