Quotations & Lecture Material on Racism

I quoted a couple passages in 240A yesterday which I promised to put on the blog. For those in 240B (at 2:30) I did not get to these quotes yesterday but I will next Tuesday, Oct. 2nd.

The first passage is from an article by Stephen Jay Gould entitled "The Geometer of Race," which is mainly about one of the first race theories developed by Johann Friedrich Blumenbach in 1776. He coined the term "caucasian" to refer to whites and placed them at the top of his hierarchy of races. And his basis for doing this was not what could be considered "hard science" or fact but aesthetic judgment.
"... he identified the people around Mount Causasus as the closest embodiments of the original ideal and proceeded to name the entire European race for its finest representatives."

"But Blumenbach now faced a dilemma. He had already affirmed the mental and moral equality of all peoples. He therefore could not use these conventional criteria of racist ranking to establish degrees of relative departure from the Caucasian ideal. Instead, and however subjective (and even risible) we view the criterion today, Blumenbach chose physical beauty as his guide to ranking. He simply affirmed that Europeans were most beautiful, with Caucasians as the most comely of all. This explains why Blumenbach, ... linked the maximal beauty of the Causasians to the place of human origin. Blumenbach viewed all subsequent variation as departures from the originally created ideal --..."

"Blumenbach's descriptions are pervaded by his subjective sense of relative beauty, presented as though he were discussing an objective and quantifiable property, not subject to doubt or disagreement."

And then from the "Draft Official Statement of 'Race'" from the American Anthropological Association:

"Biophysical diversity has no inherent social meaning except what we humans confer upon it. The concept of "race" is in reality a product of that process. "Race" is a set of culturally created attitudes toward, and beliefs about, human difference developed following the widespread exploration and colonization by Western European powers since the sixteenth century...."Race" was invented as a social mechanism to justify the retention of slavery...."

"As they were constructing this society, white Americans fabricated the cultural/behavioral characteristics associated with each "race," linking superior traits to Europeans and negative and inferior ones to blacks and Indians. Thus arbitrary beliefs about different people were institutionalized and deeply embedded in American thought."

"How people have been accepted and treated within the context of their society and culture has a direct impact on how they perform within that society. The "racial" worldview was invented to assign some groups to perpetual low status while others were permitted access to privilege, power and wealth. The tragedy is that it succeeded all too well in constructing unequal populations. Given what we know about the capacity of normal humans to achieve and function within any culture, we conclude that present-day inequalities between human groups are not consequences of their biological inheritance; rather, these inequalities are products of social, economic, educational and political circumstances."

All of the above passages are very consistent with the video series and points that have been made in class lecture regarding the concept of race.

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Lecture material: Since I did not get as far as I would have liked yesterday (Thurs., Sept. 27), I am going to post some lecture notes below having to do with the Basic Definition of racism:

A. Racism: although I am sure that most people would reject the idea that they are "racist" according to the Basic Definition, this does not mean that racism is dead. Racism today is more subtle than blatant. And racism has perhaps had the most serious consequences when it is unrecognized, yet imbedded, in institutions.

(1) George Frederickson (who was interviewed in the video series) observes in his recent book, Racism: A Short History, that many people were ready to declare racism a thing of the past, especially after the fall of South African apartheid, the last racist regime. As he goes on to comment: "But racism does not require the full and explicit support of the state and law. Nor does it require an ideology centered on the concept of biological inequality. Discrimination by institutions and individuals against those perceived as racially different can long persist and even flourish under the illusion of nonracism, as recent studies of Brazilian race relations have discovered."

(a) In this context he talks about a "cultural racism," such as whites who believe Blacks or Latinos in ghettos are incurably infected by cultural pathologies.

(2) Eduardo Bonilla-Silva (also in the video series) argues that a new kind of racism has developed which he calls "colorblind racism," which sounds like an oxymoron. It appeals to nonracial factors such as economics to explain and even justify existing inequalities between races.

(3) I believe there does exist such a thing as "institutional" racism (also, institutional discrimination) such as in the realm of housing and criminal justice (the Jena 6). That is, racial biases seem to be built into the operation and policies of various institutions even if they are not legally enforced.


That's all for now. Don't forget to post your comment on my "Reflections on the Jena 6" (Sept. 26th post). And don't forget that your first essay is due next Tuesday, Oct. 2nd.