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 think we’ve finally found the main culprit: Immanuel Kant! We also discuss two scientists that get a lot of undeserved blame for scientific racism: Johann Friedrich Blumenbach and Petrus Camper.
Some Resources:
To see where these Enlightenment views on race have ended up today, we give you two Steve King interviews. 1. At the Republican Convention: https://youtu.be/Ti5t1WXMs9k; and 2. defending those remarks: https://youtu.be/w3sV6NN5gqs
Sally Hatch Gray, “Kant’s Race Theory, Forster’s Counter, and the Metaphysics of Color,” The Eighteenth Century, Vol. 53, No. 4 (WINTER 2012), pp. 393-412.
Very, Ryan. “Kant’s Racism” (2012)
For a view on Kant that says he tempered his racism in his later works, see Kleingeld, Pauline. “Kant’s second thoughts on race.” The Philosophical Quarterly 57, no. 229 (2007): 573-592.
For a good look at problems with translations of Blumenbach, see Michael, John S. “Nuance Lost in Translation: Interpretations of JF Blumenbach’s Anthropology in the English Speaking World.” NTM 25, no. 3 (2017): 281-309.
Meijer, Miriam Claude, and Petrus Camper. “Petrus Camper on the Origin and Color of Blacks.” History of Anthropology Newsletter 24, no. 2 (1997): 3-9.
Müller-Wille, Staffan. “Linnaeus and the Four Corners of the World.” The Cultural Politics of Blood, 1500–1900. Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2014. 191-209.

16 Race In The Enlightenment, Part 2 - Kant And Blumenbach

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 the fourth and final installment of our mini-series on race and intelligence, we get right-up-to-the-minute with James Watson’s recent (unfounded) claims that genetics and IQ are linked. Along the way, we figure out how IQ research has changed since the 1990s (spoiler alert: not much), and—most importantly—why people keep returning to this stuff even though it’s never been substantiated.
Transcript: http://speakingofrace.ua.edu/uploads/1/1/0/5/110557873/race_and_intelligence_part_4.pdf

28 Race And Intelligence, Part4

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 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

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/

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