Human Zoos America\'s Forgotten History of Scientific Racism PDF

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Human Zoos: America's Forgotten History of Scientific Racism DOCUMENTARY NOTES - the placing of the boy in the cage with a monkey is an outrage - the negro race in america has a hard enoguh time as it is and getting away from the prejudice that is closely related to the money without having a member of the race place on exhibition - leading men of science from harvard and princeton and columbia was saying that africans were midway between an orangutan and human being 100 years later it should come as much of a surprise that many people still claim to the notions of european superiority and african inferiority - The year was 1859 three months after charles darwin published his book on the origin of species american promoter pt barnum unveiled a new attraction at his popular museum in nyc it featured what was described as what is it or man money ? - visitors were told that the creature had been captured by hunters in africa who discovered a race of beings roving among the the trees and branches like eames or monkeys museum staff declared that the created had been by scientists as a connecting link between ab and lower animals - so called man money was william henry johnson thank to barnu he spent most of his as a public display as evolutionary missing link sometimes in a cage and the reporters were happy to promote this deception - in 1880 there was krao which promoted a living proof of darwin's theory of the descent man and was described as a perfect specimen of the steppe between man and monkey actually she was from south east asia who suffered from hypertrichosis a genetic condition that produces excessive hair - in the early 1990s there was congo the ape man who usually exhibited in a cage next to a monkey most the were crude hoaxes and put forward huckster not scientists - today forest parkinson lewis is a place for walking and riding a bicycle or spending a sunday afternoon but more than a century ago it was one of the places people mostly visited in the usa, the site of the 1904 st. louis world's fair

- organizers imported thousands of indigneous people from around the world to be put for public display which was a giant human zoo unlike freak shows . the human zoo in st louis was created with the cooperation of american scientific establishment - the anthropologist william mcgee, he had already served as acting president of the american association for the advancement of science he was asked to head the anthropology department for the world's fair in 1903 - anthropology was kind of founded on this idea of mapping civilization from the higher to lower africans being the lowest and you move up leading us to the men of science from harvard and princeton and columbia - darwin's theory provided a template for categorizing africans as biological inferiors - his impact created a bandwagon effect on many scholars on both sides of the atlantic african are demeaned like terms like savages - darwin argued that the break evolutionary history of ames and men came between africans and australian aboriginals and gorillas - he thought blacks were closest humans to apes - Heron Steckel was the leading german darwinist in the late 19 and 20 century who corresponded to darwin and darwin recognized heckles affinity to his own theory . ernest haeckel also known for his raving racism , he had a graphic of the history of human evolution that in very pointed terms really embedded a racist view of human evolution yo had the teutonic male at the top those are the germanic male and then at the bottom you had some creatures that looked like apes like jews. he was also antisemitic in the middle you have the transition from the ape lik eto human creature and the takeaway from this graph was that difference beween the high humnas and the low humans being the gap between the high teutonic male and the first human being that was just the step above the apes was larger gap between the lower humans and the high ape - william mcgee argued that scientist have now shown the structure of the low human nearly resembles that of the highest ape like than that of of the high humans - louis world's fair had been transported from africa by former missionary turned explorer samuel phillips verna who had gone to congo with the explicit goal of finding pygmies to display at the fair

- they were considered by men of science at the time to be the lowest form of humans - it was presented as science not circus act because they are men of science who - They clearly saw a human being appeared to be afraid who was being heckled and things thrown at him and he was being based on the hallowed grounds of the nyzs in nyc. - madison grant was an open racist who thought blacks were an inferior race and regarded those who had parents of different races as mongrels more than decade he make a book called the passing of the great race which spoke about nordic supremacy and keeping black subservient to whites - I think the hopelessness of it all and all f the trauma he had sustained the loneliness and he had no idea of what had become of his people if his village was still even there - Darwin stated that human beings developed through a long and cruel process of natural selection or survival of the fittest and the less fittest organisms were dead leaving more capable organisms to reproduce and flourish . It was this ruthless process of elimination. - sometimes today its argued that eugenics was the fringe science just a few people believe in it which ignores the fact that for decades eugenics was what is could be called consensus view of the scientific community , the eugenics congress at the american museum of the natural history drew scientist from america top research institutions harvard ,yale , mit , ohio state , uc berkeley and university of texas participants alexander graham bell and charles darwin's own son who lashed out at the the threat of biological defectives posed to modern society - Osborne argued that racial groups should be studies to determine what tasks each race is best fitted to accomplish but it was clear that he already thought he knew the proper place for non whites ( a fine agriculturalist or mechanic) - it put human racial groups under the microscope to judge their own worth in the society - These displays highlight the difference between blakc and white babies in the womb . the displays comparing the mental stamina of different races displays reporting on the capabilities of immigrants and displays showing equipment for measuring human intelligence and other features

- there were also displays of the human brain one compared the brains of criminals and non criminals, but most extensive brain display was created by anthropologist aleš  hrdlička from his growing collection of embalmed brains - lothrop stoddard had published a book on the rising tide of color against the white world supremacy he claimed that whites were in danger of being over runned by the coloured races of the world and argued that immigration from what he called lower human types had to be regularly curtailed eugenics viewed immigrants and people of non- white races as a drag on the human race eugenics viewed blacks . Mexicans and hispanics as throwbacks evolutionary throwbacks that were the lower races in evolutionary terms and therefore were a drain on modern society and justified this in the name of Darwinism science . - the interesting thing about eugenics was the way they built on top of darwinism biology and claimed that there was a scientific justification for racism the eugenics exhibition advocated a chilling agenda for the public policy including forced sterilization and harsh new restrictions on immigration and promoted a radical proposal advanced by the eugenics record office one of the eugenics groups participating in the exhibition the proposal called for assembling biological profiles on all americans to determine whether they were biologically fit to mate - the eugenics records office was extreme and they wanted to hold records on everyone in the usa biological records showering their family trees so that if you want to marry someone you would write to them and they could tell you whether the person is willing to marry had a fit family tree in the evolutionary terms so that you can marry them or if they had bad heredity they had exercises and packets that were given to biology teachers around the country that one of the exercises you were supposed to do in your biology class when studying evolution and then eugenics was to have kids fill out this form with their genogram of who are black sheep of the family, the diseases they had in the family so that these could then be sent off to the eugenics record office and their vaults and so that they could keep records on everyone - Basis of opposition to the so called scientific eugenics movement in the early 20th century were christians, protestants , baptists and catholics who

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understood the value of every human being not only a christian value that is fundamental to the American experiment itself governor john morehead argued that the legislation not only violated the states bill of rights but also offended the higher law this proposed legislation seems more in keeping with the pagan age than with the teachings of christianity men is more than an animal while many modernist clergy supported the eugenics theoretically conservtive religious figures were much more skeptical the most fundamental principle catholic social teaching is the intrinsic dignity of every human being in other words is people are valuable simply as creatures made in he images and likeness of god and not valuable merely because they have economic value or they are productive or they are smart they have value in and of themselves as spiritual creatures made in god's image that idea the fundamental principle of eugenics which is through either passive or active means of favor of a particular ethinic group over others the eugenics movement in the supportive eugenics in the early 20th century tried to make an anti- catholic campaign part of the public argument on the one hand they claimed that their ideas were based firmly in natural science and yet they actually ran a public campaign that was anti- religious , you get the impression that there was something more simple and empirical science at stake in the debate starting in the 1920s ther was ahuge push for immgiration restrictuions on people who are coming from a non germanic or northern europen countries and so people coming from mexico to the usa or people coming from africa , southern euroopemn countries that had peopole that the eugneics viewd as had to be stopped becuase they wanted to destroy our society but the most horrifying implementation of eugenics policies took place not in usa but in nazi germany The fact of the matter is that if you read the scientists of the day in the late 19- 20th century many of them were prompting racism and even racial extermination extinction of races . They were promoting the gaining the living space , competition of the things that we know of as Social Darwinism these were things being promoted by Charles Darwin himself to some degree and many other leading biologists .

- If you go on and on it by 1920 and 30s they are becoming rallied very prominent , and if you look in especially the field of anthropology and evolutionary anthropology many of them were promoting social Drwinist . and this was not just the idea of some cranks or political people who didn't really understand the science . This was an idea that was prominent in the scientific cricles . - Instead they have closed off the monkey house , where Ota Benga was housed and now the public can't see it now and they have not just had any comment whatsoever. - Von Braun had published a manifesto arguing that cross breeding whites with species lower on the evolutionary scale diminishes the white gene pool while increasing the number of mongrels - Richard Spencer is a leader of the so called alt- right and argues that quote Darwinism offers a compelling and rational justification for whites to act on behalf of their ancestors and progeny and feel shared sense of destiny with their extended kin groups unquote...