Passages on Race & Lecture Notes on Racism

Below are the passages I read in class yesterday regarding the concept of race. First, is the passage from an article entitled, "The Geometer of Race," by Stephen Jay Gould. It concerns Johan Friedrich Blumenbach and the origin of the term "Caucasian."

"...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 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 excerpts from the American Anthropological Association's official statement on race (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 widespread exploration and colonization by Western European powers since the 16th century....'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 differences were natural or God-given. The different physical traits became markers or symbols of status differences."

"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 the different peoples 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 welath. 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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LECTURE NOTES ON RACISM

Yesterday I began talking about the basic definition of racism, noting that most people would probably reject the idea that that definition applies to them. Racism today is more subtle than blatant, for the most part. Historian, George Frederickson, made this point, as I noted in class at the very end.

1. Frederickson goes on to talk about what he calls "cultural racism." For example, whites who believe that Latinos and or blacks in ghettoes are incurably infected by cultural pathologies such as lack of initiative, etc. Indeed, Frederickson contends that such cultural racism actually pre-dates the scientific theories of race in the late 18th century (Blumenbach).

B. Eduardo Bonilla-Silva (who appeared in the video series) argues that a new form of racism has emerged, what he calls "color-blind racism." (which clearly seems to be an oxymoron or contradiction in terms). His idea is similar to cultural racism: a racism NOT based on a belief in inherent biological inferiority but based on or explained by nonracial factors such as market forces or cultural factors which explain inequalities.

C. Finally, there is INSTITUTIONAL RACISM (or institutional discrimination) which persists even though it has lost its legal basis (segregation laws of yesteryear). That is, there continue to be racial biases built into the operation and policy of various institutions. (We'll see more examples of this later on in the course.)
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That's all for now. We'll pick up with the next basic definition, ethnic group, next Tuesday 10/5.