Annotation PvF 20-38
- contradictions with the fourteenth amendment, “…by 1911 The Supreme Court has heard 607 Fourteenth Amendment cases: 312 involved corporations” and only thirty included the issues with rights to African Americans.
- Slaughter- House cases : miller said the primary intention of this amendment was to abolish slavery and that the thirteenth amendment had given African Americans rights the addition of a new amendment would be unnecessary (21).
- White League: killed hundreds of black people to keep blacks from participating in the political process.
- Harlan: thirteenth amendment didn’t only get rid of slavery but also badges of servitude, “insisted on extensive interpretations of the Thirteenth Amendment…Harlan found additional support in the Fourteenth Amendment for Congress to enact the 1875 Civil Rights Act to create new right for United States citizens” (25).
- I’m struggling with this text- I’m getting confused .
Annotation of The Mismeasure of Man 62-82
- “Hard-liners” believed that blacks were inferior and their biological status justified enslavement.
- “Soft-liners” believed that blacks were inferior but did not think that people’s freedom depended on their intelligence. Disagreed about whether or not proper education can bring them “up to the level of whites” as well as disagreeing about the “biological or culturalroots of black inferiority” (64).
- There was a difference between the skull sizes that made blacks inferior, then there was a unilinar scale done of a black mans skull and a chimpanzee by Nott and Gliddon, 1868 that attempted to portray that blacks are even inferior to monkeys, by changing the appearance of the skulls.
- “… the white leaders of Western nations did not question the propriety of racial ranking during the eighteenth…” thought it was funny.
- Homo sapiens afer (The African black): “ruled by caprice” (Linnaeus, 1758)
- Homo sapiens europaeus: “ruled by customs” (Linnaeus, 1758)
- Attempt to compare blacks to gorillas (67) as well as apes (68) by Nott and Gliddon once again.
- J. F. Blumenbach “attributed racial differences to the influences of climate” he determined his ranking by reading books written by blacks.
- monogenism– origin from a single source (Adam and Eve)
- “human races were separate biological species”
- Degenerationism
- Recapitulation: higher creatures repeat the adult stages of lower animals during their own growth. Comparing adult blacks to white children (72).
- Charles White, argued against the climate theory, he rejected extention of polygeny. He said that the physical differences show inferiority because black women don’t look like European “blushing” women.
- “Louis Agassiz—America’s theorist of polygeny” (74). Didn’t count himself as an opponent to slavery. two “iconic” things: 1. “Centers of Creation” he believed everything was put in it’s proper place and never moved from the centers. 2. Became a “taxonomist splitter” (76)
- Agassiz (a joke) had never seen a black person in Europe, so when in America he saw one, he automatically came to the conclusion that they were a different species.
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