What Contribution Has Science made To the Development of Racism?

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Constructions of 'Race' in Culture and Politics

What Contribution Has Science made To the Development of Racism?

At the time of writing this essay, the British press is full of stories concerning 'race' within British party politics. Conservative MP John Townend made a statement in which he claimed that post war immigration was a threat to Britain's 'homogeneous Anglo-Saxon culture' and was threatening to turn us into a 'mongrel race'. Conservative leader William Hague made him apologise for this, but interestingly enough did not expel him. There was public mud slinging regarding which politicians signed an anti-racist pledge, whilst in the same week, former Labour activist, Marc Wadsworth claimed that Britain's African-Caribbean communities are "losing out to increased Asian influence in the corridors of power" and that they are "not given the same opportunities as their Asian counterparts" (The Voice, April 30th 2001). With the majority of politicians utilising 'racial' rhetoric, it seems that ideas of race are still held by many. In this essay I will attempt to address the role science has played in constructing notions of race and the consequent racism(s).

There is little evidence to suggest that ideas of race were in circulation prior to the Reformation. Ivan Hannaford (1996) states that there were three distinct periods in which contributions were made to the development of notions of 'race'. The first period occurred during the years 1684-1815, the era of the discovery of the 'New World' and the ensuing triangular slave trade. Hannaford claims that in this period "major writers dealt explicitly with race as an organising idea and came to understand it as an ethnic grouping rather than as a race and order or course of things or events" (1996, p.187). In 1775, Johann Friedrich Blumenbach wrote 'The Natural Varieties of Man' in which he classified modern humans into five broad categories; Caucasian, Mongoloid, Malayan, Ethiopian and American, based mainly on cranial measurements.
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The period of 1815-70 saw writers, influenced by Barthold Georg Neibuhr (1776-1831), using history and philosophy to evoke notions of blood/soil links. Writers such as Kant believed that temperament, character and soul were inherited through the blood. During this period we see the development of an ideology that the origins of nations and states are not political, but rather naturalised by linguistic and 'natural' criteria. "What burst upon the scene in 1842 and 1859 through the works of Spencer and Darwin was a movement that treaded political activity as subject to the same rules of evolution that applied ...

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