The decline of race in American physical anthropology

Leonard Lieberman; Rodney C. Kirk; Michael Corcoran

doi:10.18778/1898-6773.66.01

Authors

Leonard Lieberman Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Central Michigan University, Mt. Pleasant, MI. 48859, USA
Rodney C. Kirk Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Central Michigan University, Mt. Pleasant, MI. 48859, USA
Michael Corcoran Department of History, Central Michigan University, Mt. Pleasant, MI. 48859, USA

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18778/1898-6773.66.01

Keywords:

race, cline, population, Boas, Washburn

Abstract

This paper is a review of how and why the race concept has changed in the United States during the 20th century. In the 19th century the concept of race provided the unchallenged folk taxonomy and the prevailing scientific paradigm for placing human biological and cultural variation into categories called races. At the height of the eugenic and anti-immigration movement of the early decades of the 20th century, Boas and his students began the critique of racism and aspects of the race concept. In the early 1950s Washburn proposed that the modern synthesis replace race typology with the study of processes and populations. In the 1960s new data on clinal genetic gradations provided tools for studying human variation while challenging the race concept. We present several kinds of documentation of the decline of the race concept over the 20th century, and place the above changes in the context of the essential development of new genetic evidence. We also relate the decline of race to historical developments, the growth of the culture concept, and the biographies of the participants. We reject political correctness and view science as a self-correcting endeavor to relate concepts to the empirical world.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

References

AAPA Statement on biological aspects of race, 1996, Am. J. Phys. Anthropol., 101, 569-70

American Anthropological Association, Guide to Departments and Members, 1973, 1985, 1999, Am. Anthropol. Assoc., Arlington, VA

ARMELAGOS G.J., D.P. VAN GERVEN, 2003, A century of skeletal biology and paleopathology: Contrasts, contradictions, and conflicts, Am. Anthropol., 105, 53-64

BIRDSELL J.B., 1972, Human Evolution, an Introduction to the New Physical Anthropology, Rand McNally, Chicago

BIRDSELL J.B., 1975, Human Evolution, an Introduction to the New Physical Anthropology, (2nd ed.), Rand McNally, Chicago

BIRDSELL J.B., 1993, Microevolutionary Patterns in Aboriginal Australia: A Gradient Analysis of Clines, Oxford Univ. Press, New York

BLAKEY A., 1993, Blacks in the Dutch World: The Evolution of Racial Imagery, Indiana Univ. Press, Bloomington

BOAS F., 1911, The Mind of Primitive Man [1924], Macmillan, New York

BOAS F., 1912, Changes in the bodily form of descendants of immigrants, Am. Anthropol., 14, 530-62

BOAS F., 1918, Notes on the anthropology of Sweden, Am. J. Phys. Anthropol., 1, 415-26

BOAS F., 1927, Primitive Art [1955], Dover, New York

BOYD W.C., 1950, Genetics and the Races of Man, An Introduction to Modern Physical Anthropology, D.C. Health & Co., Boston

BRACE C.L., 1964, A nonracial approach towards the understanding of human diversity, [in:] The Concept of Race, A. Montagu (ed.), Free Press, New York, pp. 103-152

BROWN R.A., G.J. ARMELAGOS, 2001, Apportionment of racial diversity: A review, Evol. Anthropol., 10, 34-40

CAMPBELL B.G., 1998, Humankind Emerging, (5th edition), Little, Brown, Glenview, Illinois

CASPARI R., 2003, From types to populations: A century of race, physical anthropology and the American Anthropological Association, Am. Anthropol., 105, 65-76

COCKER S., 1998, Exterminate All the Brutes, New Press, New York

DOBZHANSKY T., 1937, Genetics and the Origin of Species, Columbia Univ. Press, New York

FREDERICKSON G.M., 2002, Racism: A Short History, Princeton Univ. Press, Princeton, New Jersey

GARN S.M., 1982, Comment, Curr. Anthropol., 23, 649

GRAVLEE C.C., 2003, Boas’s changes in bodily form: The immigrant study, cranial plasticity, and Boas’s physical anthropology, Am. Anthropol., 105, 326-32

HARAWAY D.J., 1988, Remodeling the human way of life: Sherwood Washburn and the new physical anthropology, 1950-1980, [in:] Bones, Bodies, and Behavior: Essays in Biological Anthropology, G.W. Stocking Jr. (ed.), Univ. of Wisconsin Press, Madison, WI, pp. 206-59

HERRNSTEIN R.J., C. MURRAY, 1994, The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in the United States, Free Press, New York

HOOTON E., 1930, The Indians of Pecos Pueblo: A Study of Their Skeletal Remains, Yale Univ. Press, New Haven, CT

HRDLIČKA A., 1918, Physical Anthropology, Its scope and aims; Its history and present status in America, Am. J. Phys. Anthropol., 1, 3-33

HUXLEY J.S., 1938, Clines: An auxiliary taxonomic principle, Nature, 142, 219-20

HUXLEY J.S., 1942, Evolution, the Modern Synthesis, Allen and Unwin, London

HUXLEY J.S., A.C. HADDON, 1936, We Europeans: A Survey of “Racial” Problems, Cambridge Univ. Press, New York

KAESSMANN H., S. PÄÄBO, 2002, The genetical history of humans and the great apes, J. Int. Med., 251, 1-18

LARSON C.S., 2000, A view on the science: Physical anthropology at the millennium, Am. J. Phys. Anthropol., 111, 1-4

LEWONTIN R.C., 1972, The apportionment of human diversity, Evol. Biol., 6, 381-98

LIEBERMAN L., 1968, The debate over race, Phylon, 29, 127-41

LIEBERMAN L., L.T. REYNOLDS, 1978, The debate over race revisited: An empirical investigation, Phylon, 39, 333-43

LIEBERMAN L., R.C. KIRK, A. LITTLEFIELD, 2003, Perishing paradigm: Race 1931-99, Am. Anthropol., 105, 110-13

LIEBERMAN L., B.W. STEVENSON, L.T. REYNOLDS, 1989, Race and anthropology: A core concept without consensus, Anthropol. Ed. Quart., 20, 67-73

LITTLEFIELD A., L. LIEBERMAN, L.T. REYNOLDS, 1982, Redefining race: The potential demise of a concept, Curr. Anthropol., 51, 797-802

LIVINGSTONE F.B., 1958, Anthropological implications of sickle cell gene distribution in West Africa, Am. Anthropol., 30, 533-62

LIVINGSTONE F.B., 1962, On the non-existence of human races, Curr. Anthropol., 3, 279-81, 470

MADRIGAL L., B. WARE, R. MILLER, G. SAENZ, M. CHAVEZ, D. DYKES, 2001, Ethnicity, gene flow, and population subdivision in Limón, Costa Rica, Am. J. Phys. Anthropol., 114, 99-108

MAYR E., 1980, Prologue: Some thoughts on the history of the evolutionary synthesis, [in:] The Evolutionary Synthesis: Perspectives on the Unification of Biology, E. Mayr & W.B. Provine (eds.), Harvard Univ. Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, pp. 1-48

MONTAGU A., 1941, The concept of race in the light of genetics, J. Heredity, 23, 243-48

MONTAGU A., 1942, Man’s Most Dangerous Myth: The Fallacy of Race, Columbia Univ. Press, New York

MONTAGU A., 1945, An introduction to physical anthropology, C.C. Thomas, Springfield (1951 2nd edition, 1960 3rd edition)

MONTAGU A., 1951, Statement on race, Henry Schuman, New York

MONTAGU A., 1972, Statement on Race. The Four Statements by UNESCO, (3rd ed.), Oxford Publ., New York

OUSLEY S.D., R. JANTZ, 1996, Fordisc 2.0: Personal Computer, Forensic Discriminant Functions, Univ. of Tennessee Press, Knoxville, TN

PATTERSON T.C., 2001, Social History of Anthropology in the United States, Berg Publ., Oxford

PROCTOR R., 1988, From anthropologie to rossenkunde in the German anthropological tradition, [in:] Bones, Bodies, and Behavior: Essays in Biological Anthropology, W. Stocking Jr. (ed.), Univ. of Wisconsin Press, Madison, WI, pp. 138-79

PROVINE W., 1973, Genetics and the biology of race crossing, Science, 182, 790-96

RANKIN-HILL L.M., M.L. BLAKEY, 1999, W. Montague Cobb: Physical anthropologist, anatomist, and activist, [in:] African American Pioneers in Anthropology, I.E. Harrison & F.V. Harrison (eds.), Univ. of Illinois Press, Urbana and Chicago, pp. 101-36

RELETHFORD J.H., 2002, Apportionment of global genetic diversity based on craniometrics and skin color, Am. J. Phys. Anthropol., 118, 393-98

SCARR S., A. PAKSTIS, S.H. KATZ, W.B. BARKER, 1977, The absence of a relationship between degree of white ancestry and intellectual skills within the black populations, Human Genetics, 39, 69-86

SCARR S., R.W. WEINBERG, 1978, Attitudes, interests, and IQ, Human Variation, 1, 29-36

SPENCER F., 1997, History of Physical Anthropology, An Encyclopedia, Vol. 2., Garland Publishing, New York and London

STASK E., J. MARKS, 1992, Evolutionary Anthropology: An Introduction to Physical Anthropology and Archaeology, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Fort Worth

STOCKING G.W., JR., 1968, Race, Culture and Evolution: Essays in the History of Anthropology, Free Press, New York

TEMPLETON A.R., 2002, The genetic and evolutionary significance of human races, [in:] Race and Intelligence: Separating Science from Myth, J.M. Fish (ed.), Lawrence Erlbaum Association, Mahwah, NJ, pp. 31-56

TEMPLETON A.R., 1998, Human races: A genetic and evolutionary perspective, Am. Anthropol., 100, 632-50

WASHBURN S., 1951, The New Physical Anthropology, Transactions of the New York Academy of Sciences, Series II, 13, 298-304

WASHBURN S., 1953, The strategy of physical anthropology, [in:] Anthropology Today, an Encyclopedic Inventory, A.L. Kroeber (ed.), Univ. of Chicago Press, Chicago, pp. 714-27

WASHBURN S., 1963, The study of race, Am. Anthropol., 65, 521-31

WEISS, K., 2003, Ludwick Fleck and the Art-of-Fact, Evol. Anthropol., 12, 168-72

WEISS, M.L., A.E. MANN, 1975, Human Biology and Behavior: An Anthropological Perspective, Little, Brown, Boston (1978, 2nd ed.)

ZIHLMAN L., 2001, In memoriam, Sherwood Washburn, 1911-2000, Am. J. Phys. Anthropol., 116, 181-83