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 hotsky shine all day long, so that they are as black as foam frompitch. These nations lie at the edge, and are in their owngovernance. . .

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

Giltlingen Missal, Adoration of the Magi, Germany c. 1485-9

The Adoration of the Magi PanelSouth west EnglandAbout 1520Oak, painted and gilded

The Catalan Atlas, 1375 Inset detail: Prester John

Key Concepts

• ‘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

• 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 breed-

Go, bind your sons to exileTo 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/