{"id":59812,"date":"2020-06-26T01:10:17","date_gmt":"2020-06-26T01:10:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=59812"},"modified":"2020-06-26T01:10:19","modified_gmt":"2020-06-26T01:10:19","slug":"shilling-for-u-s-empire-the-legacies-of-scientific-racism-in-puerto-rico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=59812","title":{"rendered":"Shilling for U.S. Empire: The Legacies of Scientific Racism in Puerto Rico"},"content":{"rendered":"

Shilling for U.S. Empire: The Legacies of Scientific Racism in Puerto Rico<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The Abusable Past<\/a>
\nRadical History Review<\/a>
\n2020-06-22<\/p>\n

R. S\u00e1nchez-Rivera<\/strong><\/a>
\nDepartment of Sociology
\nUniversity of Cambridge<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/a>
\nPablo Delano, A Group of newly made Americans at Ponce, Porto Rico<\/a>, (detail from the conceptual art installation The Museum of the Old Colony, 2016-ongoing). Source: Stereocard published by M. H. Zahner, Niagara Falls, New York, 1898. Photographer not identified.<\/em><\/small><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

Recently, a published, peer-reviewed article caused a great deal of controversy when it circulated among many academic Facebook pages such as Latinx<\/a> Scholars, Puerto Rican Studies Association (PRSA), and the Latin American Studies Association (LASA)-Puerto Rico Section. This article, \u201cEconomic Development in Puerto Rico after US Annexation: Anthropometric Evidence<\/a>,\u201d written by Brian Marein, a PhD student in economics at the University of Colorado, Boulder, brings together data to show that the average height of men in Puerto Rico<\/a> increased by 4.2cm after the U.S. \u201cannexation\u201d (a euphemism for colonization). The author uses anthropometrics<\/a> to argue that U.S.<\/a> colonialism was actually beneficial to Puerto Ricans \u201cin contrast to the prevailing view in the literature.\u201d His main conclusion is that because U.S. officials brought in resources, food, and education, the life of Puerto Ricans improved (inferred by the increased height of men) as a result of colonization.<\/p>\n

Anthropometrics refers to the measuring of people\u2019s bodies and skeletons to correlate their difference to \u201cracial\u201d and psychological traits that privileged Eurocentric<\/a> ideas of beauty, intelligence, ableness, morality, among others. This stems from a long history of \u201crace science\u201d that surged from the polygenetic assumption that (1) \u201crace\u201d was a biological type and (2) \u201craces\u201d had distinct origins. Two major theories of human origins and heredity dominated during the nineteenth century: monogenism<\/a> and polygenism<\/a>. Thinkers who advocated for monogenism argued that all humans came from the same origin but were in different developmental stages (usually with Whites at the top and Black people at the bottom). However, during the second half of the nineteenth century polygenism, or the notion that the \u201craces\u201d had separate origins and should be considered as distinct and immutable species, became more widely accepted…<\/p>\n

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

Marein\u2019s article disregards this long history of U.S. imperialism through anthropometrics to argue that after the U.S. \u201cannexation\u201d of Puerto Rico, the lives of Puerto Ricans improved substantially. The author uses anthropometrics to construct his argument without understanding and questioning the long history of scientific racism in the archipelago or in his own methodology.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,21,2039,459,1196,8,26,394,20],"tags":[2065,2654,30919,30920,21327,28142,30921],"class_list":["post-59812","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-latincarib","category-health-medicine","category-history","category-literary-criticism","category-media-archive","category-politics","category-socialscience","category-usa","tag-eugenics","tag-puerto-rico","tag-r-sanchez-rivera","tag-rachell-sanchez-rivera","tag-radical-history-review","tag-scientific-racism","tag-the-abusable-past"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59812","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=59812"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59812\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59815,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59812\/revisions\/59815"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=59812"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=59812"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=59812"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}