Week 3

Craniology

A flawed experiment that Samuel Morton conducted using skulls of different races to compare different amounts of space in the skulls for brains.

Peggy McIntosh, "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack"

After "unpacking the invisible knapsack" with this list, McIntosh outlines why she believes that "privilege" is too soft a word. She asserts that "dominance" is more appropriate; the mental control that a particular race has over another is a sort of dominance. We are really talking about power. The conditions above allow for the systematic over-empowerment of certain groups. In short, such privilege "confers dominance because of one's race or sex." Such dominance, whether intentional or unintentional, is embedded in white privilege. McIntosh suggests that no longer are the chains of power made of metal; rather, they are made of mental control devises such as the ones listed. But no one is held responsible because of the oblivious nature of the whole thing. She believes that it is perhaps as damaging as slavery. McIntosh goes on to say that disapproving of racist systems will not be enough to change them. However, systemic change can begin with the acknowledgment, identification of, and teaching of white privilege for oneself and then others. Individuals must understand what is happening and then make others aware. Once everyone understands white privilege, the issues of control can be addressed and eradicated. Only after such persistent and patient work, may one hope for system changes.

Social Darwinism

Applied Darwin's theory of natural selection and "survival of the fittest" to human society -- the poor are poor because they are not as fit to survive. Used as an argument against social reforms to help the poor.

concordance

Concordance: correlation; non-concordance: not correlated Racial classifications impose discrete categories on continuous traits "Race is non-concordant with phenotypes"

Eugenics

Definition: a pseudoscience attempting to scientifically prove the existence of separate human races to improve the population's genetic composition by favoring some races over others Example: Significance: Encourage the higher races to reproduce. Promote positive breeding.

Human Genome Project

Identify all genes, determine sequences of chemical base pairs, store info, improve tools analysis, transfer related tech to private sector.

Jefferson Fish, Mixed Blood

In his article, "Mixed Blood", Jeffery M. Fish examines the cultural foundation of racial differentiation and claims race to be a myth. He begins by outlining human evolution in order to reveal the sheer ignorance present within racial classification schemes. He claims that, "like skin color, there are other physical differences [such as body type] that appear to have evolved through natural selection- but which Americans do not think of as racial". Since racial classification primarily focuses on skin color, people with "compact" or "lanky" body types are merely variants of white, black, or other "racial" groups. A different choice of characteristics would categorize people into different "races" and the choice of which characteristics are significant is an arbitrary cultural construct. Additionally, Fish strengthens his assertion by addressing the fluidity of racial classification. In the United States, race defines ethnicity; in Brazil, it describes distinct physical characteristics. Hence, Fish notes that his daughter can, "change her race from Black in the United States to Morena(brunette)...in Brazil, by simply taking a plane there". Racial classification schemes are always subject to change as they depend on the culture of the observer rather than the genetic makeup of the people being observed. Furthermore, Fish questions the validity of racial classification by studying the biological differences between species. Fish explains that unlike donkeys and horses, human beings are part of a collective species which allows them to, "mate with others from anywhere [around the world] and produce fertile offspring". If racial classification had a concrete scientific origin, this could not be true. In order for the word raceto have any meaning a significant difference in genetic makeup would be required, thus delineating human beings into distinct racial groups. However, this evidently is not the case. Fish believes that race does not exist - it is a myth that has been socially concocted to justify the exclusion of one group of people from the other, thus deterring our growth as a society and needlessly violating individual autonomy.

Stephen J. Gould, The Mismeasure of Man

In the introduction to the original 1981 edition, Gould states that he wrote The Mismeasure of Man because "biological determinism is rising in popularity again, as it always does in times of political retrenchment." By retrenchment, Gould is referring to times when politicians call for cuts in public spending, often on social programs designed to help the poor or disadvantaged. This is a statement he expresses in the introduction to the revised 1996 edition and repeats throughout the entire book. Gould's study of the history of biological determinism has led him to conclude that its popularity rises and falls in tandem with political cycles. For example, some politicians might want to trim the government budget by reducing or eliminating spending on a college scholarship program to encourage women to go into the fields of math and science. At the same time there is suddenly a surge of publicity about scientific studies that allegedly show that women's brains are better with words than numbers. This is no coincidence, Gould says. Prior political and social beliefs are influencing both scientific research itself and its interpretation. Gould believes fiercely that there is a need to show how cultural attitudes influence and even distort what we think of as facts. A scientist himself, Gould is by no means discrediting the power of his field to discover inescapable truths about the world. "I believe that a factual reality exists and that science, though often in an obtuse and erratic manner, can learn about it," he says. But scientists do not live in their laboratories. They have families and read the news and watch movies just like everyone else. They are immersed in society and cannot help but be influenced by it. "Facts are not pure and unsullied bits of information; culture also influences what we see," Gould states. The key to avoid error is for scientists to be aware of that influence and to make sure that it does not distort the way they formulate their studies and experiments.

Joan Gross, Phat

Joan Gross writes about phat rappers whose girth is taken as evidence of masculine potency and financial success, and Julia Harrison writes about the role of Spam in the construction of Native Hawaiian identity. Mary Weismantel probes Andean legends of white fat-sucking vampires—metaphors, she thinks, for the exploitation of Indian communities by the elite. Articles on mainstream Western attitudes toward fat uncover even more strangeness. Fanny Ambjörnsson details the byzantine ways Swedish high school girls talk about fat; Kulick and Thaïs Machado-Borges expose the odd Brazilian enthusiasm for intestinal leakage as proof that fat-dissolving pills are working; and Margaret Wilson asks why Starbucks patrons order their coffee with skim milk—only to dump whipped cream on top. The writers wear their scholarly apparatus lightly and offer a readable, thought-provoking survey of one of the most intimate and complicated issues of contemporary life. Photos. (Jan.)

Podcast: Scence On: Seeing White

On one level, it seems Americans talk about race and ethnicity all the time. The news media always seem to be reacting to the latest racial "incident," while pundits ponder "race relations" year in and year out. And yet. The premise of this series is that the American conversation about race, and the stories we tell ourselves about race and ethnicity, are deeply incomplete and often misleading. We need new stories and new understandings, about our history and our current racial and ethnic reality. Host and producer John Biewen set out to take a different kind of look at race and ethnicity, by looking directly at the elephant in the room: white people, and whiteness. White supremacy was encoded in the DNA of the United States, and white people dominate American life and its institutions to this day, and yet whiteness too often remains invisible, unmarked, and unnamed. In embarking on this journey into whiteness, past and present, Biewen sought guidance from an array of leading scholars, and from professor, journalist, artist, and organizer Dr. Chenjerai Kumanyika. A caution: Race and racism are sensitive subjects, as we all know. It's important to create an environment of safety in your classroom or discussion group. Our advice is to say something like this:

white privilege

The construct that points out the fact that white people have inearned advantages over others simply by having white skin.

Johnathan Marks, Science and Race

The scientific study of human biological variation has consistently produced knowledge that contradicts widespread popular, or folk, wisdom. Although people and the populations they belong to certainly differ from one another, they do not appear to do so in such a manner that permits the identification of a small number of human subspecies or races. Classification of people into races involves cultural, not biological, knowledge; and race is inherited according to cultural rules that stand in opposition to biology. Thus race is not a useful biological concept. To understand whether differences exist between populations in cognitive ability (or any other inherent "gifts") requires confronting the limits of scientific knowledge.

The Bell Curve

definition: Also called the normal curve. Many traits, including intellectual abilities, are said to be normally distributed, with roughly 68 percent of the distribution being within one standard deviation of the mean, and more than 90 percent were within two standard deviations of the mean. uses: 1. early IQ testing and placement 2. change the educational system 3. encourage the intelligent to have more kids, and the less intelligent to have less kids

Scientific Racism

is the pseudoscientific study of techniques and hypotheses to support or justify the belief in racism, racial inferiority, or racial superiority; alternatively, it is the practice of classifying individuals of different phenotypes into discrete races. Historically it received credence in the scientific community, but is no longer considered scientific.

The Enlightenment (the values/ideas/critiques of the Enlightment)

rational expressions for progress, humanity as an objective of science (study of humans), emphasis on universal (focus on humanity to understand commonalities to understand a whole) new focus on Natural Law, use of rationalistic explanations for human progress

taxonomies of race in brazil "Folk"

• Based on the idea of tipo, or type, which vary regionally. • Race is a characterisLc of one's appearance, not one's ancestry. You are not necessarily the same 8po as your parents. • Tipo in much greater variety than "black," "white," "LaLno," and "Asian," which Americans are fond of trying to shove all people into.