Quoted Passages & Some Lecture Notes

Below are the passages I quoted in class yesterday, adding and reinforcing the argument contained in the basic definition of RACE.

First, from "The Geometer of Race," by Stephen Jay Gould. Gould discusses the racial hierarchy of Johann Frederick Blumenbach. Blumenbach is the one who is credited with coming up with the term "Caucasian" to refer to whites, and note that it is based on aesthetic grounds (not scientific):

"...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 Caucasians to the place of human origin. Blumenbach viewed all subsequent variation as departures from the originally created ideal -- therefore, the most beautiful people must live closest to our primal home."
"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. He describes a Georgian female skull (found close to Mount Caucasus) as 'really the most beautiful form of skull which...always of itself attracts every eye, however little observant.' He then defends his European standard on aesthetic grounds: 'In the first place, that stock displays...the most beautiful form of the skull, from which, as from a mean and primeval type, the others diverge by most easy gradations....Besides, it is white in color, which we may fairly assume to have been the primitive color of mankind, since...it is very easy for that to degenerate into brown, but very much more difficult for dark to become white.'"

And then a couple paragraphs from the American Anthropological Association's Draft Official Statement on Race (Sept. 1997):

"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 differences developed following the widespread exploration and colonization by Western European powers since the 16th century. In the North American colonies, European settlers conquered an indigenous population and brought in as slaves alien peoples from Africa. By the end of the 18th century a rising antislavery movement, produced by liberal and humanistic forces mostly in Europe, compelled slave owners to find new defenses for preserving slavery. 'Race' was invented as a social mechanism to justify the retention of slavery. 'Race' ideology magnified differences among these populations, established a rigid hierarchy of socially exclusive categories, underscored and bolstered unequal rank and status differences and provided the rationalization that such diffferences were natural or God-given. The different physical traits became markers or symbols of status differences."

"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 historical and contemporary social, economic, educational and political circumstances."
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Let me, then, pick up where I left off in commenting on the basic definition of RACISM. You recall that I suggested that the vast majority of people would probably reject the notion that they are racist according to that definition. That does not mean racism is dead. Racism, today, is more subtle than blatant, and it has the most serious consequences when it is subtle and unrecognized.

(1) George Federickson (a historian who was interviewed in part II of the video series) observes in his recent book, "Racism: A Short History," that many people were ready to declare racism as a thing of the past, especially after the fall of South African apartheid, the last explicitly racist regime. And he goes on to comment --
"But racism does not require the full and explicit support of the state and law (as in the northern U.S.). 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 incurable infected by cultural pathologies. Indeed, he argues that such "cultural racism" actually predates the scientific theories of race in the late 18th century (i.e., Blumenbach).

(2) Eduardo Bonilla-Silva (also appearing in the video series) argues that a new form of racism has emerged, what he calls "color-blind racism" (which appears to be an oxymoron) -- that is, similar to cultural racism, color-blind racism involving differential treatment of racial groups is NOT based on a belief in inherent biological inferiority but rather is based on or explained by nonracial factors such as market forces, cultural factors (such as a poor work ethic), etc.

(3) INSTITUTIONAL RACISM (or institutional discrimination) persists even though it has lost its legal sanction (as slavery and Jim Crow segregation once had) -- that is, there continue to be racial biases built into the operation and policy of various institutions. (Eg., "redlining," "glass ceiling," "racial profiling," etc.) Much more on this in Shirley Better's book.

(a) I believe it is unquestionable the the so-called "war on drugs" has had a clear racial bias which has led to the disproportionate incarceration of African Americans.



That brings us up to ETHNIC GROUP in our list of basic definitions, which is where we will pick up next Tuesday, 10/6. Please make sure to incorporate the above lecture material in your class notes.