I took a class this past spring titled "Contested Images: Race, Religion and Science in American History". Below is an exam question that I thought an interesting place to start a conversation about the history of racism. I also offer my answer. It is by no means all inclusive, but it covers a good deal of time and varying subject matter. One thing I do want to add is that I draw some conclusions that have since evolved, but I present the answer as submitted.
First, the essay question.
Trace the development of the ‘race’ concept from a ‘folk category,’ to the ‘typological notion,’ to the ‘gradient’ and, eventually, ‘breeding population’ views used by scientists, some religious thinkers and policy makers over time. How would you explain this evolution in thinking and what impact do you think these changes have had on social, political, and/or military policy?
My answer:
Read the news on any given day and the following classifications for identifying an individual’s race will be found: black, white, Mexican-American, Hispanic, Asian, Caucasian, Jewish, and African-American. While these terms include references to color, religion, Nationality and even a continent, not one actually describes what they intend to. This is because race is a cultural construct that, while having no biological basis, permeates all aspects of society, from political policies to social and economic realities. Race has no scientific meaning and is most often confused with ethnicity - the cultural identity of a given group. So how did a term that describes a nonexistent difference come to play such a dominant role in how rights and resources are distributed? The answer is a gradual progression of ways in which to differentiate one person from another based on religion, culture, and real or perceived physical attributes in order to justify repression and exploitation.
Ethnocentrism, the belief that one’s culture is superior to another, has been used as a justification for domination throughout recorded human history. However, the ideology of race is a relatively recent development. In modern terms its genesis can be found in the interactions of both the English with the Irish and the English and Spanish with the Native Americans and Africans. In this early stage race existed as a folk category, a ranking system in which observable and perceived differences are seen as physical representations of innate and unalterable biological characteristics.
The English first developed the notion of the “other” in their protracted attempt at conquering the Irish. In order to justify escalating brutality the English identified the Irish as savages, combing differences in culture and religion to create a distinction that dehumanized the Irish, thereby freeing the English of moral guilt. The Spanish and the English used this same method of justification in their interactions with the Native Americans and Africans. However, the Spanish experience was distinct in that the Catholic Church saw all people as potential converts; this allowed even the lowest members of society to exist in the caste system and retain some level of humanity. The English on the other hand actively denied conquered and enslaved peoples baptism rights, effectively blocking any chance of joining society.
By the early 19th Century proponents of these culturally based racial views were finding it harder to defend their ideology from abolitionists and those calling for better treatment of the Native Americans. A new method of marking distinctions was needed and the answer was found in science. Typological distinctions, or differences in physical attributes such as skin color and head size, were recorded and analyzed in the developing scientific field of anthropology. The repressed were to be proven not just inferior but of a different species than superior humans. This idea had religious implications as well as it contradicted the orthodoxy of human unity and original sin and created much debate concerning the Biblical narrative told in the Book of Genesis. However, following the release of the Theory of Evolution the focus shifted to superiority through natural selection and the notion of survival of the fittest. Defining levels of superiority among human populations was considered important to those that debated the idea of Gradient Theory: if superior people breed with the inferior, does this lower the superior, improve the inferior, or something in between? Even if all humans were of the same species they were not all evolved to the same level: various classification schemes were developed to try and find a marker for measuring superiority.
One such method that gained wide acceptance was a series of tests that assigned an intelligence quotient (I.Q.) believed to measure a person’s innate ability for social achievement. This method was in turn used by researchers attempting to create bell curves that claimed to show the distribution of levels of intelligence among humans while holding constant such factors as geography and wealth. From these proponents of racism argued that intelligence is biological and therefore all social actions meant to help the inferior are essentially pointless. The I.Q. tests have since been proven to be culturally biased, and bell curve models depend on the existence of a type or average that is arbitrary and is itself open to human bias.
Additional research has shown that a combination of genetic and environmental factors play significant roles in human development. The study of human genetics, comparing the expressed and unexpressed hereditary information held in a person’s genes, has given scientists a new method of tracking human migration patterns. Through mutation and natural and artificial selection certain traits will develop and become dominant within a breeding population’s gene pool. Through gene flow these traits are passed on to other breeding groups where the gene may remain dominant or become recessive. By determining the frequency of these genes scientists can identify their origin. This method is not without controversy; the labels assigned to these origins are often the very socially constructed terms mentioned at the beginning of this essay.
Regardless of the questionable viability of the various arguments deployed by proponents of racial ideology over the years the implications of these beliefs have had real world implications. Racism has been used to deny people liberty, political expression and economic opportunity. At its core the racial worldview justifies repression and exploitation of those deemed inferior: examples of this include the expulsion and eradication campaigns waged against the Native Americans and the enslavement and denial of rights for those of African decent. Spiritually racism has been used as a control mechanism, designating who is member of society and therefore entitled to its benefits. Being labeled inferior has made cultures open to domination and even genocide by militarily superior cultures seeking to exploit the resources of the geographical locale.
Given the history of racial ideology it becomes apparent that the root cause has been and continues to be a battle over who is most entitled to the wealth generated by this exploitation. In this sense race is part of the larger issue of class warfare in which a select few believe themselves to be superior to the rest of humanity by virtue of their ability to accumulate large amounts of another social construct: money. The final outcome of this debate is still to be worked out as science continues to probe deeper into the human genome. While there can be little doubt that racists will continue to develop new arguments in an attempt to counter any advances made, with each new discovery their beliefs are moved further to the fringes of acceptable societal conduct. The burden of proof has shifted from proving a person’s worth to proving their inferiority.
Thoughts, comments?
Update: Here is a list of the reading material which this is based on. Unfortunately there is also some information from lecture notes, but most of it is covered in these readings.
Aptheker, Herbert. Anti-Racism in U.S. History: The First Two Hundred Years (Contributions in American History). Praeger Paperback, 1993.
Blackburn, Robin. The Making of New World Slavery: From the Baroque to the Modern 1492-1800. Verso, 1998.
Goetz, Rebecca A. “‘The Child Should be Made a Christian’: Baptism, Race, and Identity in the Early Chesapeake.” In Race and Identity in the New World, edited by John Garrigus. Texas A&M Press, 2009.
Horsman, Reginald. Race and Manifest Destiny: The Origins of American Racial Anglo-Saxonism. Harvard University Press, 1981.
Livingstone, David N. Adam’s Ancestors: Race, Religion, and the Politics of Human Origins. JHU Press, 2008.
Shanklin, Eugenia. Anthropology and Race: The Explanation of Differences. 1st ed. Wadsworth Publishing, 1983.
Smedley, Audrey. Race in North America: Origin and Evolution of a Worldview. 2nd ed., Westview Press, 1999.