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1. JBHE Foundation, Inc is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education. http://www.jstor.org JBHE Foundation, Inc 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 Accessed: 05-12-2015 08:47 UTC Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/ info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected] This content downloaded from 159.178.22.27 on Sat, 05 Dec 2015 08:47:15 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

2. http://www.jstor.org http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=chii http://www.jstor.org/stable/25073379 http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp 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

3. 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

4. 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

5. (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.

6. 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

7. by permission. 66 WINTER 2005/2006 This content downloaded from 159.178.22.27 on Sat, 05 Dec 2015 08:47:15 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp 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

8. 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

9. ! 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. "

10. 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

11. 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

12. 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 This content downloaded from 159.178.22.27 on Sat, 05 Dec 2015 08:47:15 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp 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

13. 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

14. 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.

15. 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

16. 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

17. 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 This content downloaded from 159.178.22.27 on Sat, 05 Dec 2015 08:47:15 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp THE ORIGINS OF SCIENTIFIC RACISM 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

18. 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

19. 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

20. 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

21. 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

22. 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 This content downloaded from 159.178.22.27 on Sat, 05 Dec 2015 08:47:15 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp THE JOURNAL OF BLACKS IN HIGHER EDUCATION 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

23. 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

24. 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

25. 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.

26. 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

27. 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 This content downloaded from 159.178.22.27 on Sat, 05 Dec 2015 08:47:15 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp THE ORIGINS OF SCIENTIFIC RACISM 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. "

28. 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.

29. 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

30. 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 … Variable descriptionDescription of variables in the Rent-a-Car

31. 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

32. WkCancWkHolidayWrecksDiscountUpgradesTotalAdAdBlbdAd PaperAdTVQEQ_lengthAge <25Age 25-50Age 51+FleetAgeBed'Tax129.9937.9937.75047014190221284304300 0873349641450.3104025.67229.9941.9941.50173941201670430 430007632713461751.3324.9926.9935.25028144130126543043 0008231520511152.3428.9937.9935.5118804701682430430007 727524421153.3524.9936.9924.51088147001010043043000763 162051554.370251.75629.9943.9928.7513799476017244304300 0783011559455.3728.9944.9934.5118574700203181581500813 5514551256.3821.9925.993310871470041881581500913322061 1057.3926.7648.9929.5108704700121081581500772602040175 8.380998.151028.9942.9938.25128894730199181581500843172 2441859.31125.9937.99281085547009412197815138207629114 491360.31225.9937.9930.2510911482045025208151705075350 10541161.31325.9928.9931.51089448001510164681583106844 822361062.31424.9938.9928.5009094800511081581500894813 8381363.372072.621524.9940.9930.25119564800126118158150 06826121351264.31623.9934.9928.25109884800850815815006 322716321528.51730.9941.993610983480096081581500521869 311229.51824.9941.9930.5119386230110781581500944052064 1030.583166.361926.9941.993110939620010181581500783141 4541031.52025.9945.99321094862003331455815640087338126 6932.52126.9945.9932.510902640074049658156403510702481 9341733.52229.9945.99310288864101753432581503510862872 7451434.52329.9941.9933.750093764101250432581503510682 6421311635.592470.992429.9941.9931.25109536400121124325 815035108440515511836.52524.9941.9932.5109835800892432 5815035108637415521937.52628.9940.9934.751098858209644 32581503510844589601538.52724.9946.9933109955801111144 325815035109240010681439.591174.482829.9940.9931.500961 58002304325815035108145911531740.52928.9937.9937.75109 9658006624325815035108539614601141.53027.9937.9937.510 94558001824018508035108945814631242.53129.9937.9937.25 1098659005806268508057608034416481643.53226.9940.99311 195359005504018508035108026917481544.5182486.483330.99 39.9937.250098959306354018508035108533215561445.53431.

33. 9946.9938.250010315900131004018508035107730322371846.5 3530.9946.9931.251010425900580485350883535106729723281 647.53627.9938.9932.2510102359012923477508835213481478 14511648.556038.773728.9940.99371010456100761448550818 4321348426321481549.53829.9937.9938.751010656100116026 42508021347836720441450.53930.9941.9937.75101037610015 302642508021347126322321733.24030.9942.9939.5101052610 0111112642508021347722214432034.2123935.454126.9941.99 311010556100129350850800892799631735.24231.9938.9931.2 511107161301220508508007134316381736.24334.9939.993500 11046100114012371237006129416271837.24428.9940.9935.75 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 Accessed: 18-01-2017 20:25 UTC

34. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected] Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://about.jstor.org/terms American Anthropological Association, Wiley are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to American Anthropologist This content downloaded from 216.145.177.130 on Wed, 18 Jan 2017 20:25:41 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 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

35. 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 consciousness 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

36. 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 parameters and social correlates of"racial" identity. Within the last several decades we also have seen numerous 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 contemporary issues seldom confronted either by the public,

37. 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 peoples 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 imperial 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

38. 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 culturally 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 human 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,

39. American Anthropological Association This content downloaded from 216.145.177.130 on Wed, 18 Jan 2017 20:25:41 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms SMEDLEY / RACE AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF HUMAN IDENTITY 691 cases we have seen populations assert an almost permanent 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 become 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

40. 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 phenomena as if they were something new in the human experience, 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 perceive 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-

41. 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 nations. There seems to be a psychologically based assumption 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 necessary condition for good psychological health. We humans are apparently the only animal that anguishes over the question, "Who am I?" Perhaps the question arises because 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

42. 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 interaction 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 perceive 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-

43. 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 different 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 individualism, 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 important diacritic of connectedness to the social system. In all

44. of the mostly patrilineal societies of the Middle East, Af- rica, and the Mediterranean, the norrnal person was identified 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 occupation. 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

45. This content downloaded from 216.145.177.130 on Wed, 18 Jan 2017 20:25:41 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 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 interethnic 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 variety. Populations did not necessarily lose any form of ethnic 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 historians 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 "civilized" populations, nomadic pastoralists, settled villagers, and a variety of hunting and fishing peoples, he exhorted his warriors to intermarry with the peoples they conquered

46. 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 local people. Most of northern Africa, including Egypt of the Delta, has been periodically invaded and ruled by outsiders 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 interacted 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 population of Athens were foreigners as early as the Classical period, five hundred years before the Christian era (Board- man et al. 1986:222). And the city of Alexandria was (and

47. still is) a heterogeneous, sophisticated, and complex community 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 different ethnic groups intermarried frequently, largely because 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 married 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 societies were known either by their ethnic name for themselves 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 individuals in ancient writings who changed their ethnic identities for personal or private reasons. Scholars who have studied African societies, especially African history, have also been aware of the malleability

48. 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 phenomenon myself. Most Africans spoke several different languages, 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, another 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 immediate 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 usually 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 considered 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

49. This content downloaded from 216.145.177.130 on Wed, 18 Jan 2017 20:25:41 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 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 matters 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 ethnicity 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 together in relative amity, and even intermarried, for several hundred years after the Muslim conquests and before the

50. 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 features 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- cans of clear "negroid" features have been found, and numerous statues and paintings throughout the classical era show that physical variations in different populations were recognized and accurately depicted (Snowden 1 983). Except for indigenous Americans, members of all three of the large geographic areas that came to be categorized as "races" in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (Mon- goloid, Negroid, and Caucasoid) interacted in the ancient world. Chinese porcelain vases have been found widely distributed in the East African coastal trading cities, indicating trade between these peoples at least two thousand years old. The peoples of the Malagasy Republic represent a mixture of African and Asian (Indonesian) ancestry dat- ing back several thousand years. Greek sailors sailed down the Red Sea into the Indian Ocean and met East Afri- cans long before the Christian era. The peoples of the Mediterranean regularly traded with dark-skinned peo-

51. ples of the upper Nile valley (and all those in between), northwest Africa, andthe contrasting lighter-skinnedpeo- ples of Northern Europe. Various states of the Mediterra- nean called upon and used Ethiopian warriors as merce- naries in their armies, as we have seen. Some of the more desired slaves were very fair-skinned Slavs (from whom the term slave was derived) who were traded down the Danube by German tribesmen. Northern European slaves were shipped as far away as Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia, and the Muslim capital at Baghdad (Davis 1966). What seems strange to us today is that the biological variations among human groups were not given significant social meaning. Only occasionally do ancient writers ever even remark on the physical characteristics of a given person or people. Herodotus, in discussing the habits, cus- toms, and origins of different groups and noting variations in skin color, specifically tells us that this hardly matters. The Colchians are of Egyptian origin, he wrote, because they have black skins and wooly hair"which amounts to but little, since several other nations are so too."3 Most writers explained such differences as due to natural environmental factors such as the hot sun causing people to be dark skinned. No structuring of inequality, whether social, moral, intellectual, cultural or otherwise, was associated with people because of their skin color, although all "barbarians" varied in some ways from the somatic norm of the Mediterranean world. But barbarians were not irredeem- ably so, and, as we have seen, nothing in the values of the public life denied the transformability of even the most backward of barbarians. We in the contemporary Western world have often found it difficult to understand this phenomenon and as- sume that differences in skin color must have had some important meaning. Historians have tried to discover "ra-

52. cial" meanings in the literature of the ancients, assuming that these writers had the same attitudes and beliefs about human differences found in nineteenth- and twentieth- century North America. The reason for our myopia has to do with our deeply entrenched conditioning to the racial worldview (Smedley 1993, 1998). When "race" appeared in human history, it brought about a subtle but powerful transformation in the world's perceptions of human differences. It imposed social meanings on physical variations among human groups that served as the basis for the structuring of the total society. Since that time many people in the West have continued to link human identity to external physical features. We have been socialized to an ideology about the meaning of these differences based on a notion of heredity and pelmanence that was unknown in the ancient world and in the Middle Ages. This content downloaded from 216.145.177.130 on Wed, 18 Jan 2017 20:25:41 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 694 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST * VOL. 100, NO. 3 * SEPTEMBER 1998 counterposed against the vision that the English had of themselves as a civilized people. Every new experience, along with a growing technological superiority, widened the differences and denigrated all other peoples who were not part of the civilized world. The concept of "civilized"

53. polities in contrast to savagery and barbarism was beginning to take hold in much of Western Europe, and in this sense Englishmen were not much different from the rest of the Western world. But English notions of their own superiority were enhanced by their technological, material, and politicaI successes, by their earlier successful split from the Catholic realm, by the early rise of merchant capitalism, the development of new forms of wealth, notions about individual freedom, property rights, and self- sufficiency, and by a growing sense of their own unique- ness even among other Europeans. This was summed up in the myth of Anglo-Saxonism (Horsman 1981). "Race" emerged as a social classification that reflected this greatly expanded sense of human separateness and differences. Theodore Allen (1997) argues that the "invention" of the white race took place after an early, but unsuccessful, colonial revolt of servants and poor freedmen known as Bacon's Rebellion in 1676. Colonial leaders subsequently decided it would be useful to establish a division among the masses of poor to prevent their further collaboration against the governmental authorities. As African servants were vulnerable to policies that kept them in servitude indefinitely, and European servants had the protection of English law, colonial leaders developed a policy backed by new laws that separated African servants

54. and freedmen from those of European background. Over the next half century, they passed numerous laws that provided resources and benefits to poor, white freedmen and other laws that restricted the rights of"Africans," "mulattoes,s' and "Indians." Calling upon the model of the Chain of Being, and using natural differences in physical features, they created a new form of social identity. "Race" developed in the minds of some Europeans as a way to rationalize the conquest and brutal treatment of Native American populations, and especially the retention and perpetuation of slavery for imported Africans. As an ideology structuring social, economic, and political inequality, "race" contradicted developing trends in England and in Western European societies that promoted freedom, democracy, equality, and human rights. Europeans justified this attitude toward human differences by focusing on the physical features of the New World populations, magnifying and exaggerating their differences, and concluding that the Africans and Indians and their descendants were lesser forms of human beings, and that their inferiority was natural and/or God- given. The creation of "race" and racial ideology imposed on the conquered and enslaved peoples an identity as the lowest status groups in society. Myths about their inferior Race: The Modern Conception of Human

55. Differences and Human Identity In the eighteenth century this new mode of structuring inequality in human societies evolved in the American colonies and soon was present throughout the overseas territories of the colonizing countries of Western Europe. "Race" was a form of social identification and stratification that was seemingly grounded in the physical differences of populations interacting with one another in the New World? but whose real meaning rested in social and political realities. The terrn race had been used to refer to humans occasionally since the sixteenth century in the English language but was rarely used to refer to populations in the slave trade. It was a mere classificatory term like kind, type, or even breed, or stock, and it had no clear meaning until the eighteenth century. During this time, the English began to have wider experiences with varied populations and gradually developed attitudes and beliefs that had not appeared before in Western history and which reflected a new kind of understanding and interpretation of human differences. Understanding the foundations of race ideology is critical to our analysis. English settlers in North America failed to assimilate the peoples whom they …

56. How does Gobineau believe that civilizations fall? What is eugenics and what role does heredity play in eugenics? John. P Jackson, “The Origins of Scientific Racism” The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, No. 50 (Winter, 2005/2006) pp. 66-79 Jackson argues that scientific racism grew from a merger of two thoughts: heredity and the idea of passing down stable traits, and ideas of north European supremacy. These lines joined in the idea of eugenics. Darwin had to answer the question of how survival traits were transmitted from generation to generation. Natural selection was the process but he had not put forth a mechanism by which selection took place. His theory was confronted by two problems. It was not clear how the most advantageous traits got passed down when two different individuals with differing traits mixed. There was also the problem of In a review of Darwin’s Origin of the Species Fleeming Jenkins imagines a white man shipwrecked on an island inhabited by Negroes. This white man, he argues, would be unable to pass down his superiority through the generations, as his whiteness would be overtaken by blackness. Interestingly, some of the traits that Fleeming deems superior about the white man are his ability to conquer, oppress and rape. (see pgs 66-67) The second problem was inheritance of “acquired” characteristics. In the nineteenth century environmental influences and biological influences were not separated. It was believed possible to acquire traits through one’s environment and pass down these newly acquired traits. This idea of inheritance was developed by Jean Baptiste de Lamarck (1744- 1829).

57. While the idea of acquired traits had many adherents, it also had its enemies. Francis Galton (1822-1911), Darwin’s cousin, introduced the phrase “nature versus nurture,” as well as the notion of eugenics. Galton fell on the side of nature and did not believe that environment could change what nature has created. In other words, education, etc., would not improve individuals. He was a champion of induction—the method of reasoning from the specific or particular example to the more general. The inductive method begins with facts and based on these facts arrives at a conclusion that is said to be objective. Using this method he skirted the problem of how traits are passed down by arguing that we can observe the effects of heredity and not worry about the mechanism by which it came down. Biometrics was born as the science that focused on the study of measurable biological traits. Based on his study of Genius, Galton concluded that the government should put forth measures that insure the breeding among the best and most intelligent people. While his ideas were admired, many criticized Galton for excluding God’s grace, individual’s control over their lives and privileging heredity over environment. There is also a prejudice built into his inductive method, which he used to study the traits of the most educated and economically successful in his community. He only interviewed those who were already privileged and educated and did not look into how the poor and uneducated became so by adverse social conditions. Support for Galton’s notion of heredity came from Cytologists who studied cells. Weismann divided cells into two –germ cells, which were the cells contained in egg and sperm and immune to the environment. The other cells were simply carriers of the germ cells and were called somatic cells. The Austrian monk Mendel (1822-1884) challenged the idea of blending and argued that he could predict the traits passed down and they were discontinuous.

58. Ideas of heredity worked nicely with ideas of race. Comte Joseph-Arthur de Gobineau (1816-1882) defended whiteness or the Teutonic race as the only race able to build civilizations and engage in creative thinking. He believed Teutons were superior because they were able to dominate and conquer other civilizations. He thought African civilization was weak because Africans coexisted peacefully with their neighbors. But Gobineau believed there was a heavy price to pay by conquering. By civilizing the conquered, he believed the superior race would be weakened by race mixing. This is how civilizations fall- when there is race mixing. Vacher de Lapouge (1854-1936) – Anthroposociology- He developed the first full version of scientific racism by building on Darwin. He built on the cephalic index , which classified people according to head size and added to this classification other socially desirable characteristics. Arayans he called dolichocephalic- long headed , blond, blue eyed, creative, strong, natural leaders. Brachycephalic were dark-skinned, round-headed, timid and natural followers. He was an advocate of selective breeding. He did not believe in the Lamarckian notion of acquired traits and therefore improvement through environment. The only way to address the racial crisis for Lapouge is elimination of inferior race. This idea gave birth to the rise of Eugenics movement that was dominant between 1900-1945. Eugenics was the way people chose to address social problems in scientific terms. (1870-1939 industrialization and movement away from small towns) The rest of the article has a rich historical discussion of eugenics in Europe, the US and Nazi Germany. How did people understand themselves as part of a group before the idea of race?

59. What does it mean to argue that race is not a biological fact but a social construction? How did the idea of race function to oppress enslaved Africans in the US? Explain Theodore Allen’s notion that the idea of race originated as a response to Bacon’s rebellion? What does Smedley mean when she says we need to study the effects of a possible “transgenerational retention and transmission of an ethos of hopelessness” ? Audrey Smedley, “’Race’ and the Construction of Human Identity” American Anthropologist, Vol. 100, No 3, September 1998. https://archive.org/stream/raceandConstructionOfHumanIdentity /SmedleyRace_djvu.txt Audrey Smedley lays out her project in the first paragraph. She describes how the idea of race did not exist prior to the seventeenth century and her project of understanding the consequence of the use of the concept of race to understand human identity. She aims to show us the basis for disconnecting race from human identity. “Race as a mechanism of social stratification and as a form of human identity is a recent concept in human history. Historical 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 themselvesas of "mixed race." We need to research and understand the consequencesof race as the premier source of human identity. This paper briefly explores how race became a part of our culture and consciousness 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

60. "race" ideology is already beginning to disintegrate as a result of twentieth-century changes, [race, identity, history, ethnicity, culture]” She also writes:“Scholars in psychology, anthropology, and other social fields need toexamine in much greater depth the reality of "race" as identity in oursociety.We need to explore not only the consequences but the parameters and social correlates of "racial" identity.” Ethnicity vs Race In the Old World people traveled a lot to other countries despite the lack of modern machines that make travel much easier today. To get to other countries took much effort and struggle on boats, camels and horses. Travel was undergone primarily for trade and during war and expansion. When in new lands peaceful travelers traded goods and culture with each other and intermarried. Interethnic interaction was vast and existed for a long time before the idea of race came into usage. Still the question of difference did arise but not along fixed biological notions. She asks:“What strategies were used in ancient times to accommodate or transcenddifferences? How did ancestral societies perceive and deal with humans who differed from themselves, both culturally and/or physically?” In today’s society we question who we are. We look for an identity. Smedley notes this may be because we don’t have strong territorial limits belonging to kinship group. We live in an individualist society and individualism fosters isolation and insecurity. From as far back as the Old Testament we have records of ethic group formation. People were demarcated by land, language and culture and were able to understand themselves as different than other groups. Yet, ethnic identities were fluid and changed when individuals took on a new language and culture. When

61. people were conquered the soldiers were encouraged to intermarry. Those who spoke multiple languages had access to other cultures and multiple senses of identity. With the rise of proselytizing Christianity and Islam, a battle was raging for souls and land. Before the rise of Christian Kingdoms under Muslim rule, Judaism, Christianity and Islam lived together with each other and even intermarried. At this time there was no idea of racial classification. It did not exist as a concept under which to group people. 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 features as skin color. In the Ancient world people interacted together and lived among each other without employing racial difference as a means of division amongst themselves. They traded with each other, lived and intermarried. Skin color was not given much weight and there was no idea that differences were fixed by biology or stagnant. When the idea of race began to develop physical differences were given social meanings that were fixed based on ideas of heredity. The idea of race developed in the eighteenth century in the American colonies and spread to the colonies controlled by Western Europe. The term itself was used in the sixteenth century but not to refer to people in the slave trade. The English who came to North American had brought with them a notion of savagery that they had developed in their beliefs of superiority and domination over the Irish. Against the idea of savagery, the English understood themselves as

62. civilized. This sense of superiority was supported by their technological, political and economic successes and independence from Catholic rule. "Race" emerged as a social classification that reflected this greatly expanded sense of human separateness and differences. Theodore Allen (1997) argues that the "invention" of the white race took place after an early, but unsuccessful, colonial revolt of servants and poor freedmen known as Bacon's Rebellion in 1676. Colonial leaders subsequently decided it would be useful to establish a division among the masses of poor to prevent their further collaboration against the governmental authorities. As African servants were vulnerable to policies that keptthem in servitude indefinitely, and European servants hadthe protection of English law, colonial leaders developed a policy backed by new laws that separated African servants and freedmen from those of European background. Over the next half century , they passed numerous laws thatprovided resources and benefits to poor, white freedmen and other laws that restricted the rights of "Africans," "mulattoes," and "Indians." Calling upon the model of the Chain of Being, and using natural differences in physical features, they created a new form of social identity. "Race" developed in the minds of some Europeans as a way to rationalize the conquest and brutal treatment of Native American populations, and especially the retention and perpetuation of slavery for imported Africans. As an ideology structuring social, economic, and political inequality, "race" contradicted developing trends in England and in Western European societies that promoted freedom, democracy, equality, and human rights. Europeans justified this attitude toward human differences by focusing on the physical features of the New World populations, magnifying and exaggerating their differences, and concluding that the Africans and Indians and their descendants were lesser forms of human beings, and that their inferiority was natural and/or God- given. …. Myths about their inferior moral, intellectual, and behavioral features had begun to develop and

63. these facilitated proscription of any competition with Europeans. By the mid-eighteenth century, Negroes had been segregated from poor whites in the laws of most colonies and transformed into property as slaves in a state of permanent bondage. This theory argues that wealthy whites feared the collaboration of poor whites with black and Indigenous peoples after the uprising of Bacon’s Rebellion and used race and laws to align poor whites with wealthy whites along race and separate whites from uniting along class lines. Edmund Morgan (1975) also interpreted the actions ofthe early colonists in the process of establishing "racial" identities as stemming from the propertied colonists' fear of poor whites and possibly slaves engaging in rebellions together.Colonial leaders consciously formulated policies that would separate poor whites from Indians, blacks, and mulattoes and proceeded to provide the white poor, whom they had hitherto treated with contempt and hatred, with some privileges and special advantages. In time, class divisions diminished in the minds ofpoor whites and they saw themselves as having something in common with the propertied class,symbolized by their light skins and common origins in Europe. With laws progressively continuing to reduce the rights of blacks and Indians, it was not long before the various European groups coalesced into a white "racial" category whose high-status identity gave them access to wealth, power, opportunity, and privilege. Race eventually became the way people understood their individual and group identity. After the Civil War race ideas were strengthened. This continued to have a devastating affect on blacks, deemed the lowest social group. The problems that this has entailed, especially for the low- status "races," have been enormous, immensely complex, and almost intractable. Constant and unrelenting portrayals of their inferiority conditioned them to a self-imagery of being

64. culturally backward, primitive, intellectually stunted, prone to violence, morally corrupt, undeserving of the benefits of civilization, insensitive to the finer arts, and (in the case of Africans) aesthetically ugly and animal-like.Because of the cultural imperative of race ideology, all Americans were compelledto the view that a racial status, symbolized by biophysical attributes, was the premier determinant of their identity. "Race" identity took priority over religion, ethnic origin, education and training, socioeconomic class, occupation, language, values, beliefs, morals, lifestyles, geographical location, and all other human attributes that hitherto provided all groups and individuals with a sense of who they were. The dilemma for the low-status races was, and still is, how to construct a positive identity for themselves in the light of the "racial" identity imposed on them by the dominant society. Some responses to racism and racial oppression have been Negritude, Afrocentrism and Nativism. But these notions rely on a racial world view and the assumption of innateness and immutability that do not exist. Still, all these movements aim to restore pride and self image. And while this is critical it must be remembered that there are no real connections between culture and biology. Anyone can learn about another culture and there is no cause to think that one is obligated to learn about cultures because of a genetic connection. The connections are social. Racism in its various forms, legal, social, educational, economic, etc. has had devastating consequences. Many minority youth today not only are suffering the consequences of the oppressive and mean-spirited policies of white America, but they are descendants of men and women whose spirits were broken by these practices and who too often turned their pain and frustrations inward It is not enough to emphasize black resistance and overcoming

65. oppression. There are too many African Americans and Native Americans who do not have the skills to enter mainstream arenas, who seem to have dropped out of the social system, or who are incapable of dealing with the reality of modern life: those into the drug culture, the undereducated, those in our jails and prisons, or the homeless. We need to understand how to remove the barriers that have kept them down. Too few people have studied the phenomenon of the transgenerational retention and transmission of an ethos of hopelessness. But some filmmakers have documented the heartbreaking stories of black men and women who suffered unbearable discrimination in our nation's indus- tries. 13 And others have told the painful stories of the hopelessness suffered by so many on Indian reservations. Their sons and daughters felt their pain and the degradation they have experienced. We need to study this phenomenon and to understand what these kinds of experiences have done to the self-image and self-esteem of low-status minorities.

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