Outcasts from evolution : scientific attitudes of racial inferiority, 1859-1900 / John S. Haller, Jr.

  • Haller, John S., Jr., 1940-
Date:
[1971]
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: Outcasts from evolution : scientific attitudes of racial inferiority, 1859-1900 / John S. Haller, Jr. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    $7-50 OUTCASTS FROM EVOLUTION Scientific Attitudes of Racial Inferiority, 1859-1900 John S. Haller, Jr. The concept of racial inferiority of the Negro was beyond critical reach in the nineteenth century. According to John S. Haller, Jr., anthro¬ pology, medicine, psychology, and sociology became instruments which verified theories of race extinction and helped to rationalize the politics of disfranchisement and segregation. To see racial prejudices in their scientific robes, Haller points out, is to understand why, despite later conceptual changes in evolution and methodology, atti¬ tudes of racial inferiority have continued to plague western culture. Haller focuses on anthropometric examinations carried out during the Civil War on Negro soldiers and on subsequent medical reports by southern physicians on the emancipated black population. Ironically, the war which freed the slave also contributed to the development of ideas of racial inferiority in nineteenth-century society. Scientists roamed far and wide in their studies and conclusions on the com¬ parative mortality, health, and physiognomy of Negroes and whites. Considering Negroes outcasts from the evolutionary struggle, scientists described them as a race come out of the depths of centuries, existing on the fringe of Caucasian race achievement and slowly succumbing to natural race extinction. In this period ( 1859 to 1900 ) scientific ideas quickly entered the popular culture through the publications of Herbert Spencer, John Fiske, W J McGee, Edward D. Cope, Frederick Hoffman, Joseph LeConte, Nathaniel Shaler, and others, whose works Haller explores in depth. In seeking to acquaint society with the truths of evolution, scientists and social scientists helped to create and to justify subsequent institutional racism in America. Negroes, they pointed out, unless con¬ trolled by scientific laws based on awareness of race development, posed a perilous social problem for whites. Scientific sanction of the Negro's inferiority in the late nineteenth century was so formidable that even some black intellectuals accepted both the evolutionary framework and the apparent fate that awaited the Negro in an unsuc¬ cessful struggle. Understanding the attitudes of racial inferiority in the context of nineteenth-century science and social science, Haller states, is the first step in fathoming the depth of race prejudice in our own day. John S. Haller, Jr., is assistant professor of history at Indiana Uni¬ versity, Northwest. University of Illinois Press Urbana, Chicago, London 252 00164 8