Chapter 2 Presentation

By

Quanethia Le’Vell De BANOKI and Zanovia JOHNSON

The White Architects of Black Education

Many colonial educators in America embraced the tenets of biological determinism as legitimate explanations for societal development

Social scientists looked to quantification as they attempted to construct law-like assumptions about societal & human development

Based on Aristotles’ ideas that inequality was foundation of natural order, Natural difference viewed as hierarchal. Organism and races could be ranked.

Race literature of 1830’s-1850’spolitically inspireddefended Colonialism, slavery,

exploitation of land cloaked in “science”

established racial politics in the country

Science…

…justified and rationalized Colonialism…Proof that social hierarchy could be

established

The Nation capitalized from slavelabor, sharecropping, and subservience

S.J. Gould “The Mismeasure of Man” --Illustrates 2 “scientific” views on

the origins of humankind

Monogenists…believed in a single species of people originating from a single source

Polygamists

Argued human races were a separate species

“The Father of Scientific Racism”

Arthur de Gobineau’s ideas helped frame “scientism” on race and social development

…used Christian doctrine linked virtue to faith,

…associated virtue to bloodlines using Aryans as example (their pure blood= intelligence & heroism)

…Blood had to be maintained.

Race is the most important question in history

Social decline due to miscegenation

All derive from superior Aryan stock and are divided into races of unequal worth.

Superior must fight to maintain position

Gorbineau’s Hierarchy:Caucasian, Semetic, Japhetic people Yellow: Altaic, Mongol, Finnish, tartar Hamites (Blacks)

Miscegenation due to war conquest and migration. If left unchecked miscegenation would undo civilization.

1735- Carolus Linnaeus –among the first to classify human beings by race. Used Skin color and personal characteristics, mental and moral traits.

“Systema Naturae” divided ppl into White (innovative, keen of mind) Black (lazy and careless) Red & Yellow.

Ernst Haeckel -- Anthropongenie situated blacks on evolutionary tree below Gorillas and chimpanzees

Surgeon Charles White -- Blacks separate species ( b/t whites and apes): feet, fingers, toes, legs, hair, cheekbones, arm length, skull size, sex organ size & body odor made Blacks animals.

Scientific racism reinforced in the medical profession

Races differed anatomically, physiologically, psychologically

Samuel Cartwright- Negroes needed slavery exercise to help their low supply of red blood, small brains. Coined “drapetomania” –disease of the mind making slaves want to run away. Rx, kindness and whipping

Thomas JeffersonNotes on the State of Virginia explained some

of his racist ideologies. Blacks inferior in reason and imagination

(dull, tasteless). Intelligence result of biological status.

Roman slaves made intellectual contributions. Blacks are distinct

Blacks uninhibited: sleep & eat…too much passion so no New America

Let’s send them back to Africa!

Louis AgassizSwiss biologistNever met or saw a black person or encountered

US slavery.“Center of Creation”-suggest that plants and

animals were created in certain places and mostly didn’t stray far from those centers.

Roots were in creationism, monogenism “all men share commonalities, but the races are

different species” Difference is the key: culture, habit, intelligence,

and ability. Started as biological and natural history to social

and political embracing White supremacy.Cunning, tricky, cowardly. Africa never contributed to building a civilized

society

Onward Polygeny: Agassiz

Agassiz’s research unfolds while at Harvard “Centers of Creation”

Agassiz’s views were expressed in “The Diversity of Origin of the Human Races”

Agassiz’s transformation into social and political pronouncements

Watkins/Kelley, 2001; http://images.google.com/imgres

He argued for restricting the activities of American Blacks.

He believed mixed race children were an offense and a sin against nature.

He believed the libidinous Blacks would lure the White race to degradation.

He argued that interracial marriages would create feebleminded offspring with physical disabilities.

And he believed that Blacks should be trained for manual labor as opposed to intellectual cultivation Watkins/Kelley, 2001

Although Agassiz’s work was popular it had to be coupled with the empiricism of others, such as Samuel George Morton of Philadelphia.

Watkins/Kelley, 2001

Like Agassiz, Morton argued that there were separately created human species.

His differences in primordial organization

Agassiz and Morton representation

Onward Polygeny: Morton

Watkins/Kelley, 2001; http://images.google.com/imgres

He

hypothesized

that the

discrepancy

between the

skulls of blacks

and whites

would be

significant.

Morton hypothesis of human skulls

Watkins/Kelley, 2001; http://images.google.com/imgres

Shockley (1972), Jensen (1995), and Hernstein and Murray (1994) continued the tradition, as America’s brand of racism influences every aspect of social and political life.

Watkins/Kelley, 2001

Darwin’s origins of variability

New means of production, property relations, and divisions of wealth allowed for a new political sociology.

Darwinian Revolution: Changing the Discourse

Watkins/Kelley, 2001; http://images.google.com/imgres

The thought and scientific work of Charles Darwin do not underlie the rationale of Social Darwinism or modern “scientific” racism.

Racism in its different manifestationsRacial subjugation often masked

political subjugation

Social Darwinism and Colonial Conquest

Watkins/Kelley, 2001

The Eugenics Movement

The eugenics movement began in Europe in the mid-nineteenth century with the theorizing of Sir Francis Galton.

Watkins/Kelley, 2001; http://images.google.com/imgres

Stage 1, 1870-1905, hereditarian explanations took root

1905-1930, theorists directly associated feeblemindedness, insanity, pauperism, and crime with heredity.

Reform, correction, and charity organizations advocated custodial care and sterilization as solutions for “defective” types.

Eugenics building block

Haller (1984) He divides the American eugenics movement into stages.

Watkins/Kelley, 2001

Sir Francis Galton (1822-1911) a cousin of Charles Darwin and founder of eugenics ideology.

Galton: The “Scientific” Dimension of Eugenics

Watkins/Kelley, 2001; ; http://images.google.com/imgres

Pearson argued, as a eugenicist, that personality and intelligence were predetermined in the germ plasma before birth.

Biometrics the application of statistics

Eugenics influences that improve the inborn qualities of a race

Karl Pearson (1857-1936)

Watkins/Kelley, 2001; Farrall, 1985, p.55; http://images.google.com/imgres

A central premise of the eugenicists was that American institutions were incapable of molding or assimilating the “inferior” races (Haller, 1984)

Nativism, racism, and anti-immigrant sentiment provided fertile soil for eugenicist outlooks in America around the turn of the twentieth century (Selden, 1999).

Eugenics and Race in America

Watkins/Kelley, 2001

Sociologist Edward A. Ross

Another sociologist, Henry Pratt Fairchild

Researcher Edward M. East

Eugenics and Race in America continued

Watkins/Kelley, 2001; Hasian, 1996, p.54 ; http://images.google.com/imgres

Galton wrote, “The average intellectual standard of the Negro race is some two grades below our own”

Howard University’s Kelly Miller argued that poverty, tuberculosis, venereal decease, and other ailments would always plague Blacks because of their inherent immorality.

Eugenics and the American Black

Watkins/Kelley, 2001; http://images.google.com/imgres

Eugenics and the American Black continued

Carl C. Brigham, he concluded that blacks were deficient in native or inborn intelligence and that their lack of intelligence would likely lead to a decline in the nation’s collective intelligence.

Watkins/Kelley, 2001;http://images.google.com/imgres

The connection of “scientific” racism(SR) to Black education and the new social sciences is far from coincidental.

“Scientific” racism was indeed the centerpiece of the new social science, which presented human difference as the rationale for inequality.

“Scientific” racism explained

SCIENTIFIC RACISM AND BLACK EDUCATION: RETROSPECTS AND PROSPECTS

Watkins/Kelley, 2001

SCIENTIFIC RACISM AND BLACK EDUCATION: RETROSPECTS AND PROSPECTS continued

SR was a fundamental precept in the architecture of Black education.

Industrial education was presented as progressive reform

Watkins/Kelley, 2001

Behaviourism, Psycho-Analysis and Physiological Manipulation in EducationBrent Jessop

                                                                                   

SR provided legitimization for colonial policies. Blacks got all they could intellectually manage.

The race issue saturates every aspect of our social, economic, political, educational, and personal life.

Notions of racial “difference” affected the architects of Black education, as evidenced in both their thought and their actions.

SCIENTIFIC RACISM AND BLACK EDUCATION: RETROSPECTS AND PROSPECTS continued

Watkins/Kelley, 2001

END OF CHAPTER 2 POWER POINT PRESENTATION

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