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In the historical sense of the word, scientific racism (or pseudo-scientifical racism) includes Physical Anthropology , Anthropometry , Craniometry , Phrenology , Physiognomy and other disciplines, in order to provide a Typology of different " Human Race s", based on a biological conception of the race. Such theories have provided Ideological justifications to Racism , Slavery and Colonialism during the New Imperialism period in the second half of the 19th century. Their popularity coincide with this period of European expansion in the world. These scholarly theories sometimes worked in conjunction with Racism , for example in the case of the " Human Zoo s", during which various human beings were presented in cages during Colonial Exhibition s. They were strongly denounced after World War II and the Holocaust , in particular by the UNESCO 1950 statement, signed by internationally known scholars, and titled '' The Race Question ''. Today, the phrase is used either as an Accusation or to describe what is generally considered to be historical racist propaganda about the supposed existence of different "human races", refuted by ''The Race Question'' UNESCO statement who advocated the use of the more precise term " Ethnic Group ". The phrase has been applied retroactively to publications on race as far back as the 18th century. Many subsequently disproven claims of scientific conclusion have been used as advocacy for racist policies. OVERVIEW
Beside this first acception of the term, scientific racism is a pejorative label sometimes given to modern theories or arguments that allege that Scientific Evidence shows significant Evolution ary differences between races or Ethnic Groups . In this sense, the term is used to criticize modern studies of Human Genetics or studies claiming to show a link between Race And Intelligence , as well as hierarchically classifying races, hence asserting the superiority or inferiority of specific ones. Critics of such studies assert that both "race" and "intelligence" are Fuzzy Concept s. EARLIEST EXAMPLES OF SCIENTIFIC RACISM See Also: Race (historical definitions) Regular publications on race and other claimed differences between people of different geographical locations began at least as early as the eighteenth century. The 17th and 18th century were marked by and Epic s such as '' The Song Of Roland '', Boulainvilliers sought some kind of scientific legitimity by basing his distinction between a Nordic race and a Latin race on true, historical events. But his theory of races was completely distinct from the biological concept of race later used by nineteenth century's theories of scientific racism. Carolus Linnaeus (1707-78), a Swedish botanist, physician and zoologist, who laid the bases of Binomial Nomenclature (the method of naming species) and is known as the "father of modern Taxonomy " (the science of describing, categorising and naming organisms) was also a pioneer in defining the concept of "race" as applied to humans. Within ''Homo sapiens'' he proposed four taxa of a lower (unnamed) rank. These categories are, ''Americanus'', ''Asiaticus'', ''Africanus'', and ''Europeanus''. They were based on place of origin at first, and later skin color. Each race had certain characteristics that were endemic to individuals belonging to it. Native Americans were reddish, stubborn, and angered easily. Africans were black, relaxed and negligent. Asians were yellow, avaricious, and easily distracted. Europeans were white, gentle, and inventive.Linnaeus, Carl. ''Systema Naturae'' (1767), p. 29 In addition, in ''Amoenitates academicae'' (1763), Carolus Linnaeus defined ''Homo anthropomorpha'' as a catch-all race for a variety of human-like mythological creatures, including the Troglodyte , Satyr , Hydra , and Phoenix . He claimed that not only did these creatures actually exist, but were in reality inaccurate descriptions of real-world ape-like creatures. He also defined in ''Systema Naturæ'' ''Homo ferus'' as "four-footed, mute, hairy." It included the subraces ''Juvenis lupinus hessensis'' ( Wolf Boy s), who he thought were raised by animals, and ''Juvenis hannoveranus'' ( Peter Of Hanover ) and ''Puella campanica'' ( Wild-girl Of Champagne ). He likewise defined ''Homo monstrosous'' as agile and fainthearted, and included in this race the Patagonian Giant , the Dwarf Of The Alps , and the Monorchid Hottentot . Edward Long , a British Colonial Administrator , created a more simple classification of race in ''History of Jamaica'' (1774). The next year, Johann Blumenbach published his thesis, ''On the Natural Varieties of Mankind'', one of the foundational work of scientific racism. Blumenbach, however, supported the Monogenism thesis, according to which all mankind descended from the same, original authors, against Samuel Von Sömmering and Christoph Meiners , who supported Polygenism . 19TH CENTURY THEORIES OF RACE The Scientific Classification proposed by Linnaeus was a prerequisite of any attempts at scientifically classifying humanity according to various races. Unilinealism depicting a progression from primitive human societies to industrialised civilisation became popular amongst philosophers including Friedrich Hegel , Immanuel Kant and Auguste Comte , and fitted well with the Christian belief of a divine Creation following which all of humanity descended from the same Adam and Eve. In contrast, Polygenist theory alleged that there were different origins of mankind, thus making it possible to conceive of different, biological, human races, or to classify other humans as akin to animals without rights. Early scientific racist theories such as Arthur Gobineau 's '' An Essay On The Inequality Of The Human Races '' (1853-1855) were mostly Decadent in that they did not believe in the possibility of "improvement of the race." did state, however, However with " Social Darwinism ", a later name for ideas from earlier thinkers combined with concepts of Evolution by Natural Selection , scientific racist theories could postulate a racist " Survival Of The Fittest ," an expression coined by Herbert Spencer in 1864. Ideas of improving human races were popularized by Francis Galton 's " Eugenics ". Scientific racism theories, influenced by other Discourse s and events, became extremely popular towards the end of the 19th century. Phrenology , which attempted to describe traits of character by outward appearance, including by the shape of skulls, measured via Craniometry , and of skeletons, was put to use in racist ends. Thus, skulls and skeletons of Black people and other indigenous people were displayed between apes and white men. Thus, Ota Benga , a Pygmy , was displayed as the "Missing Link" in 1906 in the Bronx Zoo in New York, alongside apes and other animals. Some of the most influential theories included Vacher De Lapouge (1854-1936)'s "anthroposociology" and Herder (1744-1803), who applied "race" to Nationalist theory to develop the first conception of Ethnic Nationalism . To the contrary, Ernest Renan famously argued in 1882 against Herder for a conception of nation based on the "will to live together," which was not founded on any ethnic or racial prerequisite. Scientific racist discourse posited the historical existence of "national races" such as German and French, branching from basal races supposed to have existed for millennia, such as the " Aryan race", and believed political boundaries should mirror these supposed racial ones. Craniometry and physical anthropology Dutch scholar conception of history. These scientific racist researchs were continued by Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire (1772-1844) and Paul Broca (1824-80). Samuel George Morton (1799-1851), one of the inspirator of Physical Anthropology , collected hundreds of human skulls from all over the world and started trying to find a way to classify them according to some logical criteria. Influenced by the common racist theories of his time, he claimed that he could judge the intellectual capacity of a race by the Cranial Capacity (the measure of the volume of the interior of the skull). A large skull meant a large brain and high intellectual capacity, and a small skull indicated a small brain and decreased intellectual capacity. By studying these skulls he decided at what point Caucasians stopped being Caucasians, and at what point Negroes began. Morton had many skulls from ancient Egypt, and concluded that the Ancient Egyptians were not African , but were White . His two major monographs were the ''Crania Americana'' ( 1839 ), ''An Inquiry into the Distinctive Characteristics of the Aboriginal Race of America'' and ''Crania Aegyptiaca'' (1844). In ''Crania Americana'', he claimed that the mean cranial capacity of the skulls of Whites was 87 in³ (1,425 cm³), while that of Blacks was 78 in³ (1,278 cm³). Based on the measurement of 144 skulls of Native Americans , he reported a figure of 82 in³ (1,344 cm³) . 's map of the "cephalic index" in Europe, from '' The Races Of Europe '' (1899).]] Stephen Jay Gould (1941-2002), an American Paleontologist , evolutionary biologist and Historian Of Science , studied from a historical perspective these craniometric works in '' The Mismeasure Of Man '' (1981). He showed that Samuel Morton had fudged data and "overpacked" the skulls with filler in order to justify his racist opinions. In 1873 , Paul Broca (1824-1880), founder of the Anthropological Society of Paris in 1859, found the same pattern described by Samuel Morton's ''Crania Americana'' by weighing brains at Autopsy . Other historical studies alleging a Black-White difference in brain size include Bean (1906), Mall, (1909), Pearl, (1934) and Vint (1934). Monogenism and polygenism Morton's followers, particularly Josiah C. Nott (1804-1873) and George Gliddon (1809-57) in their monumental tribute to Morton's work, ''Types of Mankind'' (1854), carried Morton's ideas further and claimed that his findings in fact supported the notion of polygenism, which claims that humanity originates from different lineages and is the ancestor of the Multiregional Hypothesis . Morton himself had been reluctant to explicitly espouse polygenism because it was a major challenge to the biblical account of Creation . Charles Darwin opposed Nott and Glidon's polygenist — and Creationist s — arguments in his 1871 '' The Descent Of Man '', arguing for a monogenism of the species. Darwin conceived the common origin of all humans (aka Single-origin Hypothesis ) as essential for Evolutionary Theory . Furthermore, Josiah Nott was the translator of Arthur De Gobineau 's '' An Essay On The Inequality Of The Human Races '' (1853-55), which is one of the founder of "biological racism", in contrast to Boulainvilliers (1658-1722)'s theory of races. Philosophers of the Enlightenment and racial classifications A few years later, Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), celebrated as the symbol of the Enlightenment 's philosophy of progress and Humanism , wrote his essay ''On the Different Races of Man'' (1775) in which he attempted a scientific classification of human races. Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) would also include a strongly Evolutionist account of history in '' Lectures On The Philosophy Of History '', describing the development of the ''Geist'' (Spirit or Reason) in history through a serie of incarnations in specific '' Volkgeist s'' (Folk Spirit). Hegel's Philosophy Of History was explicitly biased in favor of Europe, and, in particular, of the Prussia n state, conceived as the achievement of history (the " End Of History "). In his chapter on the Geographical Foundings of Universal History, Hegel wrote that "each People represented a particular degree of the development of the Spirit," thus forming a "nation." Influenced, as many others, by Montesquieu 's theory on the influence of climate on mores and laws, which the latter had developed in '' The Spirit Of The Laws '' (1748), Hegel wrote that: ''"It is true that climate has influence in that sence that neither the warm zone nor the cold zone are favourable to the liberty of man and to the apparition of historical peoples. Friedrich Hegel , '' Lectures On The Philosophy Of History '', 1828-1830, Chapter IV, Natural Conditions - The Geographical Foundings of Universal History; 1, General Definitions; A. Natural Conditioning, §5. "''(i.e. of peoples that "have" a history, in contrast with " Savage s" that allegedly have no history). Unsurprisingly, Hegel thus favored the ''Geist'' in temperate zones. Hegel finally made an account of " Universal History ," which started with the Oriental World , then the Greek Antiquity , then the Roman and the Christian World , and, ultimately, the Prussian World Hegel, ''ibid.'', Chapter V It is true, however, that Hegel's philosophy, as Kant for that manner, can not be reduced to such evolutionist statements. In the same lessons, Hegel thus write that "America is the country of the future", but that "philosophy does not concerns itself with prophecies", but with history. Hegel, ''ibid.'', IV, 2, The New World , 4 (1 is the Introduction) "North America and its Destiny," excipit Nevertheless, as great as Hegel's philosophy may be considered to be, it has provided justifications for Europe's Imperialism until World War I . In the same way, the works of Montesquieu, one of the early founder of modern Sociology , has provided various justifications over the age claiming to scientifically ground "Negroes' inferiority" on claims of the alleged influence of climate. Such racial and evolutionist statements would be echoed by Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) who attributed civilizational primacy, on naturalistic grounds, to the "white races" who gained their sensitivity and intelligence by refinement in the rigorous North: ''"The highest civilization and culture, apart from the ancient Hindus and Egyptians , are found exclusively among the white races; and even with many dark peoples, the ruling caste or race is fairer in colour than the rest and has, therefore, evidently immigrated, for example, the Brahmin s, the Incas , and the rulers of the South Sea Islands . All this is due to the fact that necessity is the mother of invention because those tribes that emigrated early to the north, and there gradually became white, had to develop all their intellectual powers and invent and perfect all the arts in their struggle with need, want and misery, which in their many forms were brought about by the climate. This they had to do in order to make up for the Parsimony of nature and out of it all came their high civilization."'' Schopenhauer , ''Parerga and Paralipomena: Short Philosophical Essays'', Volume II, Section 92 Various typologies One of the first Typologies used to classify various human races was invented by Georges Vacher De Lapouge (1854-1936), a theoretician of Eugenics , who published in 1899 ''L'Aryen et son rôle social'' (1899 - "The Aryan and his social role"). In this book, he classified humanity into various, hierarchized, races, spanning from the "Aryan white race, dolichocephalic", to the "brachycephalic" "mediocre and inert" race, best represented by the " Jew ." Between these, Vacher de Lapouge identified the "'' Homo Europaeus '' (Teutonic, Protestant, etc.), the "'' Homo Alpinus ''" ( Auvergnat , Turkish , etc.), and finally the "'' Homo Mediterraneus ''" ( Neapolitan , Andalus , etc.) Vacher de Lapouge became one of the leading inspiration of Nazi Anti-semitism and Nazi Racist Ideology . See Pierre-André Taguieff , ''La couleur et le sang - Doctrines racistes à la française'' ("Colour and Blood - Racist doctrines ''à la française''"), Paris, Mille Et Une Nuits , 2002, 203 pages, and ''La Force du préjugé - Essai sur le racisme et ses doubles'', Tel Gallimard , La Découverte, 1987, 644 pages Vacher de Lapouge's classification was mirrored in William Z. Ripley in '' The Races Of Europe '' (1899), a book which had a large influence on US White Supremacism . Ripley even made a map of Europe according to the alleged Cephalic Index of its inhabitants. He was an important influence of the American eugenist Madison Grant . Furthermore, according to John Efron (Indiana Univ.), the late 19th century also witnessed "the scientizing of '', Vol. 19, n°1 / January 2005 . Deniker, Grant and the "Nordic race" One of William Ripley's main opponent was Joseph Deniker (1852-1918). While Ripley maintained, as Vacher de Lapouge, that Europe was composed of three racial stocks, Joseph Deniker held that there were ten European races (six primary races with four subsidiary or sub-races). Deniker's most lasting contribution to the field of racial theory was the designation of one of his races as ''la race nordique'' (the Northern race). While this group had no special place in Deniker's racial model, it would be elevated by Madison Grant (1865-1937) in his Nordic Theory to the engine of civilization. Grant adopted Ripley's three-race model for Europeans, but disliked Ripley's use of the "Teuton" for one of the races. Grant transliterated ''la race nordique'' into "Nordic", and promoted it to the top of his racial hierarchy in his own popular racial theory of the 1910s and 1920s. Furthermore, Deniker proposed that the concept of "race" was too confusing, and instead proposed the use of the word " Ethnic Group " instead, which was later adopted prominently in the work of Julian Huxley and Alfred C. Haddon . Ripley argued that Deniker's idea of a "race" should be rather called a "type", since it was far less biologically rigid that most approaches to the question of race. Scientific racism in the Svecoman movement in 19th century Finland See Also: Language strife Svecoman Fennoman A Language Strife developed in the Grand Duchy Of Finland in the 19th century, supported by Finnish speaking nationalists, the Fennoman s, which aimed at raising the majority language, Finnish Language , from peasant-status it had during the Swedish reign to the position of a national language and status. These were opposed by the the Swedish speaking minority living in Finland, called Svecomans and best represented by the linguist Axel Olof Freudenthal (1836-1911), who defended the use of the Swedish Language against Finnish . Svecomans were influenced by Herder, Gobineau, Blumenbach (1752-1840) and others racialist theorists, and thus considered that Finland was separated into two discrete "races," one speaking Finnish, and the other, superior one, assimilated to the "Germanic race," spoke Swedish. Scientific racism and eugenics Madison Grant 's '' The Passing Of The Great Race '' (1916) was described by Stephen Jay Gould as "the most influential tract of American scientific racism." Grant's Nordic Theory was embraced in Germany by the Racial Hygiene movement in the 1920s-30s. The term itself of ''Rassenhygiene'' was coined by Alfred Ploetz (1860-1940) in ''Racial Hygiene Basics'' (1895). Ploetz founded the German Society For Racial Hygiene in 1905. The German Racial hygiene movement advocated Selective Breeding , Compulsory Sterilization s and a close alignment of Public Health with Eugenics . Racial hygiene was historically tied to traditional notions of Public Health , but usually with an enhanced emphasis on Heredity — what philosopher and historian Michel Foucault has called State Racism . The use of social measures to attempt to preserve or enhance biological characteristics was first proposed by Francis Galton (1822-1911) in his early work, starting in 1869. He then coined the term "eugenics." A Statistician before all, Galton had created the statistical concepts of regression and Correlation and discovered Regression Toward The Mean , and was the first to apply statistical methods to the study of human differences and " Inheritance Of Intelligence ". He introduced the use of Questionnaires and Survey s for collecting data on sets of Population s, which he needed for genealogical and biographical works and for his Anthropometric studies. Galton also founded Psychometrics (the science of measuring mental faculties) and Differential Psychology (the branch of psychology that concerns itself with psychological differences between people, rather than on common traits). As scientific racism, eugenics became very popular in the early 20th century, and both were main influence of the Nazi Racial Policies as well as their Eugenics Program . Galton, Karl Pearson (1857-1936) and Walter F. R. Weldon (1860-1906) founded in 1901 the '' Biometrika '' scientific journal, which promoted the study of Biometrics and the statistical analysis of Hereditary phenomena. Charles Davenport (1866-1944) was involved for a short time in the review. He published in 1929 ''Race Crossing in Jamaica'', purported to give statistical evidence for biological and cultural degradation following Interbreeding between white and black populations. Davenport had connections to Nazi Germany , before and during World War II. in 1939 he wrote a contribution to the ''festschrift'' for Otto Reche (1879-1966), who became an important figure within the plan to "remove" those populations considered "inferior" in eastern Germany.Kuhl, 1994. Scientific racism and popular racist ideology , called the ''Hottentot Venus''. Born to a Khoisan family, she was displayed in London in the early 19th century that sparked the indignation of the African Association. She was examined by French anatomist Georges Cuvier and then died in 1815. Her remains were conserved until 1974 at the '' Musée De L'Homme '' and have since been returned to South Africa on Nelson Mandela 's request. ]] Human Zoo s were an important means of bolstering "popular racism", while being at the same time an object of Anthropology and Anthropometry ; they were sometimes called " Ethnographic exhibitions" or "Negro villages." Starting in the 1870s, they were common until World War II, and the concept has even survived until the 21st century. Ethnographic zoos were often predicated on Unilinealism and a version of Social Darwinism . A number of them placed Indigenous People (particularly Africans) in a continuum somewhere between the great apes and human beings of European descent. Fundamental to any scientific racist theory and White Supremacist views, Theories of unilineal evolution claimed that Western Culture was the contemporary pinnacle of Social Evolution . It was upheld by famous thinkers such as August Comte (1798-1857), Edward Burnett Tylor (1832-1917), Lewis Henry Morgan (1818-1881), and Herbert Spencer (1820-1903). Social Evolutionism represented an attempt to formalize social thinking along scientific lines, later influenced by the biological Theory Of Evolution . The display of human beings in cages, in an attempt to demonstrate scientific racist theories, became common in the second half of the 19th century. The 1889 World Fair in Paris had as major attraction a "Negro village" where 400 indigenous people were displayed. Carl Hagenbeck , a German merchant in wild animals, exhibited in 1874 Samoans and Sami People described as "purely natural" populations. Two years later, he sent an emissary to Sudan to capture wild beasts for his Circus attractions, along with Nubian s. Geoffroy de Saint-Hilaire, son of Edouard Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire and owner of the Parisian ''Jardin d'acclimatation'', presented Nubians and Inuit in 1877. In 1906, Madison Grant , head of the New York Zoological Society , had Congolese Pygmy Ota Benga put on display at the Bronx Zoo in New York City alongside Ape s and other animals. At the behest of Grant, a prominent Eugenicist , the zoo director placed Ota Benga in a cage with an orangutan and labeled him ''The Missing Link'', illustrating that in evolutionary terms Africans like Ota Benga were closer to apes than were Europeans. Historian Pascal Blanchard et al. thus wrote:
Justification of slavery in the nineteenth century of "a Negro head… a Caucasian skull… a Mongol head."]] Because the —Southern and Western States'', Volume XI, New Orleans, 1851 Cartwright also described ''dysaethesia aethiopica'', "called by overseers 'rascality'". The attention focused on race leading up to, during, and after the American Civil War led to a proliferation of works looking at the physiological differences between Caucasians and Negro es, with a large amount of attention paid to the question of " Miscegenation ." Work by early Anthropologists such as Josiah Clark Nott , George Robins Gliddon , Robert Knox , and Samuel George Morton attempted to prove scientifically that Negroes were not the same species as White People , and alleged that the rulers of Ancient Egypt were not actually Africa ns, and that racial mixture provided infertile or weak offspring. In the years after the Civil War, Southern physicians wrote text after text outlining different scientific studies which sought to prove that the Negro was dying out as a race under the conditions of freedom, implying that the system of Slavery had been beneficial. IN THE TWENTIETH AND TWENTY FIRST CENTURIES This sort of work continued through the early twentieth century, but soon Intelligence Testing became a new source for comparisons between races. Poorly designed studies appeared to justify the claim that "Negroes," as well as Eastern European s and Jew s, were physically and mentally inferior to whites from Northern Europe. In the United States, Eugenicists such as Harry H. Laughlin and Madison Grant sought to justify policies such as Compulsory Sterilization and Immigration Restriction by using scientific research to show that certain populations of people were physically or mentally inadequate. Compulsory sterilization programs were active until the 1960s and even further on. In France, Nobel Prize winner Alexis Carrel , who founded the ancestor of the present INED demographic institute, followed a similar discourse, in particular under the Vichy Regime . However, Vichy didn't implement any eugenics programs. Nazi Germany The Nazis and sympathizers published a great number of books dealing with scientific racism. Many beliefs which would become associated with the Nazis, such as Eugenics and Anti-Semitism , had been in circulation since the 19th century, and the Nazis seized on this body of existing work in their own publications. Books such as ''Rassenkunde des deutschen Volkes'' (Ethnology of German People) by Hans Günther and ''Rasse und Seele'' (Race and Soul) by Dr. Ludwig Ferdinand Clauss attempt to identify and classify the differences between the German , Nordic or Aryan type and other, supposedly inferior, peoples using scientific and anthropological methods. These books were used as texts in German schools during the Nazi era. |
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