Download Race as a historical `identity` and `identifier`

Race, Science, and Identity
HI269
Lecture 7
Race as a historical ‘identity’ and ‘identifier’
• When can we reasonably begin to talk
about ‘race’ as a factor in culture, society,
politics, science, etc?
• When does ‘race’ as we understand it
today emerge, and how were science,
technology and medicine involved?
• What intellectual, social, political factors
make ‘race’ interesting?
For myself, I accept the view that the peoples of Germany have
never contaminated themselves by intermarriage with foreigners
but remain of pure blood, distinct and unlike any other nation. One
result of this is that their physical characteristics, in so far as one
can generalize about such a large population, are always the same:
fierce-looking blue eyes, reddish hair, and big frames.
Tacitus, Germania 4; 18 First Century CE
Those that dwell in the east part, on them the sun and the hot
sky shine all day long, so that they are as black as foam from
pitch. These nations lie at the edge, and are in their own
governance. . .
Kyng Alisaunder, circa early 14th c
His skin, that had been black and loathsome, became all white,
through God’s grace, and was spotless without blemish. And when
the sultan saw that sight, well he believed on almighty God. . .
.Scarcely did she (his wife) recognize her lord. Then she well knew in
her mind that he did not believe at all in Mohammed, for his color was
entirely changed…
Cursor Mundi ca. 1325
The Adoration of the Magi Panel
South west England
About 1520
Oak, painted and gilded
Giltlingen Missal,
Adoration of the Magi,
Germany c. 1485-9
The Catalan Atlas, 1375
Inset detail: Prester John
Key Concepts
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‘Great Chain of Being’
Monogenism/polygenism
‘recapitulation’
Evolution
Nature/nurture
Essentialism
Biological determinism
Relativism
The Racial Sciences
• Comparative anatomy: anatomical studies drawing
their analytical power and results from comparisons
between human-animal, or human-human (sexual or
racial) comparisons
• Phrenology: the scientific study and categorization of
the shape of the skull to predict character and
characteristics
• Craniometry science devoted to the measurement of
the skull (initially externally, subsequently internally) and
correlation of such measurements to mental traits and
abilities
• Anthropometry
• Anthropology: esp. physical anthropology
• Psychology
Samuel G Morton Crania Americana 1839
Samuel G Morton Crania Americana 1839
• Caucasians: ‘This race is distinguished for the facility with which it
attains the highest intellectual endowments…’
• Asians: ‘In their intellectual character the Mongolians are ingenious,
imitative, and highly susceptible of cultivation [i.e. learning]....So
versatile are their feelings and actions, that they have been compared
to the monkey race, whose attention is perpetually changing from one
object to another’
• Native Americans: ‘In their mental character the Americans are averse
to cultivation, and slow in acquiring knowledge; restless, revengeful,
and fond of war, and wholly destitute of maritime adventure. They are
crafty, sensual, ungrateful, obstinate and unfeeling, and much of their
affection for their children may be traced to purely selfish motives.’
• Africans: ‘while the many nations which compose this race present a
singular diversity of intellectual character, of which the far extreme is
the lowest grade of humanity…The Negroes have little invention, but
strong powers of imitation, so that they readily acquire mechanic arts.
They have a great talent for music, and all their external senses are
remarkably acute…’
Josiah Clark Nott, Types of
Mankind, 1854
Stephen Jay Gould’s Critique
He slates the assumptions, the methodology and
the goal of the racial sciences:
‘the abstraction of intelligence as a single entity,
its location within the brain, its quantification as
one number for each individual, and the use of
these numbers to rank people in a single series
of worthiness, invariably to find that oppressed
and disadvantaged groups—races, classes, or
sexes—are innately inferior and deserve their
status.’
Race as an analytical tool
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Emergence of ‘race history’
Analogies with ‘gender’
‘Race’ and ‘orientalism’
‘Identity politics’ and ‘Identity history’
What USE is ‘race’ in history?
As an ‘identity’?
Do we choose it or is it imposed upon us?
‘Racial
science’ in
practice:
the slavery
debates
‘Whipped Slave’ Harper’s Weekly, 1863
Samuel Cartwright, Southern Physician
‘Dysaesthesia Aethiopica is a disease peculiar to negroes, affecting both
mind and body… It is much more prevalent among free negroes living in
clusters by themselves … and attacks only such slaves as live like free
negroes in regard to diet, drinks, exercise, etc. … From the careless
movements of the individuals affected with the complaint, they are apt to do
much mischief, which appears as if intentional, but is mostly owing to the
stupidness of mind and insensibility of the nerves induced by the disease.
…The fact of the existence of such a complaint, making man like an
automaton or senseless machine … can be clearly established by the most
direct and positive testimony. That it should have escaped the attention of
the medical profession, can only be accounted for because its attention
has not been sufficiently directed to the maladies of the negro race. The
northern physicians and people have noticed the symptoms, but not the
disease from which they spring. They ignorantly attribute the symptoms to
the debasing influence of slavery on the mind without considering that
those who have never been in slavery, or their fathers before them, are the
most afflicted, and the latest from the slave-holding South the least. The
disease is the natural offspring of negro liberty--the liberty to be idle, to
wallow in filth, and to indulge in improper food and drinks.
‘Racial science’ in practice: Immigration
Racial science in
practice:
assumptions and
access
‘Race’ in practice: Empire
The White
Man’s Burden
“Take up the White Man's
burden-Send forth the best ye
breedGo, bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives'
need;
To wait, in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild-Your new-caught sullen
peoples,
Half devil and half child.”
Rudyard Kipling, ‘The White
Man’s Burden’, 1899
The Sciences of
Race, the
building blocks
of empire
Up-coming events
• Today! 3-5 Milburn House: drop in, meet the
artist and crochet your own condom for the
Warwick SHAW Arts trail…
• Next week: heaps of events!!
See http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/chm/events/shaw2009/