"Nations and races, like individuals have each an especial destiny: some are born to rule, and others to be ruled. And such has ever been the history of mankind. No two distinctly marked races can dwell together on equal terms."
-Josiah Nott
In 1854, Dr. Josiah Nott compiled and published a 738 page best-selling book entitled Types of Mankind. It cited a massive amount of "scientific research"/data, quoted "findings", and displayed elaborate illustrations collected by the greatest scientists of the era.
Near the bottom of the title page was an ominous and prophetic quote by Lord Byron...
“But words are things, and a small drop of ink, falling, like dew, upon a thought produces that which makes thousands, perhaps millions think.”
The most influential scientist published in this book was Harvard professor-Dr. Samuel George Morton. He was well-known for "owning" the world's largest collection of skulls (600+ over several decades) which he analyzed, measured, compared, and ranked to help prove his belief that African-Americans, Native Americans, Chinese, etc. were each a different biological species (races) and inferior to Caucasians.
These "Racist Head Games" were used to predict brain size and the "progress/ potential of each race" in intellectual capabilities, morality, behavior, job capabilities, and capacity for future achievement.
Morton's "Cranial" Conclusion:
"The Negroes have little invention, but strong powers of imitation, so that they readily acquire mechanic arts. They have a great talent for music, and all their external senses are remarkably acute."
Another Harvard professor, Swiss-born Louis Agassiz (a world-renowned biologist/ geologist) was deeply influenced and swayed (he had previously believed that man came from a single species) by Morton's "cranial data" and quickly became an "authority" on race.
Agassiz quotes:
"As much as I try to feel pity at the sight of this degraded and degenerate race, as much as their fate fills me with compassion in thinking of them as really men, it is impossible for me to repress the feeling that they are not the same blood as us..."
"The brain of the Negro is that of an imperfect seven month's infant in the womb of a White...they are incapable of living on a footing of social equality with the whites, in one and the same community, without becoming an element of social disorder...the government must put every possible obstacle to the crossing of the races, and the increase of half-breeds."
These "scientific findings" were used far beyond (even in 2014!) the abolition of slavery to rationalize and justify Dred Scott, Plessy v. Ferguson, Jim Crow Segregation, The Negro Problem, Native American Genocide, Chinese Exclusion, Mexican "Repatriation", Japanese Internment, Quotas, Real Estate Redlining, racial profiling, police brutality/ excessive force, the "drug wars"/ Jim Crow Incarceration, resegregated Public Schools, the "Black/Latino" Achievement Gap, U.S. Census racial categories, whitewashed History books, our friends/ neighbors...I could go on!
KEEP KILLING JELLYFISH!
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