Race

Making of the Modern World

Term 2, Week 8

Introduction• Origin of term ‘Race’

• 15thC & 16thC European explorations

• Atlantic World

• Aim: to trace devt of racial ideas, how / why becomes synonymous with skin colour

What is ‘Race’?

• Race not biological but sociological – subjective method of categorising and differentiating peoples

• Humans share 99.9% of DNA; physical appearance determined by 0.01% of DNA

• Criteria for categorisation varies widely: skin colour, religion, civilization, dress, behaviour, complexion, size, gender.

Early Racial Ideas

• Flexibility of Race

• Ideas related to skin colour

Early modern racial attitudes

• Theories of monogenesis make it difficult to see Africans and Amerindians as sub-human

• ‘[Africans are] very black; but the features of their faces, and their excellent teeth, being white as ivory, make up together a handsom ayre, and taking comliness of a new beauty’ John Ogilby, Africa (1670)

• ‘[Indians are] a sort of white men in America (as I am told) that only differ from us in having no beards’ Richard Bradley, A Philosophical account of the works of nature (London, 1721)

• ‘[Africans are] black as coal. Here, thro’ custom, (being Christians) they account themselves white men’ Journal of a Voyage up the Gambia (London, 1723)

• Importance of context, eg Europeans treat Africans differently in Africa to how they treat them in the Americas.

Pocahontas (? 1595,d.1617)

original woodcut, 1616 and 18thC copy (left) note her

Anglicisation

Mid 18thC developmentsCrucial period, linked to enlightenment, new

scientific thinking about race.

• Theoretical problem: why were people so different?

• Polygenesis theories allow for concept of distinct creation of races

• Race become much more fixed on skin colour and physical appearance eg physiognomy.

New views of race• The first difference which strikes us is that of colour… the difference is

fixed in nature. …Besides those of colour, figure, and hair, there are other physical distinctions proving a difference of race. They have less hair on the face and body…They seem to require less sleep. A black, after hard labour through the day, will be induced by the slightest amusements to sit up till midnight, or later, though knowing he must be out with the first dawn of the morning. They are at least as brave, and more adventuresome. But this may perhaps proceed from a want of forethought, which prevents their seeing a danger till it be present. When present, they do not go through it with more coolness or steadiness than the whites. They are more ardent after their female: but love seems with them to be more an eager desire, than a tender delicate mixture of sentiment and sensation. Their griefs are transient. Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the state of Virginia (London, 1787)

• ‘There appears in savages a natural and rooted aversion to a civilised state… by the efforts of their natural genius alone, they never would have raised themselves above their original character’ David Doig, Two Letters on the Savage State (London, 1793)

From Atlas Geographus

(London, 1711)

diff continents embodied by

dress as much as colour

Gustavus Hesselius, ‘Tishcohan’

1735

From, A collection of voyages and

travels (London,

1745)

‘Europe Supported by Africa and

America’William Blake,

c.1777

note – dress no longer needed to

distinguish between continents, colour

alone suffices.

Charles White, An account of regular gradation in man (London, 1799)

19thC developments

• From skin to blood

• ‘One drop’ rules

• Growing use of science

• Ideas of identity

Role of perception

Mixed-race population means it is not always easy to categorise people

Race determined subjectively by all senses (not just eyes), but these were fallible – notion of ‘passing’

• “We cannot say what admixture of negro blood will make a colored person. The condition of the individual is not to be determined solely by distinct and visible mixture of negro blood, but by reputation, by his reception into society, and his having commonly exercised the privileges of a white man…it may be well and proper, that a man of worth, honesty, industry, and respectability, should have the rank of a white man, while a vagabond of the same degree of blood should be confined to the inferior caste.” South Carolina Judge William Harper, 1835

19thC racial attitudes• ‘The negro is particularly adapted to the wild or natural state of life. … The

senses are more prefect in negroes than in Europeans. This perfection of the ruder faculties of sense is not required in the civilized state, and it therefore gives way to a more capacious form of the skull, affording space for a more ample conformation of the brain, on which an increase of intellectual power is probably dependent’ James Prichard, Researches into the Physical History of Man (London, 1813)

• “the negro’s want of capability to receive a complicated education renders it improper and impolitic, that he should be allowed the privileges of citizenship in an enlightened country.” Richard H. Colfax, Evidence Against the Views of the Abolitionists, Consisting of Physical and Moral Proofs, of the Natural Inferiority of the Negroes (New York: 1833),

•

• “The brain of the Negro, … is, according to the positive measurements, smaller than the Caucasian by a full tenth; and this deficiency exists particularly in the anterior portion of the brain, which is known to be the seat of the higher faculties.” Josiah C. Nott, Two Lectures on the Natural History of the Caucasian and Negro Races (Mobile, 1844),

•

• "No man will treat with indifference the principle of race. It is the key to history, and why history is often so confused is that it has been written by men who are ignorant of this principle and all the knowledge it involves. . . Language and religion do not make a race--there is only one thing which makes a race, and that is blood." - Benjamin Disraeli

Post-slavery• Growing threat of racial violence

Development of systems of segregation

20thC developments• Racism reaches zenith of scientific application in 1930s

and 40s by Nazis, race not just skin colour but religion (Jews) and ethnic groups (Slavs)

• “We intend to keep this country white and not allow its peoples to be faced with the problems that at present are practically insoluble in many parts of the world.” Australian Prime Minister Stanley Bruce 1925

• ‘the higher race subjects to itself a lower race …a right which we see in nature and which can be regarded as the sole conceivable right’ Adolf Hitler, 1933 Nuremberg party rally.

• ‘The Germans were the higher race, destined for a glorious evolutionary future. For this reason it was essential that the Jews should be segregated, otherwise mixed marriages would take place. Were this to happen, all nature’s efforts “to establish an evolutionary higher stage of being may thus be rendered futile” (Mein Kampf).’

Pluralism – the new Racism?• Post WWII popularity of Pluralism• Idea that culture is innate, can’t be learned,

everyone different, not necessarily equal. Denial of individuality and freedom of choice.

• 'Every society, every nation is unique. It has its own past, its own story, its own memories, its own languages or ways of speaking, its own - dare I use the word - culture.' Enoch Powell

• ‘Love the Diversity of God's Creation; Practice Racial Integrity; Don't Race Mix; Imagine the world with only one race - only one culture - Is that really what you want?...Because that WILL be the End result . Think about it!’ Ku Klux Klan Mission Statement

Race in Britain in the 21st C• ‘Mankind is divided into races, and those races, while

sharing many common features of humanity, are innately different in many ways beyond mere colour. Despite the propaganda of neo-Marxist academic and media prostitutes, and the cowardice of conservatives who dare not stand up to the totalitarian bullying of Political Correctness, this is a fact. Whether those differences are God-given or the result of evolutionary pressure is irrelevant; the important fact is that the British National Party recognises such ineradicable facts of human nature and seeks to base its political programme on such realities, and not on the pernicious fantasy of ‘human equality.’ The most important first consequence of our acceptance of innate human differences is our recognition that nationality, while it is influenced by many factors – including shared loyalties, common history, religious heritage and personal identification – is first and foremost decided by ethnicity.’ Press Statement by BNP Chairman Nick Griffin

Conclusions

• General movement away from race as useful method of social categorisation since 1970s, discrimination unlawful in most western countries.

• Yet racial attitudes exist in West, and are responsible for most wars eg between ethnic groups in Africa, between religious groups in middle east.

• Still most commonly used defining characteristic of an individual.