Said Sean M. Decatur, president of The American Museum of Natural History, quoted in "Facing Scrutiny, a Museum That Holds 12,000 Human Remains Changes Course/The American Museum of Natural History said it would address its collecting of remains, which stretched into the 1940s and included practices now viewed as abusive and racist " (NYT).
[One] set of problematic remains includes the bones of five Black adults that were dug up from a Manhattan cemetery for enslaved people in 1903....
“Certainly as an African American, the question of race is one of particular interest,” Decatur said. “The legacy of dehumanizing Black bodies through enslavement continues after death in how those bodies were treated and dehumanized in service of a scientific project.”...
“Folks who studied eugenics were interested in understanding the anatomical and behavioral differences between certain groups,” said Carlina Maria de la Cova, an anthropology professor at the University of South Carolina. “Today we would consider these approaches as scientific racism. But at the time, scientists were trading people like kids trade Pokémon cards.”
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38 comments:
Abusive and racist?
Wait a minute.
Isn't everything racist and abusive any more?
Completely irrelevant, prof. Not intended for publication
I think you missed a big story last week, particularly given your attention to precision in language.
RFK, Jr.’s kin tweeted and published a graphic blast last week, “denouncing” him for running for president. They didn’t oppose him or express disagreement with his policies. They denounced him in the style of Stalin or Mao. When did we start denouncing people for running for office?
I’d like to read your comment on this.
So there is no physical or genetic difference between white and black?
Cool.
So now I can not only identify as a woman, I can identify as a white woman
John Henry
Would you like a little cheese with our whine?
This has ZERO to do with race or slavery. Archaeologists dig up old bones, and look at them for scientific purposes. They do this all over the world, and often don't know what race/culture was present unless and until they find other artifacts or use a (e.g., carbon) dating method. They go through layers and layers at a given site.
Watch the BBC TV show Time Team (now streaming) -- they find bones from whoever lived on the British Isles. Some were Romans, some were modern English, some (e.g., Stonehenge era) have almost nothing/minimal DNA matching modern English people. Some were dark skinned, some were light skinned...DNA testing only allows this to be determined after they are dug up.
Yes, the scientists of 100 years ago were often racists and behaved almost exactly like a different flavor of Woke. They were also struggling to break free from the dogmas of the day and their ideas were better than what came before. They were far, far more left wing versus others. For example, the notion of a 7-day creation with Adam and Eve has no relation to the flawed evolutionary interpretation that followed Darwin. Yet, no one now can reject Darwinism on the whole per the evidence.
History is full of gray areas. Make the best of the situation. Don't dwell on the bad deeds of people dead for 100 years. Don't make things political that aren't political.
Mike Rowe did a ”Somebody’s Got to Do It” video of the Mutter Museum that also collected human remains. Mike didn’t have to invoke racism to get his audience to be interested in the story.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2yZhTieVsI
Just abolish the museum. And put those white supremacists that work there out of a job.
It is the dinosaur remains he should worry about. They are mounted and displayed in public for everyone to gawk at. We owe it to the birds to treat their ancestors with greater respect.
You can safely ignore any article that brings up white supremacy as being the product of a barely-formed juvenile mind.
IOW, the scientific search for truth must end where religion ends it, and this is as true for humanistic as for theistic religions. Furthermore, religion may redraw the red lines at will.
The legacy of dehumanizing Black bodies through enslavement continues after death
I'm reminded of the arguments made by doctors of a few centuries ago when it was illegal to experiment on human bodies. How much this restriction stunted medical advancement, how much unnecessary suffering, how many avoidable deaths took place because of the small-minded superstitions of the authorities at that time.
And how much their backwards, damaging, superstitious thinking is reflected in today's woke ideology.
There's a sympathetic case to be made here, but they would be more persuasive if they dropped the leaden academic jargon.
Clinical... historical cannibalism. At least they waited until the hunan life was no longer viable, rather than force it by choice. We have since progressed in a liberal blather, lather, ever again, and again, and again.
included practices now viewed as abusive and racist
What isn't? Shorter list.
If race and gender are mere social constructs, how do they even know whose bones these are? Couldn't the social justice warrior's concern be met by simply relabeling the collections "Random Humanoid Remains Signifying Nothing"?
"Folks who studied eugenics were interested in understanding the anatomical and behavioral differences between certain groups,” said Carlina Maria de la Cova, an anthropology professor at the University of South Carolina. “Today we would consider these approaches as scientific racism. But at the time, scientists were trading people like kids trade Pokémon cards.”
I don't understand how much of this comment is factual and how much is this person's ex-post-facto explanation of what was happening. Was it "folks who studied eugenics" who were interested in the differences between groups, or was it "physical anthropologists who wanted to learn something new"? Would every anthropologist today consider such study "scientific racism," or would at least some consider it "science"? (I have heard that anthropology has been very thoroughly colonized by the Woke, as witness the newfound utter inability to tell whether a pelvic girdle belonged to a male or female person.) Were scientists "trading people" like Pokemon cards, or were they sharing their discoveries with their colleagues to advance the body of knowledge in their field?
I am either advantaged or disadvantaged by not caring what happens to my remains after my death (beyond not wanting them to be paraded through the streets as a political prop) - bury my body, dig it up in a hundred or five hundred or five thousand years and learn something about living conditions during my time - I would be happy to have my remains advance science. But I know not everyone feels this way.
During the American Revolution, the British held their POW's on troop ships in the NY harbor. They were held in conditions of great privations and many of them died. They were buried in mass graves in the Gravesend section of Brooklyn. Above their graves, there are now auto repair and salvage spots. So far as I know, there's no great movement to repair their bodies to more hallowed spots. The descendants of American POW's are not an aggrieved minority in America.....For many of the same reasons that eugenics was a flawed science, criticism of eugenics is a flawed criticism....There are churches in eastern Europe where the the altar and pulpit were made from the bones of dead parishioners. I guess you can say their remains are in a hallowed place, but it does seem macabre....Well, whatever you say about how the anthropologists and eugenicists treated bones, it was way more respectful than the way the Aztecs, Tamerlane, or many of the kings of Africa treated human remains.....In the way the eugenicists tried to use bones to prove the superiority of the white race, the current generation of advanced thinkers try to use bones to prove the immorality of the white race.
Everything the white man does is racist.
Jaysus, you people, you might consider stopping scraping the barrel bottom for that dwindling supply of racism. Give these old bones to "distant" relatives - that don't give a shit about them, or bury them, or display them, or research them some more, already. Just stop anguishing and flagellating yourselves over them.
The goings-on described in that article are the very definition of "mental masturbation."
Every. Fucking. Thing. Is. Racist.
What about curiosity? The search for knowledge? To try to understand the natural world and out place in it?
Nope.
A bunch of white assholes stole our ancestors.
But I do agree that we should give them back.
But 'white supremacy?' No.
If there were such a thing as true white supremacy I'd be making $40M/year as a point guard for the Warriors...
Considering the way many are talking about the Palestinians, I can definitely see how this happened: Blacks weren't people, right? Because - if we rose up against anything that happened to us - we were then labeled "savages," correct? Think about that: white people think you even have to free yourself in the way white people approve of you freeing yourself.
And y'all say millennials are entitled.
Some of y'all really need a rethink.
What do they do with the bones of tribes or ethnic groups that no longer exist because they were wiped out by tribes or ethnic groups that weren't white? Are the bones restored to the people who eradicated them?....I guess eugenics is a flawed if not failed science, but why is Marxism never described that way. Its supporters used to call it the science of economics or the science of history....From reading that article, you'd never know that eugenics used to be a progressive cause. At one time, it was bigger than BLM.
Please more! We need the clowns that push this gibberish to DEMAND that “racial separation” in medicine and science be abolished so that we treat all people the same in treatment. No more “known susceptibilities” to certain diseases be taught - that’s obviously racial stereotyping! No more examination of drug or treatment effects on race / sex - that’s white supremacy eugenics.
And when science falls apart and the medicines or treatments or you name it doesn’t work - blame whitey for being stupid enough to pay attention to the nonsense that these “educated” folks push. The murder rate in the “community” is off the charts now because of similar advice for policing and charging - but the “experts” got to virtue signal - that’s all that counts today.
Osteological specimens provide insight into evolution, medicine, anthropology, and culture. Many who oppose the study of remains have a political agenda that depends upon false beliefs that they fear will be rebutted by study of the bones.
It continues to be astonishing to me that so many people have lost the use of their critical thinking facilities, and have adopted the view that the worth of all social things must be judged by the power of the groups involved. And who see the lack of power as the primary indicator of social worth.
It's just sad that WASPs are so willing to abandon the values that characterize their own heritage in favor of those of others.
And so culture and education are lost.
Fortunately when we look back at today in the 2100’s there will be no such aspersions cast at today’s intellectual elite.
""Human remains collections were made possible by extreme imbalances of power.""
Why, yes, dead people definitely lack the power to object to being studied in the name of science, especially bad science such as eugenics.
(Ancient skeletons present a different set of issues, as physical cultural anthropology and are AFAIK not built around proving "white supremacy". )
But if eugenicists and their work should be discredited and shunned , why not dissolve Planned Parenthood, founded by that notorious racist Margaret Sanger?
https://nypost.com/2020/07/22/planned-parenthood-finally-admits-that-its-founder-was-a-horrific-bigot/
But of course the wokerati give her a pass---even though PP continues to fulfill Sanger's dream of reducing the black population.
What hypocrites.
.
"Human remains collections were made possible by extreme imbalances of power."
I can see why the writers of this formulaic drivel are worried about AI replacing them.
So what?
I have it on reasonable authority that once your dead, not merely dead, but really most sincerly dead. That you're not going to give a damn what happens to your earthly remains. If somebody can learn something from them, go for it.
So, in their view, there is no physical differences among races... and all evidence to the contrary should erased.
And the choice here here is, believe what they say or believe your own eyes. Believe self evident facts they stand or just believe cause 'they' say so.
What if they declare the world is flat, the stars are pin pricks in a black curtain, and water runs uphill? Yes, no?
But of course they already say men or women if they dress like women....
Or a black woman
John Henry
1. How are the remains of Caucasian Americans treated in the museum's collection - is it differently, or the same? Native Americans?
2. How did the race hustlers (since that's what they are) divine the intentions of people studying the remains, as being 'eugenic' in nature? Can they present their qualifications and training and track records in the mind-reading of unnamed researchers?
I assume the solution to this problem is MFN (Money For Negroes).
Does anyone here remember Al Capp? And SPONGE, the Society for the Prevention of Negroes Getting Everything? A man before his time.
"Human remains collections were made possible by extreme imbalances of power."
Sure, let's look at this exclusively through the lens of leftist ideology. I mean, it's not as if this is objectively grossly disturbing regardless of intent.
chuck said...
“It is the dinosaur remains he should worry about… We owe it to the birds to treat their ancestors with greater respect.”
Tippi Hedren nods in agreement.
Perhaps the white Europeans who dug up the bones and studied them for various reasons were the only ones capable of such studies.
Perhaps the black natives of deep, "darkest" Africa didn't dig up any bones because when you're done with dinner, you don't care to look at the scraps anymore.
MarcusB. THEOLDMAN
Check out Elizabeth Weiss online. Phys anth professor who was run through the wringer for not being prog enough. There have been attempts to forbid menstruating women researchers from handling (Amerindian) human remains. Among other things.
Basically, prehistoric* archaeology in N America is on its way to being dead.
So long, Enlightenment. We hardly knew ya.
* Even the term 'prehistoric' is on its way to being verboten.
In my neck of the woods, alongside the Jupiter Inlet, there is a current controversy about a developer who bought a piece of waterfront that had been used as a mobile home park for many decades and wants to develop it into retail, restaurants and condos. The outrage is that it MIGHT have Indian bones buried there -- they have found stuff from the Indian settlements from centuries past but, so far, no bones.
Funny, these are white people who want the area undisturbed just in case it was used as a burial ground. But 20 years or so earlier, these same people were squeaking about the developer making the mobile home residents leave the property in preparation for development. "Veterans" might be living there too, screamed the people who don't want to spend their own money to buy such land. SO it was OKAY for lower, middle class people in trailers to squat on their rental properties (was owned way back by Sperry of the Green Stamps family), and the chance that an Indian settlement that may or may not have human bones buried there wasn't a problem. But let some high and mighty RICH people enjoy the view and the water, NOOOO, that is SO wrong because of the BONES!
MarcusB THEOLDMAN
So, the Museum is condemned for preserving African skeletons, as they would European skeletons. Yeah, that's, something. I guess.
But then i had a premonition to google "the american museum of natural history board" click images, and there it was The skeleton in the closet was Climate change denier David Kock
It appears to have evolved from a negotiation to an insurrection. My guess is 'no one will survive'.
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