{"id":62423,"date":"2021-11-29T02:53:33","date_gmt":"2021-11-29T02:53:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=62423"},"modified":"2021-11-29T22:36:23","modified_gmt":"2021-11-29T22:36:23","slug":"inventing-the-science-of-race","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=62423","title":{"rendered":"Inventing the Science of Race"},"content":{"rendered":"

Inventing the Science of Race<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The New York Review<\/a>
2021-12-16<\/p>\n

Henry Louis Gates Jr.<\/strong><\/a>, Alfonse Fletcher Jr. University Professor; Director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research
Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts<\/em><\/p>\n

Andrew S. Curran<\/strong><\/a>, William Armstrong Professor of the Humanities
Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/a>
Jean-Baptiste Oudry<\/a>: Africa: A European Merchant Bartering with a Black Chief<\/em>, from the Four Continents<\/em> series, 1724<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In 1741, Bordeaux\u2019s<\/a> Royal Academy of Sciences held an essay contest searching for the origin of \u201cblackness.\u201d The results help us see how Enlightenment<\/a> thinkers justified chattel slavery.<\/em><\/p>\n

In 1712 King Louis XIV<\/a> of France signed the lettres patentes<\/em><\/a> that formally established Bordeaux\u2019s<\/a> Royal Academy of Sciences<\/a>, Belles Lettres, and Arts, a social club of intellectual inquiry and public edification. In contrast to the more conservative University of Bordeaux<\/a>, whose primary objective was to educate the country\u2019s priests, doctors, and lawyers through lessons compatible with Scripture, the Bordeaux Academy saw itself as \u201cenlightened\u201d: its objective was advancing scientific truth as part of a larger program intended to promote \u201cmankind\u2019s happiness.\u201d<\/p>\n

Every year, the academy organized an essay contest that it publicized throughout Europe<\/a>. In 1739 the members announced the subject of the competition for 1741: \u201cQuelle est la cause physique de la couleur des n\u00e8gres, de la qualit\u00e9 de leur cheveux, et de la d\u00e9g\u00e9n\u00e9ration de l\u2019un et de l\u2019autre?\u201d (\u201cWhat is the physical cause of the Negro\u2019s color, the quality of [the Negro\u2019s] hair, and the degeneration of both [Negro hair and skin]?\u201d) Embedded in this question was the academy\u2019s assumption that something had happened to \u201cNegroes\u201d that had caused them to degenerate, to turn black and grow unusual hair. In short, the academy wanted to know who is black, and why<\/em>. It wanted to know, too, what being black signified. The winner was promised a gold medal worth three hundred livres<\/a>, roughly the annual earnings of a common worker at the time.<\/p>\n

The 1741 contest was only the latest iteration of non-Africans\u2019 fascination with dark skin. When the ancient Greeks, Romans, and Arabic peoples first described the inhabitants of Africa<\/a>, it was Africans\u2019 color that struck them most. Over many centuries, African \u201cblackness\u201d grew into an all-encompassing signifier that substituted for the range of reddish, yellowish, and blackish-brown colors that the skins of Africans actually express. The color black also became synonymous with the land itself; many of the geographical names that outsiders assigned to sub-Saharan Africa<\/a>\u2014Niger<\/a>, Nigritia<\/a>, Sudan<\/a>, Zanzibar<\/a>\u2014contain the etymological roots of the word \u201cblack.\u201d The most telling example is the name Ethiopia<\/a>. Derived from the Greek<\/a> aitho<\/em> (I burn) and ops<\/em> (face), it became the most widespread label for the entire sub-Saharan portion of the continent until the late seventeenth century. It even hinted at the cause of blackness itself…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In 1741, Bordeaux\u2019s Royal Academy of Sciences held an essay contest searching for the origin of \u201cblackness.\u201d The results help us see how Enlightenment thinkers justified chattel slavery.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1295,12,28,459,8],"tags":[32547,32549,96,2935,31300,32548,31299],"class_list":["post-62423","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-africa","category-articles","category-europe","category-history","category-media-archive","tag-andrew-s-curran","tag-bordeaux","tag-france","tag-henry-louis-gates-jr","tag-new-york-review","tag-royal-academy-of-sciences","tag-the-new-york-review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62423","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=62423"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62423\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62444,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62423\/revisions\/62444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=62423"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=62423"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=62423"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}