Carolyn Fluehr-Lobban - Race and Racism

Second Edition

Race and Racism

An Introduction

Carolyn Fluehr-Lobban

Professor Emerita of Anthropology

Rhode Island College

ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Fluehr-Lobban, Carolyn, author.
Title: Race and racism : an introduction / Carolyn Fluehr-Lobban, Emerita, Rhode Island College.
Description: Second edition. | Lanham : Rowman & Littlefield, 2019. |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017057238 (print) | LCCN 2017060401 (ebook) | ISBN
9781442274600 (electronic) | ISBN 9781442274587 (cloth : alk. paper) |
ISBN 9781442274594 (pbk. : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: AnthropologyUnited StatesHistory. | Physical
anthropologyUnited StatesHistory. | Racism in anthropologyUnited
StatesHistory. | WhitesRace identityUnited StatesHistory. |
RacismUnited StatesHistory. | United StatesRace relations.
Classification: LCC GN17.3.U6 (ebook) | LCC GN17.3.U6 F58 2019 (print) | DDC
305.800973dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017057238

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America

Dedication

May the color bar that W. E. B. Du Bois cast as the defining feature of the twentieth century not also define the twenty-first century.

Contents

Contrasting Presidents

FIGURE 0.1A Barack Obama presidential portrait

Source: Photograph by Pete Souza/Public domain

FIGURE 0.1B Donald Trump presidential portrait

Source: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, DC, 20540 USA

Preface

This book was originally born from a frustration in locating a suitable text for courses in anthropology and race. I searched for an introductory text that would combine a comprehensible, accessible summary of the biologyphysical anthropology of race with the social history of the race concept and its applications in society. Excellent books written by physical anthropologists proved difficult to teach, with students complaining about their scientific remoteness. Excellent studies of the history of the race concept lacked the biological information so important to demythologizing race. The second edition of this book, like the first, seeks to bridge this gap.

For the first edition, I was motivated to create a course that combined the study of racist thought with the evolutionary and biological science of racial difference, as I had not been exposed to the critical study of race in my anthropological training during the 1960s and 1970s. Inspired, I introduced a course into the Rhode Island College (RIC) general education program in 1975 entitled Race and Racism. The course was so well received that it was adopted by the anthropology department as one of its regular offerings in 1978 as Anthropology of Race and Racism. At that time, I made a pedagogical decision to offer the course at the introductory level that students could opt to take as part of their basic undergraduate education. Indeed, many students who were not anthropology majors did select the course, particularly from elementary and secondary education, communications, theater and the arts, as well as others of the social sciences.

New to this Edition

A revised introduction to the subject to reflect changes in the United States and the world since 2006, and a personal testimony of a biracial couple regarding their disparate experiences at a state DMV office.

Revised and updated origins of humanity in Africa with latest finds and genetic tracks of the spread of humans out of Africa.

A new section review of recent racist incidents and anti-racist activism.

A new section on objective measures of intelligence, differences by race, and intelligence still fundamentally questioned.

New sections on international perspectives: European cases of France, Germany, and Italy, Can Europe remain white?; the changing New World identity of Afro-Caribbean persons, new contributions by Dominican writers; lessons from South Africas Truth and Reconciliation Commission; and Islamophobia as a subset of racism

New sections on race in America, Donald Trumps electoral victory; Black Lives Still Do Not Matter; Reasonable Racismthe Bernhard Goetz case and beyond; Dylann Roofs killing of black parishioners in South Carolina; a new section on Hollywood and race by Andrew Stewart; a successful suit by the Southern Poverty Law Center against the KKK; and an expanded section on Asian Americans

A frequent comment made at the end of the introductory Anthropology of Race and Racism class was But I feel as though were just getting started, I wish the course could go on for another semester. In response to student interest, I developed an advanced undergraduate and graduate course for our Program of African and Afro-American Studies, entitled Comparative Race Relations, which explored race and racism in our own and in other cultures. In time, this course evolved to one focusing on Critical Race Theory, as advances in fields other than anthropology were taking place in the postcivil rights era in the United States.

Students from the introductory-level courses were recruited not only to the advanced courses but also to involvement in education and civil rights activism. From these courses the RIC Unity Players emerged, a multiracial group of students who performed skits on race and diversity for community, high school, and university audiences.

It was in this context that the pioneering Haitian anthropologist Antnor Firmin was discovered and then recovered in a 1988 Anthropology of Race and Racism class. Firmin was brought to my attention by a Haitian student, Jacques Raphael Georges, who asked if I had not heard of Firmins De lgalit des races humaines: Anthropologie positive , published in Paris in 1885 in response to Arthur Gobineaus writings on the inequality of races in 1855. This rediscovery of Firmin led to an English translation of the book by Haitian scholar Asselin Charles that appeared in hardcover in 2000 and in paperback in 2002 as The Equality of the Human Races: Positivist Anthropology . The first conference on Firmin was held at RIC in 2001, and Dr. Cary Hector at Quisqueya University in Port-au-Prince organized a conference celebrating the 150th anniversary of Firmins birth in 2011. Since the English edition, two new French editions have been published, one to coincide with the bicentennial of Haitian independence from France.