Human Zoos: America's Forgotten History of Scientific Racism

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[–]HugodeCrevellier 3 insightful - 2 fun3 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 2 fun -  (4 children)

The St Louis Fair had 'a darker side'? :)

In any case, that the St Louis Fair should show 'types of mankind from many continents' does say 'mankind', making it thus accurate.

And African 'Pigmies' did and do exist and so did 'Head-hunters' in South-East Asia. And Ainu men did grow tremendously long beards. And as for 'dog-eaters', they did and still exist today in East Asia.

Now, the issue with human zoos was exactly the same issue that still exists with animal zoos, namely the removal of beings from their environment, to move and place them in artificial settings to be gawked at. But that Anthropology mapped humans on a greyscale from primitive to civilized is not crazy considering that Europeans were at the time discovering unquestionably primitive humans still living naked in the stone-age. Finally, religious imbeciles notwithstanding, that humans evolved from ape-like hominids is also an unquestionable fact.

Science is by method always tentative and many early anthropological theories were not complete nor fully correct. But that there exist morphological differences between (pre-'diversification') European Swedes, African Pigmies, Australian aborigines and East-Asian Ainus is not all mean-minded and unscientific. It's the current push to deny these that's dogmatically unscientific. Woke (this time) imbeciles notwithstanding, that human types do exist is similarly unquestionable.

This "documentary' is ironically closer to a P. T. Barnum version of 'history'. It's closer to catering to current sensationalist dogmata than to actual history. It does so by e.g. reversing the sequence of events and having show-people influencing the scientists, not the other way around (show-people commercializing scientists' hypotheses and pushing them to sensationalist absurdity), etc.

[–][deleted] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

Thanks for this. I would agree that there is a myopic approach in the video that avoids some of the socio-historical context. There is also much more to consider regarding displays of humans in France and England in the 18th and 19th centuries. It helps to see your approach because this is not the way I think about some of the early problems with the display of people. Something the video should clarify is that Darwin is not the source of Social Darwinism, which developed later in the 19th century. There are important books on 'Human Zoos' published in the 2000s, and help address overlooked concerns about colonial approaches to non-Europeans. One important note at the end: "The misuse of science to promote racism is no longer just a sad relic of our history, it’s also an uncomfortable part of out present.” Thus we'll likely see more books and videos on this subject, in response to post-colonial interests.

[–]HugodeCrevellier 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (2 children)

"The misuse of science to promote racism is no longer just a sad relic of our history, it’s also an uncomfortable part of out present.”

It's rather the other way around.

It's science and scientific thinking that gives rise to typology. And it's unscientific careerism that makes many/most current 'scientists' (by name misnomer only) submit to woke dogmata denying the existence of human types. How else can we explain managing not to notice differences between human groups, nor similarities within them ... not being able to determine any types whatsoever when observing e.g. (pre-'diversification') European Swedes, African Pigmies, Australian aborigines, etc?

We seem to currently be going through a climate of oppression in enforcing an orthodoxy that's reminiscent of Galileo's plight ... but by use of more subtle 'soft power'.

'It's difficult for a man to understand something, when his salary depends on not understanding it'.

'E pur si muove'

[–][deleted] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

The problem today is not science or scientists. The reference to scientific racism is about a historical moment in the 19th and early 20th century. Not all scientists "submit" to a specific dogma. "Typology" and systematic approaches to types of species pre-dates classical science by hundreds of years. Perhaps you refer to natural philosophy.

[–]HugodeCrevellier 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

A problem today is not science of course (that's rather the solution to it), but it is 'scientists' that will disregard observation+reason in order to submit to some ideological (and non-scientific) heterodoxy.

By 'typology', I'm of course referring to its use in anthropology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typology_(anthropology).

Finally, would you agree that typology applies to humans or do you hold that it needs to be denied when humans are concerned?

edit: Hello? :D

[–]Airbus320 1 insightful - 2 fun1 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

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