The Concept of Race in the Recent Past - Essay Example

The Concept of Race in the Recent Past Introduction Although only a four letter word, the term Race and the concept associated with it presents itself as a prime social mover especially during the era of imperialism. Early in our History subjects we learn that the American Civil War was fought because of the abolishment of Negro Slavery. Even the Second World War and the resulting genocide was a result of the supposed superiority of the Aryan Race. Clearly in both wars, the concept of Race was at play. Negroes were differentiated from the whites and was made to look as savages to the point of dehumanizing them. Jews suffered millions of deaths in death camps because their 'race', which was speculated to be lead by the Elders of Scion, was a threat to the supremacy of the German pure blood. The term "race" in the not so distant past had a negative connotation associated with it because it was used as an instrument to justify violation of basic human rights. The term 'Racism' has been equated to Discrimination. We see in America reputed to be of high civility, Negroes sold and made to work in the cotton field and was given no election power or the basic right of Self Determination. Yet, as the loom of time unwinds its thread, the concept behind Race has gradually transformed. Although the same notion of inferiority is still present today in some regions of the world, we now see that Race has become a classifying tool trying to rid itself of discrimination tendencies. Many nations today have mixed populations and are thriving. In The United States, for example, the colored citizen has as much right as the white citizen. This paper aims to determine how the anthropological nature of race has evolved thru time. 2. Defining Race According to the brochure entitled "Race : The Power of an Illusion", all people tend to have a notion of race. The problem, however, is that their notions vary from person to person. This problem was also stated in the 13th page of the reading Chapter 1 Some Theoretical Considerations where each student had some characterization to the term different from their peers. However, the author was able to find commonalities in the answers. Race is associated with the characteristics of each racial group. This includes not only physical features but also the culture practiced by the individual. By culture, we mean music styles, mannerisms, personality traits and the like. Race tends to become rather like classifying according to the nationality of the individual - Chinese, Russian, German, African and the likes. Essentially, the term race tries to distinguish one population or group of people. The most widely used human racial categories are based on visible traits especially skin color, facial features and hair texture and then one refers to genes and self-identification. Conceptions of race, as well as specific racial groupings, vary temporally. This characteristic is significant because of scientific reasons and its impact on social identity and identity politics. Some scientists regard race as a social construct while others maintain it has genetic basis. Although classification of people can be found in as far back as the Ancient Egyptian sacred text the Book of Gates with reference to skin tone, we focus ourselves to the development of the idea of race starting in the 19th century where it has received much attention and fan fare. Our setting will mostly be in the United States where the academic development of anthropology from an exotic undertaking became an academic discipline. The 19th Century This period was characterized by attempts to change race from a taxonomic to a biological concept and where tribesmen where shown in fairs not only to show people the variety of men but also their supposed inferiority to the Western civilized world. There were many natural scientists who delved in the subject of race such as Georges Curvier, Alfred Wallace, Francis Galton and many more but none was more influential than Charles Darwin. In his most controversial book, The Descent of Man, Darwin strongly asserted notions linking racial differences and European superiority. According to his concept of 'Survival of the Fittest', the strong will always replace the weak and humans are not exempted from this natural rule. Suffice it to say, stronger tribes of humans always replaced weaker tribes. As savage tribes came in conflict with civilized nations, such as England, the less advanced people were destroyed. The destruction of the weaker peoples seemed desirable to many scientists at the time. It was thought that "fit" people would replace the "unfit" and human evolution would be accelerated. As the science of anthropology took shape in the 19th century, European and American scientists increasingly sought explanations for the behavioral and cultural differences they attributed to groups. For example, using anthropometrics, invented by Francis Galton and Alphonse Bertillon, they measured the shapes and sizes of skulls and related the results to group differences in intelligence or other attributes. There are generally three claims regarding race during this period and they are the following: 1. Races are objective, naturally occurring divisions of humanity 2. There exists a strong relationship between biological races and other human phenomena such as forms of activity and interpersonal relations and culture and by extension the relative material success of cultures 3. Race is a valid scientific category that can be used to explain and predict individual and group behavior. Races were distinguished by skin color, facial type, cranial profile and size, texture and color of hair. Moreover, races were almost universally considered to reflect group differences in moral character and intelligence. The eugenics movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries which was inspired by Arthur Gobineau's An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races (1853-1855), Vacher de Lapouge's "anthroposociology" asserted as self-evident the biological inferiority of particular groups. In many parts of the world, the idea of race became a way of rigidly dividing groups by culture as well as by physical appearances. Campaigns of oppression and genocide were often motivated by supposed racial differences. Essentially, the 19th century saw the use of race as an instrument not only to differentiate people but also to exemplify notions of superiority among other people. This is to be expected since this was the period of Imperialism where imperialists sought to justify the slave trade and feed their pride regarding their achievements. Even the academe, the supposed bastion of critical thinking and holistic considerations, forwarded the notion of inferiority. In the reading Ascension of Anthropology as Social Darwinism, we read of Daniel Brinton, president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1986 and the first ever professor of Anthropology. He noted that even with the same cerebral capacity and efforts., the black, brown and the red races could never rival the white man's achievements. John Wesley Powell, head of the Bureau of American Ethnology, even stated that "the laws of evolution do not produce kinds of men but grades of men; and human evolution is intellectual, not physical.. All men have pleasures , some more, some less; all men have welfare, some more, some less; all men have justice, some more, some less". The statement of these men encapsulates the ideas regarding Anthropology at the time. The 20th and the 21st Century As we have said earlier, the 19th century sought to endow the term race with a biological nature. The 20th century and the 21st century saw much advancement in science which basically revolutionized our way of thinking. It is in this period where the concept of race was sought to be abandoned. At the beginning of the 20th century, anthropologists questioned, and eventually abandoned, the claim that biologically distinct races are isomorphic with distinct linguistic, cultural, and social groups. Then, the rise of population genetics led some mainstream evolutionary scientists in anthropology and biology to question the very validity of race as scientific concept describing an objectively real phenomenon. Those who came to reject the validity of the concept, race, did so for four reasons: empirical, definitional, the availability of alternative concepts, and ethical. The first to challenge the concept of race on empirical grounds were anthropologists Franz Boas, who demonstrated phenotypic plasticity due to environmental factors, and Ashley Montagu (1941, 1942), who relied on evidence from genetics. Zoologists Edward O. Wilson and W. Brown then challenged the concept from the perspective of general animal systematics, and further rejected the claim that "races" were equivalent to "subspecies". The existence of race was first effectively raised by C. Loring Brace who noted that genotypic and phenotypic variations , insofar as it is affected by natural selection, migration, or genetic drift, are distributed along geographic gradations; these gradations are called "clines" (Brace 1964). This point called attention to a problem common to phenotypic-based descriptions of races (for example, those based on hair texture and skin color): they ignore a host of other similarities and difference (for example, blood type) that do not correlate highly with the markers for race. Thus, anthropologist Frank Livingstone's conclusion that, since clines cross racial boundaries, "there are no races, only clines" In the 19th century, race was a central concept of anthropology. In 1866, James Hunt, the founder of the Anthropological Society of London, declared that anthropology's primary truth "is the existence of well-marked psychological and moral distinctions in the different races of men." However, this view became marginalized in the 20th century. The American Anthropological Association, drawing on biological research, currently holds that "The concept of race is a social and cultural construction. . . . Race simply cannot be tested or proven scientifically," and that, "It is clear that human populations are not unambiguous, clearly demarcated, biologically distinct groups. The concept of 'race' has no validity . . . in the human species". Race and the associated superiority/inferiority in the 19th century no longer became valid in the time that we are currently living in. Sources: Reading Materials for R06O:Introduction to Anthropology: A Four-Field Integrated Approach to Race and Racism Read More