Racial Theories in Physical Anthropology, 1850-1918
Further information: Historical definitions of raceThe scientific classification established by Carl Linnaeus is requisite to any human racial classification scheme. In the 19th century, unilineal evolution (aka classical social evolution) was a conflation of competing sociologic and anthropologic theories proposing that Western European culture was the acme of human socio-cultural evolution. The ideologic proposal that social status is unilinear — from primitive to civilized, from agronomic to industrial — became popular among philosophers, including Friedrich Hegel, Immanuel Kant, and Auguste Comte. In said context, the Christian Bible was interpreted to sanction slavery, and, from the 1820s to the 1850s, was an oft-cited, pro-slavery legalism used in the antebellum Southern United States, by writers such as the Rev. Richard Furman and Thomas R. Cobb, for the de jure and de facto enforcement of the racialist idea that negroes had been created unequal, and thus suited to slavery.
Read more about this topic: Scientific Racism
Famous quotes containing the words racial theories, racial, theories and/or physical:
“From whichever angle one looks at it, the application of racial theories remains a striking proof of the lowered demands of public opinion upon the purity of critical judgment.”
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“Rarely do American parents deliberately teach their children to hate members of another racial, religious, or nationality group. Many parents, however, communicate the prevailing racial attitudes to their children in subtle and sometimes unconscious ways.”
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“The wise man regulates his conduct by the theories both of religion and science. But he regards these theories not as statements of ultimate fact but as art-forms.”
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“Our own physical body possesses a wisdom which we who inhabit the body lack. We give it orders which make no sense.”
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