Lecture 1 on white skin supremacy or racism

Lecture 1 on white skin supremacy or racism

Carlos Linnaeus (Chapter 2; page 32 of the text ) wrote _Systema Natura_, first Tree of Life classification or taxonomic Tree of Life _without_ underlying Darwinian thesis that all life ( including humans) is related to all other life by “descending” from common ancestor species . In other words, Linnaeus’s Tree of Life was a Taxonomy , not a Phylogeny. Linnaeus gave humans the genus- species name “ Homo sapiens”.

Linnaeus classified Homo Sapiens based on skin color as indicators of residence in different geographical regions , but did _ not_ seem to include the pernicious element of white supremacy; that white skin signaled superiority in white people over peoples of color – moral , inherent , biological superiority of some type.

(See attachment of section of text which explains the range of skin colors as selected for by different levels of sunlight in different geographical regions of the Earth as discovered after Linnaeus )

It was evidently one Blumenbach who wrote a hierarchy of skin colors with the false idea of _white supremacy _ or racism . Blumenbach also originated the term “Caucasian “ still in prominent use as a name for Europeans or white people today. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Friedrich_Blumenbach ).

Page 146 of the Text : “The German physician Johann Blumenbach (1752-1840) introduced a significant and pernicious change in the hierarchy of human types. Considering the skull of a woman from the Caucasus Mountains (located between the Black and Caspian Seas of southeastern Europe and southwestern Asia) the most beautiful in his collection, Blumenbach saw it as a reflection of nature's ideal form: the circle. Surely, he reasoned, this "perfect" specimen resembled God's original creation. Moreover, he thought that the living inhabitants of the Caucasus region were the most beautiful in the world. Based on these criteria, he concluded that this high mountain range, which included lands mentioned in the Bible, was the place of human origins. Blumenbach concluded that all light-skinned peoples in Europe and adjacent parts of western Asia and northern Africa belonged to the same "variety." On this basis, he dropped the label "European" and replaced it with "Caucasian." Although he continued to distinguish American Indians as a separate variety, he regrouped dark-skinned Africans as "Ethiopian" and split those Asians not considered Caucasian into two separate groups: "Mongolian" (referring to most inhabitants of Asia, including China and Japan) and "Malay" (indigenous Australians, Pacific Islanders, and others).

Convinced that Caucasians were closest to the origi nal ideal humans supposedly created in God's image, Blumenbach ranked them as superior. The other "vari-eties," he argued, were the result of "degeneration"; by moving away from their place of origin and adapting to different environments and climates, they had degenerated physically and morally into what many Europeans came to think of as inferior races. Political leaders have used this notion of superior and inferior races to justify brutalities ranging from repression to slavery to mass murder to genocide.” (End of quotation from the text)

Prof. Brown: HOWEVER ! , this was in the context of European capitalism expanding in conquest of colonies and slave enterprises around the globe starting about 500 years ago. These “explorers” collected information on describing the bodies/phenotypes of different peoples they invaded ; and brought these back to Europe where these early biologists also collected it from them. Blumenbach’s white supremacy-racist thesis “rationalized” the fact of the conquerors’ material and military superiority ( but ignoring the conquerors’ moral inferiority to those whom they conquered)

White supremacist colonialism and slavery were the “chief momenta” of the original (primitive) accumulation of the capital of Capitalism ( See era of capitalism on Scientific Cosmological Timeline handout) “The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black-skins, signalised the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production. These idyllic proceedings are the chief momenta of primitive accumulation ( at the beginning of capitalism circa 500 years ago –CB). On their heels treads the commercial war of the European nations, with the globe for a theatre. It begins with the revolt of the Netherlands from Spain, assumes giant dimensions in England’s Anti-Jacobin War, and is still going on in the opium wars against China, &c. (In the 1860’s –CB) The different momenta of primitive accumulation (original accumulation of capital –CB) distribute themselves now, more or less in chronological order, particularly over Spain, Portugal, Holland, France, and England. In England at the end of the 17th century, they arrive at a systematical combination, embracing the colonies, the national debt, the modern mode of taxation, and the protectionist system. These methods depend in part on brute force, e.g., the colonial system. But, they all employ the power of the State, the concentrated and organised force of society, to hasten, hot-house fashion, the process of transformation of the feudal mode of production into the capitalist mode of production, and to shorten the transition. Force is the midwife of every old society pregnant with a new one. It is itself an economic power.

Of the Christian colonial system, W. Howitt, a man who makes a speciality of Christianity, says:

“The barbarities and desperate outrages of the so-called Christian race, throughout every region of the world, and upon every people they have been able to subdue, are not to be paralleled by those of any other race, however fierce, however untaught, and however reckless of mercy and of shame, in any age of the earth.” [4]

The history of the colonial administration of Holland — and Holland was the head capitalistic nation of the 17th century — “is one of the most extraordinary relations of treachery, bribery, massacre, and meanness” [5]

Nothing is more characteristic than their system of stealing men, to get slaves for Java. The men stealers were trained for this purpose. The thief, the interpreter, and the seller, were the chief agents in this trade, native princes the chief sellers. The young people stolen, were thrown into the secret dungeons of Celebes, until they were ready for sending to the slave-ships. “

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch31.htm; _Capital_ by Karl Marx

See also _The World and Africa__ , by W.E.B. Dubois ; https://files.libcom.org/files/w-e-b-du-bois-the-world-and-africa-and-color-and-democracy.pdf

And _Guns, Germs and Steel_ by Jared Diamond;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns,_Germs,_and_Steel

Anthropologists Ashley Montagu and Franz Boas were leaders at debunking the concept of race as white supremacy . As was leading biologist , Richard Lewontin ”A turning point in debates on race was marked in 1972 when, in a paper titled “The Apportionment of Human Diversity,” Harvard geneticist Richard Lewontin showed that human populations, then held to be races, were far more genetically diverse than anyone had imagined.

In The Apportionment of Human Diversity" is a 1972 paper on racial categorisation by American evolutionary biologist Richard Lewontin.[1] In it, Lewontin presented an analysis of genetic diversity amongst people from different conventionally-defined races. His main finding, that there is more genetic variation within these populations than between them,[2] is considered a landmark in the study of human genetic variation and contributed to the abandonment of race as a scientific concept.[3][4][5]

Our text, at pages 147 and 148 says : “ Race as a Biological Concept To understand why the racial approach to human variation has been so unproductive and even damaging, we must first understand race in strictly biological terms. Biologists define race as a subspecies, or a population of a species differing geographically, morphologically, or genetically from other populations of the same species. As simple and straightforward as such a definition may seem, three factors complicate its use. First, it is arbitrary; no scientific criteria exist on how many differences it takes to make a race. For example, if one researcher emphasizes skin color while another emphasizes fingerprint differences, they will not classify people in the same way (> Figure 7.2).

Second, no single race has exclusive possession of any particular variant of any gene or genes. In human terms, the frequency of a trait like the type O blood group, for example, may be high in one population and low in an-other, but it is present in both. In other words, populations are genetically "open," meaning that genes flow between them. The only reproductive barriers that exist for humans are the cultural rules some societies impose regarding appropriate mates. As President Obama's family illustrates (Luo father from western Kenya and Anglo-American mother born in Kansas, who, incidentally, was an anthro-pologist), these social barriers change through time. third problem is that the vast majority of genetic variation exists within a so-called racial group. In the 1970s, right on the heels of the civil rights movement, evolutionary biologist Richard Lewontin demonstrated that a mere 7 percent of human genetic variation exists among racial groups. As the science writer James Shreeve puts it," most of what separates me genetically from a typical African or Eskimo also separates me from another average American of European ancestry" (Shreeve, 1994, p. 60). ( End of quotation)

This argument has been cited as evidence that racial categories are biologically meaningless, and that behavioral differences between groups are not caused by genetic differences.[7] One example is the "Statement on 'Race'" published by the American Anthropological Association in 1998, which rejected the existence of races as unambiguous, clearly demarcated, biologically distinct groups.[11]”

Youtube link on Lewontin’s thesis : https://youtu.be/JvG1ylKhzoo Preview YouTube video The Concept of Race with Richard Lewontin The key pernicious concept is WHITE SUPREMACY.

(per·ni·cious having a harmful effect, especially in a gradual or subtle way. “the pernicious effects of air pollution"; white supremacy’s harmful effect is often not subtle to People of Color) European capitalist society not only divides the species homo sapiens into invalid biological sub-species based on skin color; but it perniciously puts those “races” into a hierarchy with white as falsely SUPERIOR in morality, spirit, soul, intelligence and other important characteristics.

Detroit’s late, great Black Mayor extraordinaire explains white supremacy in his autobiography _Hard stuff_ with a story he heard from his grandfather. “When I was old enough to begin contemplating the dynamics of labor unions, it was one of my Grandpa Young's Alabama tales that illustrated for me the fundamental racial dilemma inherent in collective bargaining. The way we had it figured at Maben's barbershop, racial unity in organized labor was the only way for blacks or whites to gain any leverage in the workplace. For the white man, however, the notion of rubbin shoulders with black men, while to his economic advantage, required him to surrender his sacred myth of superiority---- as i clearly understood when my grandfather' told me the story o fthe honey dippers.

In the old South, honey dippers were the men who drove the s--- wagons and had the job of cleaning outhouses, which was done by removing buckets that had been placed in the holes or where there were no buckets, dipping out the waste with cups. Often, honey dippers came in pairs, one black and one white, the black one doing the dipping and the white one driving the mule team. When the black dipper had a bucket of shit, he would hand it up to the white driver, wo would fill the wagon with buckets to be hauled out to the dump. I one instance, however --according to my grandfather --- the driver suddenly had a change of heart and said to the dipper, "Tom, get up here in this wagon. " So Tom sat in the wagon and the white guy proceeded to hand him the bucket. When Tom's curiosity, finally got the better of him and he asked why they had swapped jobs, the white fellow told him, "I ain't ginna have no n-word handing me no s---"

Here’s an analysis I wrote a few years ago: Charles Brown: You see, in this Reaganite era a change we must make is in the media defaming those anti-racists speaking out against racism as "playing the race card". For decades, anti-racist speech has been censored by the Press through this sleight of hand.

We live in a "post-racial" society, supposedly. So, the word "racist" is never used ,except perhaps rarely to describe some person of color protesting _against_ racism. Things are so twisted that almost the only thing called "racism" by Big Brother Press are acts or statements of anti-racism. For corporate journalists, that is "playing the race card", "reverse racism".

In the infamous US Supreme Court case of _University of California vs Bakke_ , way back in 1978, affirmative action to attain racial equality, the only way equality can be achieved, was slandered as violating protections of racial equality that are provided in the equal protection clause of the 14th

Amendment to the US Constitution (wow, that's a mouthful; I'm a lawyer; smiles) .This began more than 30 years of denying the existence of racism anymore. The narrative has been that the racial playing field is now level , and we have achieve a "post-racial" or colorblind society , in no need of affirmative action remedies to overcome historically instituted inequality between whites and people's of color.

_____________________________________________________________________________________ Yet , People of Color continue to rise ! ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Attachment on Skin Color Selection: “Skin Color: A Case Study in Adaptation: Page 157 to 159 of Text Several factors impact variation in skin color: the transparency or thickness of the skin; a copper-colored pigment called carotene; reflected color from the blood vessels (responsible for the rosy color of lightly pigmented people); and the amount of melanin (from melas, a Greek word meaning "black"—a dark pigment in the skin's outer layer. People with dark skin have more melanin-producing cells than those with light skin, but everyone (except albinos) has a measure of melanin. Exposure to sunlight increases melanin production, causing skin color to deepen.

Melanin protects skin against damaging ultraviolet solar radiation, conferring less susceptibility to skin cancers and sunburn on dark-skinned peoples compared to those with less melanin. Dark skin also helps to prevent the destruction of certain vitamins under intense exposure to sunlight. Because the highest concentrations dark-skinned people tend to be found in the tropical regions of the world, it appears that natural selection has favored heavily pigmented skin as a protection against exposure where ultraviolet radiation is most constant. The inheritance of skin color involves several genes (rather than variants of a single gene), each with several alleles, thus creating a continuous range of expression for this trait. In addition, the geographic distribution of skin color tends to be continuous (> Figure 7.7 and > Figure 7.8). In northern latitudes, light skin has an adaptive advantage related to the skin's important biological function as the manufacturer of vitamin D through a chemical reaction dependent upon sunlight. Vitamin D maintains the balance of calcium in the body essential for healthy bones and balance in the nervous system. In northern climates with little sunshine, light skin allows enough sunlight to penetrate the skin and stimulate the formation of vitamin D. Dark pigmentation interferes with this process in environments with limited sunlight. (melanin A dark pigment produced in the outer layer of the skin that protects against damaging ultraviolet solar radiation.)

Cultural practices can contribute to avoiding the severe consequences of vitamin D deficiency (> Figure 7.9).

In the middle of the 20th century, parents in northern Europe and northern North America fed their children a spoonful of cod liver oil, rich in vitamin D, during the dark winter months. Today, pasteurized milk is fortified with vitamin D. Given what we know about the adaptive significance of human skin color, and the fact that, until 800,000 years ago, members of the genus Homo were almost exclusively “Creatures” of the tropics, lightly pigmented skins are likely a recent development in human history. Conversely, and consistent with humanity's African origins, darkly pigmented skins likely are quite ancient. Human skin, more liberally endowed with sweat glands and lacking heavy body hair compared to other primates, effectively eliminates excess body heat in a hot climate. This would have been especially advantageous to our ancestors on the savannah, who could have avoided confrontations with large carnivorous animals by carrying out most of their activities in the heat of the day. For the most part, tropical predators rest during this period, hunting primarily from dusk until early morning. Without much hair to cover their bodies, selection would have favored dark skin in our earliest human ancestors. Thus, all humans have a black ancestry, no matter how white some of them may appear to be today.

One should not conclude that its relative newness makes lightly pigmented skin better or more highly evolved than heavily pigmented skin. Darker skin better suits the conditions of life in the tropics or at high altitudes, although with cultural adaptations like protective clothing, hats, and more recently invented sunscreen lotions, lightly pigmented people can survive there. Conversely, the availability of supplementary sources of vitamin D allows more heavily pigmented people to do quite well far away from the tropics. In both cases, culture has rendered skin color differences largely irrelevant from a purely biological perspective.”