Race
Making of the Modern World
Term 2, Week 7
Introduction
• Origin of term ‘Race’, not used in English before
c.1520, from Fr ‘Razza’ = group, type of people
• 15thC & 16thC European explorations of world,
(led by Port and Sp) increased contact between
different peoples, driven by trade.
• Primarily a term influenced by Atlantic World,
confluence of Europeans, Africans and
Amerindians - though with later implications for
Asia and Australasia.
• Aim: to trace devt of racial ideas, how / why
becomes synonymous with skin colour
World before 1492
World in 1587
What is ‘Race’
• Race not biological – no more diff between black, white,
brown or red than within each group. Skin colour not an
accurate indicator of ethnic origins due to genetic quirks.
Possible to be one skin colour yet belong to a different
ethnic group
• Race therefore sociological – subjective method of
categorising and differentiating peoples, how categories
formed/applied is very revealing of society / individual –
reason why we study it as an historical concept, since
reveals attitudes, still useful / important today.
• Largest def – Humanity
• Criteria for categorisation varies widely: skin colour,
religion, civilization, dress, behaviour, complexion, size,
gender.
Early Racial Ideas
• Race not fixed identity, possible to change,
adapt, assimilate
• Earliest classification of people due to civilization
status, eg Roman/Barbarian, Free/Slave,
Xtn/Jew/Muslim
• Skin colour only one method of categorisation,
colour - understood to be result of climate,
(heat/exposure to sun) - idea that it is possible
for blacks to become white after few generations
of living in Europe, and vice versa.
• Colour therefore no indicator of status, possible
for whites/blacks to have any status
Early modern racial attitudes
• Theories of monogenesis make it difficult to see Africans
and Amerindians as sub-human
• ‘[Africans are] very black; but the features of their faces,
and their excellent teeth, being white as ivory, make up
together a handsom ayre, and taking comliness of a new
beauty’ John Ogilby, Africa (1670)
• ‘[Indians are] a sort of white men in America (as I am
told) that only differ from us in having no beards’ Richard
Bradley, A Philosophical account of the works of nature
(London, 1721)
• ‘[Africans are] black as coal. Here, thro’ custom, (being
Christians) they account themselves white men’ Journal
of a Voyage up the Gambia (London, 1723)
• Importance of context, eg Europeans treat Africans
differently in Africa to how they treat them in the
Americas.
Spanish
depiction of
Aztecs
‘The Flyer’
Watercolour
by John
White, 1584
Pocahontas
(? 1595,d.1617)
Unidentified
Artist, 1616
National Portrait
Gallery,
Smithsonian
Institution
Mid 18thC developments
Crucial period, linked to enlightenment, new
scientific thinking about race.
• Theoretical problem: men potentially equal
but why so different?
• Polygenesis theories allow for concept of
distinct creation of races
• Race become much more fixed on skin
colour and physical appearance eg
physiognomy.
18thC racial attitudes
• Those belonging to a racial group are seen to
have inherent traits, unalterable defining
characteristics, natural roles
• Whites – seen as xtn, civilized, natural rulers,
rational thinkers, calm
• Blacks – brutal, suited to manual labour,
unintelligent, musical, passionate (no selfcontrol), destined to be slaves
• Indians – wild, savage, brutal, uncivilized, in tune
with nature, heathen, destined to die out
New views of race
• The first difference which strikes us is that of colour… the difference is
fixed in nature. …Besides those of colour, figure, and hair, there are
other physical distinctions proving a difference of race. They have less
hair on the face and body…They seem to require less sleep. A black,
after hard labour through the day, will be induced by the slightest
amusements to sit up till midnight, or later, though knowing he must be
out with the first dawn of the morning. They are at least as brave, and
more adventuresome. But this may perhaps proceed from a want of
forethought, which prevents their seeing a danger till it be present.
When present, they do not go through it with more coolness or
steadiness than the whites. They are more ardent after their female: but
love seems with them to be more an eager desire, than a tender
delicate mixture of sentiment and sensation. Their griefs are transient.
Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the state of Virginia (London, 1787)
• ‘There appears in savages a natural and rooted aversion to a civilised
state… by the efforts of their natural genius alone, they never would
have raised themselves above their original character’ David Doig, Two
Letters on the Savage State (London, 1793)
From Atlas
Geographus
(London,
1711)
diff continents
embodied by
dress as much
as colour
Gustavus
Hesselius,
‘Tishcohan’
1735
From, A
collection of
voyages and
travels
(London,
1745)
‘Europe Supported
by Africa and
America’
William Blake,
c.1777
note – dress no
longer needed to
distinguish between
continents, colour
alone suffices.
Charles White, An account of regular gradation in
man (London, 1799)
19thC developments
• Begins to look beyond just skin colour
to blood, that these traits are in the
blood – hence one-drop rules in NA
(any black ancestor makes you black,
regardless of actual colour c.f.
“Showboat”). Ideas of racial purity
become more important; fear that
miscegenation might end easy
distinction between races.
• Science used to confirm racial
differences
• Re-affirmation of racial categories by
European powers during colonisation
efforts, innate belief in superiority, and
of inferiority of native peoples. Helps to
explain imperialism, linked to ideas of
civilization
Race and Identity
• By 19thC Race becomes means by which
people define themselves and define ‘others’.
• Race not a group you belong to but what you
are
• Race as ideology encourages racism
• Increasingly important to ‘belong’ to a race
• Social and psychological problems for those
who do not fit in (cf Wide Sargasso Sea)
Role of perception
Mixed-race population means it is not always easy to categorise people
Race determined subjectively by all senses (not just eyes), but these
were fallible – notion of ‘passing’
• “We cannot say what admixture of negro blood will make a colored
person. The condition of the individual is not to be determined solely
by distinct and visible mixture of negro blood, but by reputation, by
his reception into society, and his having commonly exercised the
privileges of a white man…it may be well and proper, that a man of
worth, honesty, industry, and respectability, should have the rank of
a white man, while a vagabond of the same degree of blood should
be confined to the inferior caste.” South Carolina Judge William
Harper, 1835
19thC racial attitudes
•
‘The negro is particularly adapted to the wild or natural state of life. … The
senses are more prefect in negroes than in Europeans. This perfection of
the ruder faculties of sense is not required in the civilized state, and it
therefore gives way to a more capacious form of the skull, affording space
for a more ample conformation of the brain, on which an increase of
intellectual power is probably dependent’ James Prichard, Researches into the Physical
History of Man (London, 1813)
•
“the negro’s want of capability to receive a complicated education renders it
improper and impolitic, that he should be allowed the privileges of
citizenship in an enlightened country.” Richard H. Colfax, Evidence Against the Views of the
Abolitionists, Consisting of Physical and Moral Proofs, of the Natural Inferiority of the Negroes (New York: 1833),
•
•
“The brain of the Negro, … is, according to the positive measurements,
smaller than the Caucasian by a full tenth; and this deficiency exists
particularly in the anterior portion of the brain, which is known to be the seat
of the higher faculties.” Josiah C. Nott, Two Lectures on the Natural History of the Caucasian and
Negro Races (Mobile, 1844),
•
•
"No man will treat with indifference the principle of race. It is the key to
history, and why history is often so confused is that it has been written by
men who are ignorant of this principle and all the knowledge it involves. . .
Language and religion do not make a race--there is only one thing which
makes a race, and that is blood." - Benjamin Disraeli
Post-slavery
• End of slavery in Americas
during 19thC, doesn’t alter racial
attitudes, almost fixes them more
firmly since legal diffs between
groups now swept away.
• ‘Jim Crow laws’ in USA outlawed
mixed race marriages,
established segregation, denied
voting rights to non-whites via
literacy or poll tax requirements –
not dismantled until Civil Rights
legislation of 1960s
• Similar system established in
South Africa 1948-1990
20thC developments
• Racism reaches zenith of scientific application in 1930s
and 40s by Nazis, race not just skin colour but religion
(Jews) and ethnic groups (Slavs)
• ‘the higher race subjects to itself a lower race …a right
which we see in nature and which can be regarded as
the sole conceivable right’ Adolf Hitler, 1933 Nuremberg
party rally.
• ‘The Germans were the higher race, destined for a
glorious evolutionary future. For this reason it was
essential that the Jews should be segregated, otherwise
mixed marriages would take place. Were this to happen,
all nature’s efforts “to establish an evolutionary higher
stage of being may thus be rendered futile” (Mein
Kampf).’
Pluralism – the new Racism?
• Post WWII popularity of Pluralism
• Idea that culture is innate, can’t be learned,
everyone different, not necessarily equal. Denial
of individuality and freedom of choice.
• 'Every society, every nation is unique. It has its
own past, its own story, its own memories, its
own languages or ways of speaking, its own dare I use the word - culture.' Enoch Powell
• ‘Love the Diversity of God's Creation; Practice
Racial Integrity; Don't Race Mix; Imagine the
world with only one race - only one culture - Is
that really what you want?...Because that WILL
be the End result . Think about it!’ Ku Klux Klan
Mission Statement
Race in Britain in the
st
21
C
• ‘Mankind is divided into races, and those races, while
sharing many common features of humanity, are innately
different in many ways beyond mere colour. Despite the
propaganda of neo-Marxist academic and media
prostitutes, and the cowardice of conservatives who dare
not stand up to the totalitarian bullying of Political
Correctness, this is a fact. Whether those differences are
God-given or the result of evolutionary pressure is
irrelevant; the important fact is that the British National
Party recognises such ineradicable facts of human
nature and seeks to base its political programme on
such realities, and not on the pernicious fantasy of
‘human equality.’ The most important first consequence
of our acceptance of innate human differences is our
recognition that nationality, while it is influenced by many
factors – including shared loyalties, common history,
religious heritage and personal identification – is first and
foremost decided by ethnicity.’ Press Statement by BNP
Chairman Nick Griffin
Conclusions
• General movement away from race as useful
method of social categorisation since 1970s,
discrimination unlawful in most western
countries.
• Yet racial attitudes exist in West, and are
responsible for most wars eg between ethnic
groups in Africa, between religious groups in
middle east.
• Still most commonly used defining characteristic
of an individual.