HW 2/13

Annotation and Notes on : The Mismeasure of Man

• Page 62: “Blacks and Indians as Separate Inferior Species”. Use of appeals to reason to promote hierarchies. Endless cycle? God?
• Page 63: Humblest and Greatest? Biological Determinism, proposed by Plato. Racial Prejudice. A shared context of culture. Science introduced in the 18th and 19th century had it’s own views on race. Racial Rankings, ‘Hard-liners’, and ‘soft-liners’.
• Page 64: American Heroes embraced racial attitudes? Biological inferiority?
• Page 65:Compariosn of human skulls to chimp skulls to show lower rankings (blacks lower than chimps?).
• Page 66: Douglas debates. Demagogism? Ruled by caprice, and ruled by customs.
• Page 67: Comparison of Blacks to gorillas….
• Page 68: More Comparisons…….
• Page 69: Degradation of a specific race. Charles Darwin talks about a ‘gap’ from apes to humans. Racial differences due to climate differences.
• Page 70: Humboldt, hero of modern egalitarians. -Against slavery and degradation. Cultural differences.
• Page 71: Pre-evolutionary styles of scientific racism: monogenism and polygenism. Brings ‘justification’, ‘soft’ arguments. Adam and Eve?
• Page 72: Humans perfect themselves? Change due to their own efforts. Comparison of races to animals. Theory of recapitulation (higher creatures repeat adult life of lower creatures).
• Page 73:” Charles White, an English surgeon, wrote the strongest defense of polygeny in 1799. ‘Account of the Regular Gradation in Man’.“
• Page 74: “Louis Agassiz—America’s theorist of polygeny”. Walk on their own feet. Political independence. Poor country choice…..Slavery…Taking people from home.
• Page 75: Centers of creation. Single center? Many centers?
• Page 76: Camps (Lumpers). Doctrine of Human unity?
• Page 77: ‘Christian Examiner’, published in 1850. Divines and abolitionists.
• Page 78: Bible? Three races from one area? Not derived from single individual group? Moral imperative. Caucasian cultural stereotypes. Blacks at the bottom?
• Page 79: “Education, he argues, must be tailored to innate ability; train blacks in hand work, whites in mind work”
• Page 80: Regulations and limits put on blacks. No right to something if the man is ‘unfit’?
• Page 81: Legal freedoms. Mixed and enfeeble people? Climates of their homeland? Choice?
• Page 82: Darwin’s social preferences for racial segregation prevailed all. “Samuel George Morton—empiricist of polygeny”. Agassiz – Visits just for anatomical collections (Indian skulls).

Annotation of Plessy v Ferguson coming soon! : Waiting on the book!