The Effects of Experience on Ethnic Identification

As I read both Bernier and Kant’s thoughts on the idea and definitions of both race and ethnicity, I could but contemplate the implications such a discussion has on my own brother who is biracial. While he has both black and white ancestry, the darkness of his skin urges the superficial eyes of our society to view him as a member of the black race. This external evaluation of one’s heritage based upon placing an individual in a particular race category due to varying degrees of skin color follow both philosopher’s arguments. This practice is also consistent with both the past and current practice of our society to focus an individual’s identity around the fairly crude structure of skin color. However, shortly after my brother was adopted when he was two, my parents changed his name from a fairly non-traditional name to one which is commonly used throughout the Judeo-Christian society. Furthermore, at this young age, my brother was moved from the Urban area surrounding Baton Rouge to the suburbs of Houston. In this area, my brother was surrounded by a white neighborhood, white friends, and, quite simply, a white society. For this reason, my brother has told me that he probably identifies more with the white community than I myself do.

Because of this, I believe race as defined by Bernier and Kant is insufficient in properly categorizing cultural identifications. Thus, it is my argument that the philosopher’s definition of ethnicity best accounts for possible variations in race and cultural identification. For example, legally my brother, despite the color of his skin, is a Landolt and as such, at least on paper, he can be thought of as a member of a white family. Therefore, legally and arguably culturally, my brother is ethnically white. If this is true, ethnicity is based upon not only a legal transferal of name but also upon a changed empirical response due to a changing cultural environment. Thus, my brother is both racially black while being ethnically white. Quite honestly, I did not expect this massive diversion in definitions between these two ideas, and yet, at least to me, this seems to be the only rational conclusion based upon my existing understanding of these two terms. As such, my brother seems to exist as a complete contradiction as his race seems to come into conflict with his ethnicity, or cultural identification. This leads me to conclude that the empirical experience is integral to our understanding of ethnicity due to varying ethnic groups being formed as a result of religion and cultural identification. What are the effects of this assessment? Can race and ethnicity truly be independent of one another?

What's Next?

Bernier and Kant carefully illustrated in their essays the basic format for what race is and the unique ways it would be classified. Herder, a student of Kant’s Physical Geography lecture declares that race derives from a difference in ancestry that does occur here or includes the most diverse races within each of these regions in each of these colors. This was such a rebellious thing to say but it became applaudable with his orderly reasoning of a “Divine Intellect”. Herder takes not a scientific, but religious approach when explaining his theory that the whole course of a human being’s life consists on transformations. The continuous use of religious based pronouns  emphasize his attempt to explain how “One and the same species is humankind on Earth.” Herder preaches, “He stages and destroys, refines the figures, and revises them after He has transformed the world around them.”

Christianity brings Herder to many fixed conclusions but I thought the most relevant point to that Herder made was that man is created in the image of God. The transformations that regional differences were made by Kant were rejected by Herder his modified approach. Herder mentions a valid argument when questioning why at one point in history elephants lived in Siberia and North America, not Africa. The same can be said for human beings which alters the correlation between environmental differences and race. Herder evaluates Kant by questioning, “Who is capable of classifying four or five races on the bases of their geological and environmental differences?” If Herder’s theory is correct and God is control of these transformations that have taken place in humans, then wouldn’t our racial differences be continuos? If this is the case, then the explanation of what Kant believes race is becomes invalid. 

“An eighty-year old man has renewed his entire body at least 24 times. Who can follow the change in matter and it’s forces throughout the whole human realm on earth in all of the causes of it’s changing. For no wave in the stream of time is the same as the other.”

The best way to know what to expect from the future is to observe our past. If one is to take note of the natural catastrophes that have taken place (i.e: earthquakes,floods,droughts,plagues, floods) there must be some correlation to a shift in culture. If the shift is large enough, the result could possibly be an alteration of an overall culture. The past has shown that humans will adapt to settlements that have undergone treacherous natural occurrences. With this continuous geographical shift Herder mentions,“If humans lived in these areas at that time, how different they were from those that live there now!” This is where I find myself asking yet another perplexing question regarding our future. In some way, history is bound to repeat itself. I’m not saying that there is a modern day Ice Age predetermined for humanity but if Herder’s theory is correct, then there should be another natural catastrophe that will rearrange our accustomed lifestyle somewhat like our ancestors experienced but also vastly new and different. Given this, what NEW race can we expect or prepare for?

Bernier, Kant, and Obama

While watching the inauguration speech Obama touched on things that relate to this course. “Through blood drawn by lash and blood drawn by sword, we learned that no union founded on the principles of liberty and equality could survive half-slave and half-free. We made ourselves anew, and vowed to move forward together.” Obama being the first black president in American history and realizing how far society and civilization have come from the ideas of Bernier and Kant. Bernier and Kant’s explanation of how the different races were formed seems completely out of touch with what we know today and we question how they could even begin to think that they had the correct answer to the question that stumped them all. Kant’s point on how he believed race and physical features were the best way to distinguish and categorize humans instead of by what they actually know or by who they are is something that is so completely foreign to what I have ever known. My mother told me to never judge a book by its cover and here that is all Kant is doing. The Lapp people or the Eskimos knew things that Kant probably never would, like how to build an igloo in little under an hour, but he demeans them to creatures based on physical appearance. What I also really found interesting was the fact that he found beauty in all races. Well I did not find it interesting because I think anyone can be beautiful, I found in interesting that he recognized that all races could be beautiful. In the Django post it was brought to light that how some slaves were house slaves because they were prettier than the other slaves. 

Most people in later history did not want to acknowledge them period, let alone their beauty. Thomas Jefferson being one that comes from American history. He was so racist he did not believe blacks were even capable of having thoughts or recognizing anything beautiful or create anything that is beautiful. Jefferson and Kant were similar in believing that blacks were not human, but Kant was in a different time and it’s hard to belive that as founding father who was so fervent for independence and freedom could be in favor of slavery. I wonder what what Thomas Jefferson would be saying about Obama being president today.

Bernier and Kant’s interpretation of race was also very set on the church and it’s hard to believe that such a drastic thing like this could be backed up by the church because we are taught to love all. Also the fact that they were the ones to first bring to light that there might be a difference between humans based on the color of their skin.

Colorism & Social Hierarchies

          The notion of colorism is an idea fully identified and named within the modern era that refers specifically to the internal prejudices of African-Americans. However, throughout the course of reading Franscois Bernier’s “A New Division of the Earth,” I noticed statements about skin color and its connection to social status that hinted colorism may not be exclusive to internal racial strife within modern African-American communities. My interest then lies with wondering whether or not the modern concept of colorism has only recently been explicitly identified and named after a long history of serving as a mechanism for further division between and among races.
         NadraK. Nittle defines colorism as the practice of discrimination by which those with lighter skin are treated more favorably than those with darker skin; favorable treatment could result in higher social status. There are two things that stood out to me from Bernier’s work that hinted to possible early stages of colorism. First, is the distinction he makes between North African peoples and sub-Saharan African peoples. It is interesting that he makes this division in the first place considering that all peoples on the continent of Africa, despite being in the north or south, are African peoples with a culture and physicality much different from Europeans. My attempt to understand the need for the division brings me to the idea of separation based on skin color and its depth in hue/permanence. Hopefully this is no overwhelmingly shocking surprise to note that African peoples of the north are significantly lighter in skin tone than their sub-Saharan counterparts. It is interesting to think that the division made is potentially based on the premise of preference of skin color and various hues. Secondly, he makes a point to emphasize that western Asiatic peoples are “black” (what he really means is darker) only by accident; the dark color of Indians is temporary and signifies that they are of the lower class condemned to working in the sun. Here is the more explicit connection between skin color and social status.The pointing out of these two things in a larger conversation about race comes as a little surprise in that my assumption is the idea of colorism is an internal conflict specific to African-Americans that has its roots in the American slave history (click house negro v. field negro). The act of simply noting these things makes me wonder whether or not prejudices with skin color have its roots in slavery or if this is something that predated what has evolved to be the modern understanding of race.
      What do you think? Is colorism exclusive to the modern era or is this something that stands outside the confines of race?

             

Bernier and Beauty

François Bernier and Beauty


Much of what François Bernier wrote about was recognized because of his extensive travels, notably his 12-year journey to Egypt, India, and Persia. Bernier's essay, "A New Division of the Earth", a 329- year old document, is the first work to describe human groups on the basis of skin color and other physical attributes in our modern understanding of the word race. Bernier's division of race is one that transitions from casual similarities in groups, to pointing out very opinionated distinctions among people in geographic regions, to simply talking about the beauty found in the different regions.

Bernier's travels around the world promote his division of the earth into four species, or races. In the  first species we find France, Spain, England, Denmark, Sweden and other areas of the world that can be considered as Caucasian, or white. Bernier mentions little about the physical characteristics of the people other than they include the Indians (subcontinental) that are perceived to be black, but only as a result of prolonged activity in the sun. Bernier's description of the first species is not very descriptive at all. It is understood that his description of the species is of white individuals, and it is left to our own current understanding of the race to fill in the blanks. One could say that his absence of defining his own race pays homage to a mindset of educational superiority. In other words, Bernier feels the need to educate other Europeans on the division of races, but doesn't feel a need to describe the Caucasians as he does the Africans or the Lapps. Another example of this is at the end of the essay when he writes, "I shall say nothing of European beauties, you doubtless know as much of them as I do."

As Bernier writes about the second species, "the whole of Africa with the exception of certain coasts,"  he goes above and beyond in describing the the characteristics of the individuals in this region. He mentions "their thick lips and squab noses, their blackness which is peculiar to them and not caused by the sun, and their hair, which is not properly hair but a species of wool similar to hairs of our (European) dogs." At this point of the essay one may start to question the influence this account of racial division had on the world perspective of the educated everywhere. He describes the Asian countries which include China, Japan Philippines and other countries in the region as having broad shoulders, a flat face, a small squab nose, little pigs-eyes, and three hairs of beard. As the essay progresses, Bernier continues to become more opinionated about his observations. He describes the Lapps (Northern Scandinavia) as having thick legs, large shoulders, short neck and a "very ugly", elongated face resembling that of a bear. From only seeing two Lapps and a couple of pictures, he gives his final opinion of them, noting that they are "wretched animals".

From Bernier's writing he seems to have a clear and strongly stated opinion on how to define beauty and what conditions are necessary in a region for beauty to arise. For Bernier beauty arises "not only from the water, diet, soil and the air, but also from the seed which must be peculiar to certain races and species". In other words, beauty is defined by having a peculiarity that sets you apart from others in your region. The women in the Kingdom of cashmere are white, but they have a soft face and a beautiful height which makes them beautiful. The black women of Africa, who had not those thick lips and that squab nose were considered very handsome. He writes that their aquiline nose, little mouth, coral lips, ivory teeth, large and ardent eyes, soft expression, bosom and all the rest are of the last perfection. 

From Bernier's account of racial devision and beauty, how ideal is it to use Bernier's essay as a way of understanding the perceptions in which race was understood at the time? What opinons arise from your reading of his descriptions of beauty in his classifications of race? Even in current times there is a tendency among the African-American population to have a perception of what is beautiful and we make our own divisions accordingly. For example, some would say that in black women some of Bernier's descriptions of beauty have stayed true, but now the preferred peculiarity is that of being red-boned and of a lighter skin. What other peculiarities have arisen in other races since Bernier's time?

The Physicality of Race and Django Unchained

So, to start, here’s a preview of Django Unchained:

The movie follows a freed slave, Django (Jamie Foxx) and a bounty hunter, Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz) as they first execute a number of wanted men and then search for Django’s wife, Broomhilda (Kerry Washington), who has been sold to a particularly cruel slave master. 

There are dozens of race-related issues in the film, ranging from Quentin Tarantino’s liberal use of the n-word to the slave dolls that were being sold in relation to the film to whether or not the film contains messages of African-American agency and liberation or just reinforces a series of stereotypes.  Related to our class on Thursday, though, I want to ask y’all about the physical distinguishers and the “science” of race presented in the film. The pseudo-science attached to racism makes an appearance.  At one point, the plantation owner, Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio), explains the differences between African-Americans and whites using phrenology.  He notes the dimples in a black slave’s skull as evidence of a tendency toward submissiveness.  Beyond the phrenology, there are many points in the movie where the characters focus on the difference between field slaves and house slaves.  Broomhilda is, as Django says, too pretty to be a field slave.  He is referencing both her physical appearance and her skin tone.  

This pseudo-science used to justify racism doesn’t seem to make many modern-day appearances.  However, as we discussed in class, skin color is still the central piece of our race-based judgments and that doesn’t seem to have changed much since Bernier and Kant.  I had a classmate in high school whose mother could pass for white, and when she was born, a mix-up in nurses landed her in the white nursery, where none of her family could visit.  My classmate noted in a discussion on race that his mother’s lighter skin tone allowed her a number of privileges throughout her life. Even though nobody outside the Klan really breaks out a skull to defend racism anymore, the assumptions attached to that skull seem to remain in the assumptions based on skin color. 

I wanted to ask, and I know these are huge questions: what do y’all think has changed or remained the same with regard to our understanding of race?  Kant and Bernier are obviously making moral judgments in their descriptions of physical difference.  What moral judgments do we now attach to skin tone and physical appearance?  How are the conversations about skin color and identity that we have now related to those presented by Kant and relayed in Django?

Kant and Bernier in an Ethnocentric/Eurocentric World

It is a part of human nature to try to classify, label, and divide the different segments of our lives. Having more classifications means having a better general understanding of the information which is constantly bombarding our senses relating to the social world in which we live. Human beings like simplicity. Being able to internalize aspects of life into categories which form schemas held us to better organize our knowledge of society and makes things simpler for us. Bernier and Kant were some of the first individuals to officially divide human beings up into separate races. Bernier proudly declares his “division of the earth” into four (or five) distinct races; while Kant, similarly, attests to the existence of four separate human races. The majority of their arguments and declarations seem to be based upon observations of physical variations well as their correlation to geographical and environmental differences. As we discussed in class, it is understandable to some degree that upon first being confronted by peoples who appeared so outwardly different from themselves, the Europeans would have wanted to know more about them and to know why such variations existed. But, at the same time, I think that the use of race as a way to categorize physical differences between human beings quickly (perhaps almost instantaneously) became attached to much wider implications. Judgmental undertones make themselves apparent in the writing of both authors, Kant and Bernier. Bernier described the skin tone of those living in the Indies as being akin to a disease writing of “that shade of yellow…that ugly and livid paleness of jaundice.” Additionally, he speaks of the blacks living on the Cape of Good Hope as being “small, thin, dry, ugly…” He compares them to common beasts telling of the way in which they eat carrion “whose entrails they twine round their arms and neck, as one sees here sometimes with our butcher’s dogs, that they may eat them when they want…” Kant’s diction reflects similar biases which are illuminated in his characterization of behavioral attributes of the non-European races. He writes, for example, “Because he [the Negro] is so amply supplied by his motherland, he is also lazy, indolent, and dawdling.” Ethnocentrism and naïve realism highlight both Kant and Bernier’s work. Kant’s conclusion that the lineal root genus of the human race must be the white European further exemplifies these facts. The lack of reflexivity exhibited by these author’s, however, would not have been specific to them as individuals. Eurocentric philosophy dominated the discourse of (Western) Europe for hundreds of years. Even after taking the social context into account, however, I still find the hierarchy that was slowly put into place on the basis of race to be extremely problematic. I wonder if there was any way in which the circumstances could have been altered so as to create a feeling of unity and equality among races rather than the stratified tension that came to be. Do we as humans have the innate tendency to compare ourselves to others? Is it in our nature to strive to create conditions that are the most favorable to us as individuals? Does our own ethnocentrism today still color our perceptions about the society in which we live and continue to dictate our current understanding of the past?

Race Visibility

     I'm sure that many people will discuss the fact that our readings primarily focused on the physical aspects of race. It's unsurprising that the first published essay on race was mostly about the differences in appearance that Bernier saw. In a culture where race or discussion about race did not really exist, as Dr J mentioned in class, these foreign people would seem bizarre and worthy of attention. If Bernier could not communicate with any of the other people he met, all he really had to work with for his essay was what he could visibly see. While it would seem like we should have progressed beyond Bernier, and in many regards we have, we still have similar discourse and perceptions in our society. If someone has multiple racial backgrounds, he or she will most likely be identified by whatever is most visible to other people. The most obvious example of this is President Obama. Obama has multiple racial heritages, however, he is discussed primarily as 'black' or 'African American'. He is hailed as our first black president, which is true, but this is hugely because of how people perceive him. People see him as a black man, thus they project that singular racial identity onto him--despite multiple sources saying exactly what his racial background is. It's curious to see that Bernier and much of America share similar ways of describing race.
    It was mentioned in class how in our society race signals a lot because of the history and modern culture our society has with racism. However, as it was also pointed out, Bernier himself was putting value judgments and words within his descriptions of other races. The Lapp people were beastly 'creatures'. He seemed to imply good things when other races had European like qualities. Do you think this is just because of a tendency to assume one self is the 'proper' way thus anything else is a deviation, therefore possibly bad? Without the history, why did Bernier write the way he did?

Race and Ethnicity

Today in class, while we were discussing Bernier and Kant, I started thinking about the changes the word race has gone through. As stated in class, in 1684 Bernier offered a definition of race that said race is a major division of humanity displaying a distinctive combination of physical traits that are transmitted through a line of descent. He was also the first person to divide people into races primarily by their skin color. Kant understands race as a deviation. In both of these definitions, race is discussed in a more scientific way. What I mean by that is both of them focus on physical appearances (skin color and facial characteristics). However, in the society we live in today, although physical appearance is used as a way to arbitrarily group individuals, race seems to take on another role as well. I wonder if the lines between the definitions of race and ethnicity that we operate under today are at times blurred and it is not a stretch to say that race is sometimes used to refer to cultural differences between groups as well. This transforms race into a social concept that strays from the original formulations. Is it important to try to maintain a rigid distinction between race and ethnicity? Bernier and Kant who assume race is biological would probably object to ethnicity (a cultural identity) being equated in a sense or at the very least used interchangeably with the term race. Does this grouping of race and ethnicity demonstrate a lack of understanding? These questions are all based on an observation of the way the terms are used in The United States. Would it be accurate to speculate that these questions are applicable in other places as well? Within each race, there are many ethnicities. Does intertwining the terms race and ethnicity further complicate the terms or neglect the complications? Race and ethnicity are both terms that were intended to stand on their own and perhaps be discussed in conjunction. However, by mingling the terms it is possible that we are ignoring significant differences that could help us to more fully understand the terms and their influence.