It is certain that debates within the scientific community about whether the historic descriptors of race or ethnicity are valid anymore, or indeed ever were, and whether they should be replaced with more robust information about genetic ancestry will continue. My own view is that attempts to stop the progress of science have been remarkably unsuccessful over time, and the benefits of understanding the impact of human variation outweigh the risks. But I say this with the specter in the back of my mind of someone speaking from this stage in a hundred years time, castigating the scientists of my era for their blindness to the ways in which their scientific findings were used to sustain prejudice and discrimination.Keep in mind, Tilghman delivered this speech to an audience of Afro-American studies scholars. Some might see in her stated view a note of optimism for "HBD".
How we proceed in this new era, and whether for good or ill, are now up to all of us, scientist and non-scientist alike. In this regard the Center for African American Studies is poised to play a critical role in the ongoing debate we must have about the meaning of race in the post-genome era. As a University that prides itself in being in the nation's service and the service of all nations, we need to be a leading voice in this debate, through the scholarship that we produce, the conversations that we stimulate and the future leaders whom we educate. As a community in which scientists, social scientists and humanists work and study in close proximity to one another, we can ensure that this discussion be as broad as possible. As the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. observed, "Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that." At Princeton we are in the business of generating light.What I'm getting from this is Tilghman fully grasps that current leftist dogma will be unable to withstand the onslaught of genomic fact and is warning her audience they'll need adopt newer and more effective varieties of sophistry (a number of which she illustrates in her speech).
What Linnaeus, Gall, Galton and Davenport have in common – and recall that several of them were considered scientific giants in their time – was deep-seated racial prejudice that biased the way in which they framed their questions, designed their studies and analyzed their data. It would be imprudent for us to think that such biases cannot creep into our thinking about race in the post-genome era.Followed later by (discussing the announcement of the completion of the human genome project):
It was a euphoric moment for all who had participated in the project, but even at that moment of celebration, there was a sense that the genome could potentially open up a proverbial Pandora's Box of issues, particularly surrounding the issue of race.
Because of repeated epidemics and conflicts with English colonists, including King Philip's War of 1675-76, and subsequent colonial laws forbidding tribal identification, the Wampanoag population was largely decimated, decreasing in size from as many as 12,000 individuals in the 16th century to less than 400, as recorded in 1677. To investigate the influence of the historical past on its biological ancestry and native cultural identity, we analyzed genetic variation in the Seaconke Wampanoag tribe. Our results indicate that the majority of their mtDNA haplotypes belongs to West Eurasian and African lineages, thus reflecting the extent of their contacts and interactions with people of European and African descent. On the paternal side, Y-chromosome analysis identified a range of Native American, West Eurasian, and African haplogroups in the population, and also surprisingly revealed the presence of a paternal lineage that appears at its highest frequencies in New Guinea and Melanesia.
This is Doryphoros (Dore-IF-er-us), a statue created by the Greeks in the fifth century bc. He later came to be regarded by the Romans as the Canon of Proportion, or the ideal man. In fact, when it was time for Emperor Augustus to be immortalized in marble, he merely had his sculpted head placed on a copy of this body.Needless to say, few sedentary men (let alone black men) are walking around with 52-inch muscular chests (or the height-adjusted equivalent). Here are two posts at a sculpture website looking at classical canons of proportion in light of anthropometric data, the upshot being:
The “academic canon” lines up pretty well with the mean plus one standard deviation. The “ideal (Vitruvian) canon” matches up fairly close to the mean plus two standard deviations and the “heroic” nine heads canon matches up with the proportions of the population maximum.
The 374F isofrequency values in West Europe and North Africa (Fig. 1) decrease regularly with latitude, from the north of West Europe to North Africa. Higher 374F frequency values were observed in Denmark, England, Belgium, the north of France, Germany, Switzerland, and the north of Italy; medium 374F frequency values were observed in the south of France, Portugal, Spain, Corsica, Italy, Sardinia, and Sicily. The lowest 374F frequency values were observed in the south of Spain and North Africa.
From the American Antiquarian Society meetings in Boston to the chambers of the United States Senate is a step out into the wider American society of the 1890s. But where the speaker is Henry Cabot Lodge, the transition is an easy one, and indeed the pattern of assumption is not dissimilar. Speaking in favor of immigration restriction in 1896, Lodge argued that though a Hindoo might "absorb the learning of Oxford" and even sit in Parliament, he could not be made an Englishman, even though they both came from the "great Indo-European family." It had taken "six thousand years and more to create the differences which exist between them," and these could not be effaced by education in a single lifetime. Lodge went on to ask what was the "matter of race which separates the Englishman from the Hindoo and the American from the Indian?"The full text of Lodge's speech, "The Restriction of Immigration", is online at Google Books in Speeches and addresses, 1884-1909.
It is something deeper and more fundamental than anything which concerns the intellect. We all know it instinctively, although it is so impalpable we can scarcely define it, and yet it is so deeply marked that even the physiological differences between the Negro, the Mongol, and the Caucasian are not more persistent or more obvious. When we speak of a race, then,...we mean the moral and intellectual characters, which in their association make the soul of a race, and which represent the product of all its past, the inheritance of all its ancestors, and the motives of all its conduct. The men of each race possess an indestructible stock of ideas, traditions, sentiments, modes of thought, an unconscious inheritance from their ancestors, upon which argument has no effect. What makes a race are their mental and, above all, their moral characteristics, the slow growth and accumulation of centuries of toil and conflict.
Ethnographic Video Online provides the largest, most comprehensive resource for the study of human culture and behavior – more than 750 hours and 1,000 films at completion. The collection covers every region of the world and features the work of many of the most influential documentary filmmakers of the 20th century, including interviews, previously unreleased raw footage, field notes, study guides, and more. This first release includes 226 videos totaling roughly 152 hours.
Access it now, registration-free, through Friday, March 12th.
URL: http://anth.alexanderstreet.com
username: ethnography
password: sneakpeek
| Nobel Prizes1 | Corruption2 | HDI3 | Happiness4 | |
| Sweden | 11.0 | 9.2 | 0.963 | 256.67 |
| Denmark | 8.0 | 9.3 | 0.955 | 273.4 |
| Norway | 7.4 | 8.6 | 0.971 | 246.67 |
| Italy | 1.7 | 4.3 | 0.951 | 230 |
| Poland | 0.9 | 5.0 | 0.880 | 196.67 |
Today’s few elite White sprinters can run no faster than their predecessors from the 1970s, despite improved equipment, support, and facilities (George, 1994). Proposed racial physiological differences would not adequately explain White sprinting stagnation over a quarter of a century. Proponents of biological determinism might stress that whilst racial athletic differences are small, split seconds can separate champions and also-rans (Entine, 2000). However, the influence of stereotypes could also account for performance differentials, with Whites effectively defeated at the starting-line, by inflated impressions of Black rivals. For White sprinters fear of failure, and over arousal could be triggered by negative stereotypes, whilst Black sprinters may be more relaxed, and confident, due to positive stereotypes. It certainly seems that contemporary sprinting is more important in Black subculture (George, 1994), and few Whites choose to participate, perhaps because of perceptions of inferiority. Coaches may be significant agents in shaping attitudes and channelling Black or White athletes into or away from sprinting due to stereotypical assumptions.Here is the abstract of the paper cited above:
[David Turner and Ian Jones. False Start? UK Sprint Coaches and Black/White Stereotypes.]
Over the past 30 years almost all world-class US sprinters have been black. There were also many fast black sprinters in the USA before the 1960s, but in addition there were a considerable number of world-class white sprinters. In fact, during the 1940s and 1950s the fastest men were white. This was not the case during the 1930s, when the best male sprinters were black. This essay discusses the phenomenon and attempts to give reasons for it. Sociological explanations seem considerably more plausible than physical characteristics based on perceived racial differences.Black dominance in sprinting coincides with the advent of widespread anabolic steroid use. Perhaps this is entirely coincidental. Regardless, when boosters of black athleticism note that no white has run 100 meters in less than 10 seconds, one can note that neither did any black in the pre-steroid era or without Western coaching.
[George, J. (1994) The virtual disappearance of the white male sprinter in the United States: A speculative essay. Sociology of Sport Journal, 11, 1, 70-78.]
[Testosterone] is an element in aggressiveness, territoriality, and hoarding. Blended with adrenaline and smoothed over with cool judgment, it has marked the history of the Caucasoids in many parts of the world.More excerpts within (continue reading).
