What does it mean to “decolonize” teaching and scholarship? Why would we want to do that? And how? We take on these questions and more in a panel discussion with social scientists and established scholars of race Lance Gravlee, John L. Jackson Jr., Stephanie McClure, and Yolanda Moses. 

Some Resources:

Blum, Susan D., and Alfie Kohn, eds.  (2020). Ungrading: Why rating students undermines learning (and what to do instead). West Virginia University Press. https://www.powells.com/book/ungrading-9781949199826 
Harrison, Faye V., ed. (1991). Decolonizing anthropology: Moving further toward an anthropology for liberation. American Anthropological Association. https://www.powells.com/book/decolonizing-anthropology-2nd-edition-9780913167830 
hooks, bell. (2014). Teaching to transgress. Routledge. https://www.powells.com/book/teaching-to-transgress-education-as-the-practice-of-freedom-9780415908085 
Trouillot, Michel-Rolph. (2003). "Anthropology and the savage slot: The poetics and politics of otherness." In Global transformations. Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 7-28.
Wendland, Claire L. (2010). A heart for the work: Journeys through an African medical school. University of Chicago Press. https://www.powells.com/book/a-heart-for-the-work-9780226893273 
The Boise State diversity course controversy: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2021/03/18/boise-state-suspends-diversity-course-1300-students 

Select works our guests wanted to share with podcast listeners: 
Gravlee, Clarence C. (2009). “How race becomes biology: Embodiment of social inequality.” American Journal of Physical Anthropology 138: 47–57.
Gravlee, Lance. (2021) “How whiteness works: JAMA and the refusals of white supremacy.” Somatosphere. http://somatosphere.net/2021/how-whiteness-works.html/ 
Jackson Jr, John L. (2013).  Thin description: Ethnography and the African Hebrew Israelites of Jerusalem. Harvard University Press. https://www.powells.com/book/thin-description-9780674049666 
McClure, SM (2017). Symbolic body capital of an “other” kind: African American females as a bracketed subunit in female body valuation. In Anderson-Fye, EP and Brewis, A (eds.) Fat Planet: Obesity, Culture and Symbolic Body Capital. University of New Mexico Press.
McClure, SM. (2020) Living Unembodiment: Physicality and body/self discontinuity among African American Adolescent Girls. Ethos, 48(1): 3-28.
Mukhopadhyay, Carol C., Rosemary Henze, and Yolanda T. Moses. (2013). How real is race? A sourcebook on race, culture, and biology, 2nd edition. Rowman & Littlefield. https://www.powells.com/book/how-real-is-race-9780759122734

Decolonizing

Skin color is probably THE key thing we think of when we think about race these days, but it wasn't always that way. In this episode, we ask: where and when did skin color become the trait most associated with race? There's so much to talk about that we don't quite make it up to the present day--stay tuned for a sequel where we discuss contemporary understandings of skin color, genetics, and race! 

Here's a heavily footnoted and referenced script for the episode: http://speakingofrace.ua.edu/uploads/1/1/0/5/110557873/skin_color_part_1.pdf

History of Skin Color

In this episode we finish our discussion of skin color with genetic and evolutionary models proposed throughout the 20th and into the 21st century. Spoiler alert: It's complicated!
Script and resources available here: http://speakingofrace.ua.edu/uploads/1/1/0/5/110557873/skin_color_-_2.pdf

Skin Color, part 2

Racial equality is a new idea, right? Wrong! Meet Anténor Firmin, renegade Haitian intellectual of the late 19th century. He traveled all over the world, duked it out with elite scientific racists, hung out with Frederick Douglass, even ran for president -- but was exiled. Twice. On this episode, we discuss the Haitian anthropologist whose work is finally gaining the recognition it deserves, and why you've never heard of him.
Here's the script with resources: http://speakingofrace.ua.edu/uploads/1/1/0/5/110557873/joseph_ant%C3%A9nor_firmin.pdf

Firmin

The idea that race is a biological reality has hung on longest and strongest in the parts of biological anthropology that deal with skeletal remains. In this episode we talk with two forensic anthropologists, Sean Tallman and Allysha Winburn, about how typological notions of race and ancestry have changed over time in this segment of the discipline. They have published a recent paper discussing this change (Tallman, S. D., Parr, N. M., & Winburn, A. P. (2021). Assumed Differences; Unquestioned Typologies: The Oversimplification of Race and Ancestry in Forensic Anthropology. Forensic Anthropology, Early View, 1-24. doi:https://doi.org/10.5744/fa.2020.0046).

Additional resources:

J. Bindon, M. Peterson, & L. J. Weaver (Producer). (2017, 11/14/2017). Race and the Human Genome Project [Retrieved from http://speakingofrace.ua.edu/podcast/race-and-the-human-genome-project
Bindon, J. R. (2020). Race in the wake of the Human Genome Project.  Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/342215956_Race_in_the_wake_of_the_Human_Genome_Project
Crews, D. E., & Bindon, J. R. (1991). Ethnicity as a taxonomic tool in biomedical and biosocial research. Ethnicity & disease, 1(1), 42-49. 
Dixon, R. B. (1923). The Racial History of Man. New York: C. Scribner's Sons.
Holden, C. (2008). Personal genomics. The touchy subject of ‘race’. Science (New York, N.Y.), 322(5903), 839. 
Hooton, E. A. (1931). Up from the Ape. New York: Macmillan.
Lieberman, L., Kirk, R. C., & Littlefield, A. (2003). Perishing Paradigm: Race—1931–99. American Anthropologist, 105(1), 110-113. 
Morning, A. (2011). The nature of race. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Wagner, J. K., Yu, J. H., Ifekwunigwe, J. O., Harrell, T. M., Bamshad, M. J., & Royal, C. D. (2017). Anthropologists' views on race, ancestry, and genetics. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 162(2), 318-327.

Race and Ancestry in Forensic Anthropology

Eugenics: the science and practice of promoting “good breeding” among humans. An early-20th-century movement so steeped in white supremacy that even some white people don’t count, much less people of color. Here we begin a series with more than you ever wanted to know about the sinister history of eugenics, including mass sterilization campaigns in the US and direct connections to the Holocaust.
Transcript here: http://speakingofrace.ua.edu/uploads/1/1/0/5/110557873/transcript.pdf

Eugenics, part 1

In this episode, we talk with evolutionary biologist Joe Graves and biological anthropologist Alan Goodman about their roles as thought leaders on public education around race, racism, and science (https://cup.columbia.edu/book/racism-not-race/9780231200660). They tell us about how they came to collaborate on their new book Racism not Race: Answers to Frequently Asked Questions, which tackles many of these issues. As promised, here are the links to the Wikipedia pages for Joe (https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Joseph_L._Graves_Jr.&oldid=1051037675) and for Alan (https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Alan_H._Goodman&oldid=1063696168) so you can see some of their many accomplishments. Also as promised in the episode, here is Joe’s paper telling why Lewontin’s fallacy isn’t a fallacy, a key argument against biological races in humans (http://raceandgenomics.ssrc.org/Graves/). If you want more, you’ll have to listen to the episode and buy the book!
Here's a transcript of the episode: http://speakingofrace.ua.edu/uploads/1/1/0/5/110557873/transcript.pdf

Racism Not Race

At least since Stephen Jay Gould's 1981 classic Mismeasure of Man, Darwin has been characterized as a kindly anti-racist while Morton has been characterized as a founding father of scientific racism. We argue that the two men were much more alike in their views on both slavery and race.

Great is whose sin?

In this episode we respond to a listener question about our top 5 examples of scientific racism. Unfortunately, in the five years of this podcast, we’ve only discussed two of these people/topics, so we’ve got a lot of work to do to get up to speed. The transcript includes references and resources for these topics: http://speakingofrace.ua.edu/uploads/1/1/0/5/110557873/transcript.pdf

Top 5 Scientific Racisms

In this episode we interview Erik Peterson about the book he recently released with fellow historian, Margaret Peacock, about the crazy pandemic year of 2020. Race features prominently throughout!
Some resources:
The website that accompanies the book: https://adhc.lib.ua.edu/pandemicbook/
The book: https://www.amazon.com/Deeper-Sickness-Journal-America-Pandemic/dp/0807040290

A Deeper Sickness

In this episode we describe some of the early roots of eugenics and Erik describes his three-ingredient model for eugenics.

Eugenics, Part 2

World-renowned expert on the evolution and meaning of skin color, biological anthropologist Nina Jablonski talks to Chris Lynn, professor of anthropology at the University of Alabama, Jo Weaver and Erik Peterson.  Dr. Jablonski has moved well beyond trying to explain how the distribution of skin color in human populations is not a racial marker to trying to provide educational experiences for K-12 children to understand how and what science has to say about human variation.

3 Jablonski Interview On Skin Color

We attempt to set the background for the scientific consensus that grew in the 1960s and 70s that race is a cultural construction, not a biological fact.  Since anthropology is the discipline most intimately entwined with race and biological anthropology is the part of the discipline that has the greatest history with race, this discusses some of the key players in driving the cultural consensus and some opposing it.  There was a memorable moment at a meeting in 1966 when Paul Baker, physical anthropologist and mentor to Jim Bindon, was presenting a paper about using race as research tool and Margaret Mead, cultural anthropologist, was pounding her "house post" and shouting disagreement which is used to illustrate some of the confusion about race at the time.  Definitions of race by Jonathan Marks and Audrey Smedley are featured.

4 What Is Race?

In this episode we talk about the interaction of the Human Genome Project with the concept of race and try to explain why this rapidly switched from debunking the biological nature of race to reinforcing the biological nature of race.  As an example of how things went wrong, we talk about the “warrior gene” and super predators. Here are some links that go with this episode:
Human Genome Announcement at the White House (2000)
Rosenberg, Noah A., Jonathan K. Pritchard, James L. Weber, Howard M. Cann, Kenneth K. Kidd, Lev A. Zhivotovsky, and Marcus W. Feldman. “Genetic structure of human populations.” Science 298, no. 5602 (2002): 2381-2385.
Wade, Nicholas. “Gene study identifies 5 main human populations, linking them to geography.” New York Times, December 20, 2002, p. A37.​
Wade, Nicholas. “The palette of humankind.” New York Times, December 24, 2002, p. F3.
Robert, L. H. “People are same, but different; humans can be sorted into five groups based on ancestry, major genetic study finds.” Los Angeles Times, December 20, 2002, p. 3B.
Review of Nicholas Wade’s A Troublesome Inheritance in the New York Times.
A copy of the letter that appeared in the New York Times condemning Wade’s use of genomic work in A Troublesome Inheritance.  The fifth signer is Noah Rosenberg, lead author on the 2002 article.
Peterson, Erik L. The Life Organic: The Theoretical Biology Club and the Roots of Epigenetics. University of Pittsburgh Press, 2017.

6 Race and the Human Genome Project

In this episode we discuss some of the myths about race and athletics and try to shed a little light on the subject.  Here are some sources that can help with this discussion:
Good source on race and athletics: Hoberman, John Milton. Darwin's athletes: How sport has damaged Black America and preserved the myth of race. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1997.
Journalist with a very readable approach to race: Harrison, Guy P. Race and Reality: what everyone should know about our biological diversity. Prometheus Books, 2010. Chapter 4: Black Men Can’t Jump
Epstein, David. The sports gene: Inside the science of extraordinary athletic performance. Penguin, 2014. Shows a couple of single gene mutations that affect performance but also emphasizes the 10,000 hour principle.
Clips from the Jimmy the Greek interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzB7IsmOegE
Interview with Donald Trump in June 2016 where he says Jimmy the Greek shouldn’t have apologized for his racist rant:  http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2016/06/30/donald_trump_invokes_jimmy_the_greek_and_his_racist_slurs.html
Rush Limbaugh on Donovan McNabb: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGiTv_xRd5A
Black vs. White quarterbacks at Alabama: http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2243329-andrew-zow-the-highs-and-lows-of-life-as-a-black-qb-at-alabama
A key racial and racist source for the biological effect of race on athletics: Entine, Jon. Taboo: why black athletes dominate sport and why we’re afraid to talk about it, Cambridge, MA, Perseus Books, 2000.

Speaking of RAce

8 Race and Athletics

In this episode we address another issue that students come into class with when we try to teach about the cultural construction of race: the biological reinforcement of race that comes from commercials run by DNA ancestry companies that promise to tell you whether you should be wearing lederhosen or kilts.
​Methods of ancestry estimation:
23andMe. The science behind 23andMe's Genetic Weight report. February, 2017. https://permalinks.23andme.com/pdf/23_17-GeneticWeight_Feb2017.pdf.
AncestryDNA. Ethnicity estimate white paper. October 30, 2013. https://www.ancestry.com/dna/resource/whitePaper/AncestryDNA-Ethnicity-White-Paper.
FamilyTreeDNA ancestry methodology: https://www.familytreedna.com/learn/user-guide/family-finder-myftdna/myorigins-methodology/
Additional Resources
Brown, Kristen V. How DNA Testing Botched My Family's Heritage, and Probably Yours, Too, January 16, 2018. https://gizmodo.com/how-dna-testing-botched-my-familys-heritage-and-probab-1820932637
Copeland, Libby. Who was she? A DNA test only opened new mysteries. July 27, 2017. https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/lifestyle/she-thought-she-was-irish-until-a-dna-test-opened-a-100-year-old-mystery/ (The “she thought she was Irish” anecdote).
Dahm Triplets DNA ancestry tests: http://www.ninjajournalist.com/entertainment/identical-triplets-dna-test/
https://youtu.be/rDeyeUAtdrQ (The anecdote about identical triplets who had different “ethnic” ancestry estimates).
Grayson, Gisele. My Grandmother Was Italian. Why Aren't My Genes Italian? January 22, 2018. https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2018/01/22/578293890/my-grandmother-was-italian-why-arent-my-genes-italian
Holden, Constance. “The Touchy Subject of ‘Race’.” Science 322, no. 5903 (2008): 839. (Report on the 2008 meeting where genome scientists searched for alternatives to race)
International Society of Genetic Genealogy Wiki Autosomal DNA testing comparison chart: https://isogg.org/wiki/Autosomal_DNA_testing_comparison_chart
Minton, Mark. The Garden City Telegram, January 8, 2018. http://www.gctelegram.com/news/20180108/rep-steve-alford-cites-belief-blacks-more-susceptible-to-marijuana
Rutherford, Adam. A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived: The Human Story Retold Through Our Genes. Workman Publishing, 2017.

9 DNA Ancestry And Race

A "seismic" op-ed in the New York Times! Well known podcast host throwing down on another well known podcast host! A discredited race scientist from the 1980s-90s seemingly justified by a Harvard geneticist in 2018! What's going on here?

In our first ever "Flash" episode — and our first episode attempted (foolishly) without captain-of-the-ship Jim Bindon — Jo and Erik attempt to wade into a thicket and emerge with only a minimum of scratches. Can they do it? On a related note: can either of them actually sing:  "Flash Gordon" by Queen?

Show notes:
Sam Harris, Charles Murray, and the Allure of Race Science (Ezra Klein, Vox)
Waking Up podcast #73: Forbidden Knowledge (Sam Harris)
How Genetics is Changing Our Understanding of 'Race' (David Reich, NYT)
How Not To Talk About Race and Genetics (67 scientists, Buzzfeed)

13 Flash - Sam Harris Vs Ezra Klein Vs Actual Science

In this episode, we continue our mini-series on global race. This time we travel with historian Teresa Cribelli to 19th-century Brazil, where she and Jo banter about slavery, colorism, and how Brazil came to be seen as a nation that embraces racial mixing despite the fact that it subscribed to a national strategy of “whitening” its population. No peacocks this time, but we do talk about Linnaeus!

Here are some resources for this episode:
2016 NPR article on Brazil’s racial tribunals: https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2016/09/29/495665329/for-affirmative-action-brazil-sets-up-controversial-boards-to-determine-race
Dr. Cribelli’s book about industrialization and modernization in19th century Brazil: https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/industrial-forests-and-mechanical-marvels/7EBBFF40C0D570383C9E26A4BAD27616
Dr. Cribelli’s professional web page: https://history.ua.edu/faculty/teresa-cribelli/
John Gast’s 1872 painting “American Progress”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Progress
Modesto Brocos, painter of the 1895 “Redemption of Ham”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modesto_Brocos

21 Race In Brazil

In this episode we begin the very long story of the pseudo-scientific conflation of race and intelligence over the last several hundred years. Much more to come on this topic in future podcasts.
Transcript: http://speakingofrace.ua.edu/uploads/1/1/0/5/110557873/race_and_intelligence_part_1.pdf
Some episode resources:
Jensen, Arthur. "How much can we boost IQ and scholastic achievement?" Harvard educational review 39, no. 1 (1969): 1-123.
Spearman, Charles. "" General Intelligence," objectively determined and measured." The American Journal of Psychology 15, no. 2 (1904): 201-292.
Goddard, Henry Herbert. The Kallikak Family: A Study in the Heredity of Feeble-Mindedness (New York: Macmillan Company, 1912).
Terman, Lewis Madison. The Measurement of Intelligence: An Explanation of and a Complete Guide for the Use of the Stanford Revision and Extension of the Binet-Simon Intelligence Scale (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1916).
Brigham, Carl Campbell. A Study of American Intelligence (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1923), 197.
Brigham, Carl Campbell. "Intelligence Tests of Immigrant Groups," Psychological Review 37, no. 2 (1930): 165.

24 Race And Intelligence, Part 1

In this episode, we discuss the racial term Caucasian: origins, uses (and abuses) and how it figures in the racial conversation today. For a transcript: 
http://speakingofrace.ua.edu/uploads/1/1/0/5/110557873/origin_of_the_term__caucasian_.pdf

29 Caucasian

In this episode we interviewed an expert on Franz Boas, Herb Lewis, to learn more about how Boas developed his ideas about race and how he acted on them throughout his life.
Program notes available at: http://speakingofrace.ua.edu/uploads/1/1/0/5/110557873/lewis-boas_interview.pdf

Herb Lewis interview about Franz Boas and race

We finally fulfill our promise to talk about the seven thug skulls that arrived at the Edinburgh Phrenological Society in 1833. We also discuss how phrenology has been used to bolster biological ideas about race.
Transcript: https://110557873-374249423321902787.preview.editmysite.com/uploads/1/1/0/5/110557873/thug_heads.pdf

Phrenology, race, and Thug heads

In this episode we give our take on the rapidly growing information about racial disparities in the face of the current pandemic.

Some resources:

https://www.propublica.org/article/early-data-shows-african-americans-have-contracted-and-died-of-coronavirus-at-an-alarming-rate
https://theconversation.com/covid-19-is-hitting-black-and-poor-communities-the-hardest-underscoring-fault-lines-in-access-and-care-for-those-on-margins-135615
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-21/covid-19-divides-u-s-society-by-race-class-and-age
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-19/trump-says-coronavirus-could-have-been-stopped-in-china 
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/09/world/coronavirus-equipment-rich-poor.html 
https://www.npr.org/2020/04/04/826780041/as-coronavirus-cases-rise-navajo-nation-tries-to-get-ahead-of-pandemic
https://www.npr.org/2020/04/08/829575332/how-is-the-coronavirus-affecting-black-americans
https://www.npr.org/2020/04/10/831480462/misinformation-distrust-may-contribute-to-black-americans-covid-19-deaths 
https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/04/10/832026070/u-s-surgeon-general-people-of-color-socially-predisposed-to-coronavirus-exposure
https://the1a.org/segments/coronavirus-death-toll-racial-disparities/
Racism in the time of COVID-19 https://iaphs.org/racism-in-the-time-of-covid-19/
Fang, L., Karakiulakis, G., & Roth, M. (2020). Are patients with hypertension and diabetes mellitus at increased risk for COVID-19 infection? The Lancet. Respiratory Medicine, 8, e21.

Racism in the Pandemic

In this episode we discuss issues surrounding the demonstrations in the wake of the murder of George Floyd.

Resources

Crowdsourced spreadsheet documenting police violence: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1YmZeSxpz52qT-10tkCjWOwOGkQqle7Wd1P7ZM1wMW0E/ 
DiAngelo, R. (2018). White fragility: Why it's so hard for white people to talk about racism. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.
John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight (June 7, 2020): https://youtu.be/Wf4cea5oObY
Samuel Sinyangwe’s organization, Campaign Zero: https://www.joincampaignzero.org/ 
Samuel Sinyangwe’s twitter thread on research-based solutions to stop police violence: https://twitter.com/samswey/status/1180655701271732224
Wekker, G. (2016). White innocence: Paradoxes of colonialism and race: Duke University Press.
White People, Read This Before You Text Your Black Friends: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/tomiobaro/how-white-people-can-help

The Protests about the Death of George Floyd

In this episode we discuss a speaker who came to UA in Fall 2019 to give a presentation about the evolution of human diversity—but it was actually a presentation of scientific racism in evolutionary clothing. Erik and Jim were part of a panel that rebutted his presentation and we share our experience with Jo.
For a transcript and sources, click here: http://speakingofrace.ua.edu/uploads/1/1/0/5/110557873/scientific_racism.pdf
Low quality (especially the audio) videos of our presentations are available: 
Jim’s presentation: https://www.facebook.com/ALLELEseries/videos/1011372252533221/
Erik’s presentation: https://www.facebook.com/ALLELEseries/videos/955242114852838/.

Scientific Racism

A short suggestion about a sister-podcast on anthropology and science.

Sausage of Science Promo

A brief discussion of what Speaking of Race is all about.
Transcript and links: http://speakingofrace.ua.edu/uploads/1/1/0/5/110557873/what_is_speaking_of_race.pdf
Episodes mentioned:
What you don’t see when you don’t look https://youtu.be/1pwQuN4AM7k 
THE PROTESTS ABOUT THE DEATH OF GEORGE FLOYD http://speakingofrace.ua.edu/podcast/the-protests-about-the-death-of-george-floyd 
THE BEGINNING OF RACE http://speakingofrace.ua.edu/podcast/the-beginning-of-race 
RACE IN BRAZIL http://speakingofrace.ua.edu/podcast/august-26th-2018 
RACISM AND BLACK BODIES http://speakingofrace.ua.edu/podcast/racism-and-black-bodies 
RACE IN INDIA, PART 1 http://speakingofrace.ua.edu/podcast/race-in-india-part-1 
RACE IN INDIA, PART 2 http://speakingofrace.ua.edu/podcast/july-15th-2018 
MONOGENISM AND POLYGENISM http://speakingofrace.ua.edu/podcast/monogenism-and-polygenism 
RACE AND THE HUMAN GENOME PROJECT http://speakingofrace.ua.edu/podcast/race-and-the-human-genome-project 
RACE AND ATHLETICS http://speakingofrace.ua.edu/podcast/race-and-athletics 
DNA ANCESTRY TESTING AND RACE http://speakingofrace.ua.edu/podcast/dna-ancestry-testing-and-race 
SCIENTIFIC RACISM http://speakingofrace.ua.edu/podcast/scientific-racism

What is Speaking of Race

In this episode, we share an interview with Clarence Gravlee and Connie Mulligan, who talk about their cutting-edge research on racism and its effects on our genes (yes, you heard that right!). They show how experiences of racism have direct effects on the telomeres (the caps on the ends of our DNA) that control aging and cell death, literally wearing down our bodies over time and contributing to many of the race-based health disparities we see today. This work is right in line with our race and health mini-series, as well as our recent episode on racism and the COVID pandemic.

Resources:

Our miniseries on race and health: https://soundcloud.com/user-88955638/sets/race-and-health 
Our recent episode on racism and the COVID pandemic: http://speakingofrace.ua.edu/podcast/racism-in-the-pandemic
Rej, Gravlee, and Mulligan’s article: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ajhb.23375
The Sausage of Science podcast: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/human-biology-association-2/sausage-of-science

SOS interview of Gravlee and Mulligan

Did you know that how your neighborhood was assessed by a government agency over 70 years ago had an impact on your health and even your voting rights today? In this episode we talk about how the Home Owners Loan Corporation gave systemic racism in the U.S. a huge boost with their neighborhood ratings from the 1930s to the 1950s!
Script: http://speakingofrace.ua.edu/uploads/1/1/0/5/110557873/redlining_health_and_voting.pdf

Sources: 

AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. (9/23/2020). Growing Disapproval of Protests Against Police. Retrieved from https://apnorc.org/?post_type=project&p=2761
Herndon, A. W. (9/26/2020). How a Pledge to Dismantle the Minneapolis Police Collapsed. The New York Times. Retrieved from https://nyti.ms/2S0hDRJ
Hoffman, J.S., V. Shandas, and N. Pendleton (1/13/2020). The Effects of Historical Housing Policies on Resident Exposure to Intra-Urban Heat; A Study of 108 US Urban Areas. Climate 8(12). Available at: https://www.mdpi.com/2225-1154/8/1/12/pdf 
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/article-abstract/2747697 
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/1476-069X-8-50 
Jones, B. (5/26/2020). Coronavirus Death Toll is Heavily Concentrated in Democratic Congressional Districts. Retrieved from: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/05/26/coronavirus-death-toll-is-heavily-concentrated-in-democratic-congressional-districts/
Kolbert, E. (6/20/2016). Drawing the Line–How redistricting turned America from blue to red. The New Yorker. Retrieved from: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/06/27/ratfcked-the-influence-of-redistricting 
Kranish, M. and R. O’Harrow. (1/23/2016). Inside the Government’s Racial Bias Case Against Donald Trump’s Company, and How He Fought It. Retrieved from: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/inside-the-governments-racial-bias-case-against-donald-trumps-company-and-how-he-fought-it/2016/01/23/fb90163e-bfbe-11e5-bcda-62a36b394160_story.html 
Lockwood, B. (6/16/2020). The History of Redlining. Retrieved from: https://www.thoughtco.com/redlining-definition-4157858
McGhee F. (9/5/2018). The most important Housing Law Passed in 1968 Wasn’t the Fair Housing Act. Retrieved from https://shelterforce.org/2018/09/05/the-most-important-housing-law-passed-in-1968-wasnt-the-fair-housing-act/
Plumer, B., N. Popovich, and B. Palmer. (8/24/2020). How Decades of Racist Housing Policy Left Neighborhoods Sweltering. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/08/24/climate/racism-redlining-cities-global-warming.html
Remigio, Richard V., et al. (2019). Association of extreme heat events with hospital admission or mortality among patients with end-stage renal disease. JAMA Network Open 2.8.
Retrieved from: 
Richardson, J. et al. National Community Reinvestment Coalition: Redlining and Neighborhood Health. Retrieved from: https://ncrc.org/holc-health/
Schifano, Patrizia, et al. (2009). Susceptibility to heat wave-related mortality: a follow-up study of a cohort of elderly in Rome. Environmental Health 8.1: 50. Retrieved from:
Stone, B., Hess, J. J., & Frumkin, H. (2010). Urban form and extreme heat events: are sprawling cities more vulnerable to climate change than compact cities?. Environmental health perspectives, 118(10), 1425-1428. Retrieved from: https://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/doi/full/10.1289/ehp.0901879 
Wines, M. (6/27/2019). What is Gerrymandering? And How Does it Work? Retrieved from: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/27/us/what-is-gerrymandering.html 
Wong, K. V., Paddon, A., & Jimenez, A. (2013). Review of world urban heat islands: Many linked to increased mortality. Journal of Energy Resources Technology, 135(2). Retrieved from: https://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/energyresources/article-abstract/135/2/022101/365904/Review-of-World-Urban-Heat-Islands-Many-Linked-to?redirectedFrom=fulltext

Redlining, Health, and Voting

In this episode, Jo invites Alan Goodman back to review Isabel Wilkerson’s book, Caste. They provide some context from a science and history perspective on both caste and race.

Here’s the source that Alan refers to: Egorova, Y. (2009). De/geneticizing Caste: Population Genetic Research in South Asia. Science as Culture, 18(4), 417-434. doi:10.1080/09505430902806975 
Speaking of Race, Race in India playlist: https://soundcloud.com/user-88955638/sets/race-in-india
Wilkerson, I. (2020). Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents. New York: Random House.

Caste

In this episode we talk with Paul Wolff Mitchell, of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania, about the skull measurements of 19th century founding father of the American School of Anthropology, Samuel George Morton. Morton used his skull measurements to provide scientific support for polygenism (multiple origins of human races), slavery, and the ranking of races (as we discussed in earlier episodes: Monogenism and Polygenism and Morton and Gould--Polygeny Side B). Mitchell has analyzed Morton’s handwritten notes in an attempt to shed further light on the issue of Morton’s bias which was initially raised by Stephen Jay Gould in his 1978 article (Gould, 1978) and elaborated in his book, The Mismeasure of Man (Gould, 1981, 1996). Mitchell uses Morton’s contemporary, Friedrich Tiedemann, as an exemplar of someone using cranial measurements to come to the exact opposite conclusion, that the races were equal (Tiedemann, 1836).

Here are some resources about this controversy:

Publications by Mitchell: 
Mitchell, P. W. (2018). The fault in his seeds: Lost notes to the case of bias in Samuel George Morton’s cranial race science. Plos Biology, 16(10), e2007008. 
Mitchell, P. W., & Michael, J. S. (2019). Bias, Brains, and Skulls: Tracing the Legacy of Scientific Racism in the Nineteenth-Century Works of Samuel George Morton and Friedrich Tiedemann. In E. August, B. R. Furrow, K. Richter, K. K. Thomason, D. Costello, J. S. Michael, P. W. Mitchell, & U. Bettray (Eds.), Embodied Difference: Divergent Bodies in Public Discourse (pp. 77-98). Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield.

Gould’s paper and book:
Gould, S. J. (1978). Morton's ranking of races by cranial capacity. Unconscious manipulation of data may be a scientific norm. Science, 200(4341), 503-509. doi:10.1126/science.347573
Gould, S. J. (1981). The mismeasure of man. New York: WW Norton.
Gould, S. J. (1996). The mismeasure of man (Revised and Expanded ed.): WW Norton & Company.

Other reconsiderations of the Morton and Gould argument:
Kaplan, J. M., Pigliucci, M., & Banta, J. A. (2015). Gould on Morton, Redux: What can the debate reveal about the limits of data? Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 52, 22-31. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.shpsc.2015.01.001
Lewis, J. E., DeGusta, D., Meyer, M. R., Monge, J. M., Mann, A. E., & Holloway, R. L. (2011). The mismeasure of science: Stephen Jay Gould versus Samuel George Morton on skulls and bias. PLoS Biol, 9(6), e1001071. 
Michael, J. S. (1988). A New Look at Morton's Craniological Research. Current Anthropology, 29(2), 349-354. doi:10.1086/203646
Michael, J. S. (2012, June 14, 2013). Personal Commentary on Morton & Gould Part 1.  Retrieved from http://michael1988.com/?page_id=424
Weisberg, M. (2014). Remeasuring man. Evolution & Development, 16(3), 166-178. doi:https://doi.org/10.1111/ede.12077

Morton’s work:
Morton, S. G. (1844). Crania Aegyptiaca: or, Observations on Egyptian ethnography, derived from anatomy, history, and the monuments (Vol. 9): J. Pennington.
Morton, S. G. (1849). Catalogue of Skulls of Man and the Inferior Animals, in the Collection of Samuel George Morton: Merrihew & Thompson, printers.
Morton, S. G., & Combe, G. (1839). Crania Americana; or, a comparative view of the skulls of various aboriginal nations of North and South America: to which is prefixed an essay on the varieties of the human species: Philadelphia: J. Dobson; London: Simpkin, Marshall.

Tiedemann on skulls:
Tiedemann, F. (1836). XXIII. On the Brain of the Negro, Compared with That of the European and the Orang-Outang. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London(126), 497-527. 

Our episode about Thugee Skulls and phrenology: Phrenology, Race, and Thug Heads

Morton-Tiedemann-Gould

In this episode we interview historian of science Iris Clever about her research untangling the early 20th century entanglements of the biometricians, physical anthropology, and race. She pursues this topic through the exploration of work by the statistician and Galton protégé, Karl Pearson, and one of Pearson’s favorite students, Geoffrey Morant. Morant, who publicly opposed Nazi racism in the 1930s and 40s maintained the biological reality of race and the possibility of racial differences in mental characteristics.

Resources:

Clever, I., & Ruberg, W. (2014). Beyond Cultural History? The Material Turn, Praxiography, and Body History. Humanities, 3(4), 546-566. https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0787/3/4/546/htm
Morant, G. M. (1934). 126. A Biometrician's View of Race in Man. Man, 99-105. https://www.jstor.org/stable/2790912
Morant, G. M. (1939). The races of central Europe: A footnote to history: G. Allen & Unwin Limited.
Morant, G. M. (1952). The Significance of Racial Differences. Paris: UNESCO.
Wagenmakers, E.-J. (2018, 5/3/2018). Karl Pearson’s Worst Quotation? [Racist quotes from Karl Pearson's writings].  Retrieved from https://www.bayesianspectacles.org/karl-pearsons-worst-quotation/

Karl Pearson and Geoffrey Morant

How did race become such a flash point in modern society, and why does it remain contentious in our genomic age?
          In this first-of-its-kind trans-disciplinary podcast, biological anthropologist Jim Bindon joins with cultural anthropologist Lesley Jo Weaver and historian of science Erik L. Peterson to explore our species centuries' long debates over how to define biological and behavioral difference, and why it continues to matter today.
See more about us at: http://speakingofrace.ua.edu/

Speaking of Race

Pinned to spotlight

Popular tracks