elderolddog Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Morris Albert Wrote:
> -----------------------
> >
> > Is racism ‘science’, or
> > is it an ‘emotion’?
> >
>
>
> Whenever people feel the need to offer excuses for
> their behavior, they get their pet boffins to come
> up with an clever
> explanation.
>
> Does it mean much of anything that rabid
> conquerors can't really be pinned down to a reason
> they did it all, other than, perhaps, 'just to see
> if I could...' So is the urge to have your way,
> and to, when pressed, come up with a reason,
> simply an instinct passed on to humanity by those
> lucky survivors we call the most fit?
>
> (Is there...could there be, a 'lucky' gene, that's
> worked its way down through the ages? If
> 'victors' are part of the genetic code, what about
> 'losers'?)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_racismScientific racism, sometimes termed biological racism, is the pseudoscientific belief that empirical evidence exists to support or justify racism (racial discrimination), racial inferiority, or racial superiority.[1][2][3][4] Historically, scientific racism received credence throughout the scientific community, but it is no longer considered scientific.[2][3] Dividing humankind into biologically distinct groups is sometimes called racialism, race realism, or race science by its proponents. Modern scientific consensus rejects this view as being irreconcilable with modern genetic research.[5]: 360
Scientific racism misapplies, misconstrues, or distorts anthropology (notably physical anthropology), anthropometry, craniometry, evolutionary biology, and other disciplines or pseudo-disciplines, in proposing anthropological typologies supporting the classification of human populations into physically discrete human races, some of which might be asserted to be superior or inferior to others. Scientific racism was common during the period from the 1600s to the end of World War II. Since the second half of the 20th century, scientific racism has been criticized as obsolete and discredited, yet has persistently been used to support or validate racist world-views, based upon belief in the existence and significance of racial categories and a hierarchy of superior and inferior races.[6]
After the end of World War II, scientific racism in theory and action was formally denounced, especially in UNESCO's early antiracist statement "The Race Question" (1950): "The biological fact of race and the myth of 'race' should be distinguished. For all practical social purposes 'race' is not so much a biological phenomenon as a social myth. The myth of 'race' has created an enormous amount of human and social damage. In recent years, it has taken a heavy toll in human lives, and caused untold suffering."[7] Since that time, developments in human evolutionary genetics and physical anthropology have led to a new consensus among anthropologists that human race is a sociopolitical phenomenon rather than a biological one.[8][9]: 294 [10][11]
The term scientific racism is generally used pejoratively when applied to more modern theories, such as those in The Bell Curve (1994). Critics argue that such works postulate racist conclusions, such as a genetic connection between race and intelligence, that are unsupported by available evidence.[12] Publications such as the Mankind Quarterly, founded explicitly as a "race-conscious" journal, are generally regarded as platforms of scientific racism because they publish fringe interpretations of human evolution, intelligence, ethnography, language, mythology, archaeology, and race.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mankind_QuarterlyThe journal was established in 1960 with funding from segregationists, who designed it to serve as a mouthpiece for their views. The costs of initially launching the journal were paid by the Pioneer Fund's Wickliffe Draper.[7] The founders were Robert Gayre, Henry Garrett, Roger Pearson, Corrado Gini, Luigi Gedda (Honorary Advisory Board),[8] Otmar von Verschuer and Reginald Ruggles Gates. Another early editor was Herbert Charles Sanborn,[9] formerly the chair of the department of Philosophy and Psychology at Vanderbilt University from 1921 to 1942. It was originally published in Edinburgh, Scotland, by the International Association for the Advancement of Ethnology and Eugenics, an organization founded by Draper to promote eugenics and scientific racism.[7]
Its foundation may in part have been a response to the declaration by UNESCO, which dismissed the validity of race as a biological concept, and to attempts to end racial segregation in the American South.[10][11]
In 1961, physical anthropologist Juan Comas published a series of scathing critiques of the journal arguing that the journal was reproducing discredited racial ideologies, such as Nordicism and anti-Semitism, under the guise of science.[12][13] In 1963, after the journal's first issue, contributors U. R. Ehrenfels, T. N. Madan, and Juan Comas said that the journal's editorial practice was biased and misleading.[14] In response, the journal published a series of rebuttals and attacks on Comas.[15] Comas argued in Current Anthropology that the journal's publication of A. James Gregor's review of Comas' book Racial Myths was politically motivated. Comas claimed the journal misrepresented the field of physical anthropology by adhering to outdated racial ideologies, for example by claiming that Jews were considered a "biological race" by the racial biologists of the time. Other anthropologists complained that paragraphs that did not agree with the racial ideology of the editorial board were deleted from published articles without the authors' agreement.[14][16][17][18]
Few academic anthropologists would publish in the journal or serve on its board; when Gates died, Carleton S. Coon, an anthropologist sympathetic to the hereditarian and racialistic view of the journal, was asked to replace him, but he rejected the offer stating that "I fear that for a professional anthropologist to accept membership on your board would be the kiss of death". The journal continued to be published supported by grant money.[17] Publisher Roger Pearson received over a million dollars in grants from the Pioneer Fund in the 1980s and 1990s.[19][20][21]