posted by xhenxhefil at 1:01:44 PM

6.15.2003

 
The Science and Politics of Racial Research by William H. Tucker, published by the University of Illinois Press (Urbana), 1994.

Here's the first chapter, scanned in erratically from the Occidental College library's copy; it takes a long time to load, but is only 21 pages, with page 9 containing a synopsis of Van Evrie's other major work, Negroes and Negro "Slavery": The First an Inferior Race - The Latter Its Normal Condition. The chapter also touches on Henry Goddard's determination, by means of standardized testing of immigrants at Ellis Island, that 83% of Jews, 80% of Hungarians, and 87% of Russians were "feeble-minded"; Linnaeus's four-color system of human taxonomy, and its revision by Johann Friedrich Blumenbach who in the process coined the word "Caucasian" for the race he saw as perfectly balanced between "Mongolian" and "Ethiopian" extremes; Alexander Cartwright's study of drapetomania; the Southern Literary Messenger's public-minded concern for the safety of American society if the whole country, not just the North, was plagued by totally unsubjugated people who were by definition "felons" and "maniacs"; Louis Agassiz's revulsion at the frequency with which white Americans encountered blacks as servants; Peter Browne's 1852 determination of an important circumstantial clue to white supremacy based on whites' having more complicated hair; Herbert Spenser's Social Darwinism, which convinced an entire generation of tycoons that evolution made sense, as a side effect of convincing them that they deserved everything they could get; Harvard Medical School professor E.H. Clarke's tragic examples of "pale, weak, neuralgic, dyspeptic, hysterical, menorrhaphic, dysmenorrhoeic girls and women" who had tried and failed to equal men's intellectual achievements; the Reconstruction debate between Social Darwinists over whether it would be better for blacks to go extinct in unfair competition with whites or to remain as a cheap work force, and whether abolition was fair to white people considering the advantages blacks had from being bred for desirable quantities such as superhuman lifespan; and Charles White's eloquent extolment of white perfection and black brutishness, gleaned from years of scientificish observation.

Louis Agassiz in a letter to friends after encountering "domestics at a Philadelphia hotel":

I experienced pity at the sight of this degraded and degenerate race ... it is impossible for me to repress the feeling that they are not of the same blood as us. In seeing their black faces with their thick lips and grimacing teeth, the wool on their head, their bent knees, their elongated hands, their large curved nails, and especially the livid color of the palms of their hands, I could not take my eyes off their faces in order to tell them to stay far away. And when they advanced that hideous hand towards my plate in order to serve me, I wished I were able to depart in order to eat a piece of bread elsewhere, rather than to dine with such service. What unhappiness for the white race -- to have tied their existence so closely with that of negroes in certain countries! God preserve us from such a contact!

An observation by T.H. Huxley, an outspoken abolitionist (using "incredible" to mean "unbelievable", not "amazing"):

It is simply incredible that, when all his disabilities are removed, and our prognathous relative has a fair field and no favor, as well as no oppressor, he will be able to compete successfully with his bigger-brained and smaller-jawed rival, in a contest which is to be carried on by thoughts and not by bites.

From Charles White's famous 1799 rhetorical paean to the race with a memory that he proved to be inferior and therefore less similar to a dog's:

Where [else might we find] that nobly arched head, containing such a quantity of brain ... ? Where that variety of features, and fulness of expression: those long, flowing graceful ringlets; that majestic beard, those rosy cheeks and coral lips? Where that erect posture of the body and noble gait? In what other quarter of the globe shall we find the blush that overspreads the soft features of the beautiful women of Europe, that emblem of modesty, of delicate feelings, and of sense? Where that nice expression of the amiable and softer passions in the countenance; and that general elegance of features and complexion? Where, except on the bosom of the European woman, two such plump and snowy hemispheres, tipt with vermillion?

I would venture to say that despite White's best intentions, he was unable to keep personal opinions from influencing his scientific methods.

Third floor, Hillman