{"id":42961,"date":"2015-09-28T17:45:48","date_gmt":"2015-09-28T17:45:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=42961"},"modified":"2015-09-28T17:45:48","modified_gmt":"2015-09-28T17:45:48","slug":"born-that-way-scientific-racism-is-creeping-back-into-our-thinking-heres-what-to-watch-out-for","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=42961","title":{"rendered":"Born that way? \u2018Scientific\u2019 racism is creeping back into our thinking. Here\u2019s what to watch out for."},"content":{"rendered":"

Born that way? \u2018Scientific\u2019 racism is creeping back into our thinking. Here\u2019s what to watch out for.<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

The Washington Post<\/a>
\n2015-09-28<\/p>\n

W. Carson Byrd<\/a><\/strong>, Assistant Professor of Pan-African Studies
\nUniversity of Louisville, Louisville, Kentucky<\/em><\/p>\n

Matthew W. Hughey<\/a><\/strong>, Professor of Sociology
\nUniversity of Connecticut<\/em><\/p>\n

This month, Jennifer Cramblett lost her \u201cwrongful birth<\/a>\u201d lawsuit, which centered on a troubling ideology that has been creeping into mainstream discussions in ways not seen in decades. Cramblett claimed that the sperm used to inseminate her came from the wrong donor, leading to a biracial child, which she had not wanted. Her lawsuit claimed that this mix-up in the lab caused her and her family personal injuries of various kinds.<\/p>\n

This lawsuit was shadowed by a troubling logic: the idea that race is a biological reality with particular traits and behaviors that can be avoided through proper breeding practices. In doing so, Cramblett\u2019s claims echoed arguments made in a darker era of global history of \u201cscientific\u201d racism<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s how the argument goes. Some people are born with outstanding talents, easily mastering basketball, mathematics, languages or piano, if given the right environment in which to grow. What biologist or social scientist could argue with that? But alongside that genetic understanding, an old and pernicious assumption has crept back into the American conversation, in which aptitudes are supposedly inherited by race: certain peoples are thought to have rhythm, or intellect, or speed or charm. That\u2019s a fast track toward the old 19th- and early 20th-century problem of \u201cscientific\u201d racism…<\/p>\n

…Sociological data suggest that the social behavior of both slaves and slaveholders better explains mortality rates than do physiological qualities of health, speed or strength. In particular, groups of rebellious young men were were most likely to die<\/a> than those who passively acquiesced, while the economically well-off slaveholders were more likely to kill slaves than those who could not afford to lose property. In sum, the social forces of organized rebellion and the political economy of slavery are better explanations for mortality rates than abstract appeals to \u201cgenes\u201d or \u201cnatural selection.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hughey\u2019s and Goss\u2019s work finds that such explanations have actually proliferated in an era that many argue is \u201ccolorblind<\/a>\u201d or \u201cpost-racial,\u201d from MSNBC\u2019s Chris Matthews<\/a> who proudly said that he forgot<\/a>, for a moment, that Obama<\/a> was black, to a 2011 New York Times article<\/a> that referred to interracial marriage as \u201ca step toward transcending race,\u201d to the claim that \u201call\u201d\u2014 not \u201cblack\u201d \u2014 lives matter, as presidential candidate Rand Paul<\/a> recently insisted<\/a>…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Born that way? \u2018Scientific\u2019 racism is creeping back into our thinking. Here\u2019s what to watch out for. The Washington Post 2015-09-28 W. Carson Byrd, Assistant Professor of Pan-African Studies University of Louisville, Louisville, Kentucky Matthew W. Hughey, Professor of Sociology University of Connecticut This month, Jennifer Cramblett lost her \u201cwrongful birth\u201d lawsuit, which centered on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,2039,8,26,394,20],"tags":[12233,12234,2875,20806,2581],"class_list":["post-42961","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-health-medicine","category-media-archive","category-politics","category-socialscience","category-usa","tag-matthew-hughey","tag-matthew-w-hughey","tag-the-washington-post","tag-w-carson-byrd","tag-washington-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42961","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=42961"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42961\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42962,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42961\/revisions\/42962"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=42961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=42961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=42961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}