Samuel George Morton (1799-1851), a Caucasian professor of anatomy at the University of Pennsylvania, then the top medical school in the US, was the founder of the science of measuring skulls – craniometry. He used it to rank the races of man by skull volume, producing lists like this (here put into metric units):
- 1427 Caucasian
- 1361 Mongolian
- 1345 American
- 1328 Malay
- 1279 Ethiopian
The numbers are the average volume of their skulls in cubic centimetres. Since skull size and intelligence were assumed to be pretty much the same thing, it became the IQ of its time.
In 1851, upon his death, the Charleston Medical Journal noted:
“We can only say that we [Caucasians] of the South should consider him as our benefactor, for adding most materially in giving to the negro his true position as an inferior race.”
In 1854 Frederick Douglass, a full-time negro, had a somewhat different take:
“His very able work ‘Crania Americana,’ published in Philadelphia in 1839, is widely read in this country. – In this great work his contempt for Negroes, is ever conspicuous.”
American Golgotha: when Morton died he had 918 human skulls with 51 more still on the way. It was called the American Golgotha. Morton had skulls from all over the world, more than a hundred from the tombs of Ancient Egypt.
Morton divided his skulls by race and measured their volume to within a cubic inch (16.4 cc). A 2011 study “almost” always got the same numbers when measuring his skulls the same way.
But then Morton pulled the same old tricks that people still pull with African IQs:
- selective sampling: he left out Inuits and Asian Indians, which kept Mongolian and Caucasian skulls from ending in a tie.
- correlation is cause: assuming that intelligence was being measured and not something else, like knowledge of English in the case of African IQs, or sex and height in his case:
In 1978 Stephen Jay Gould reran his numbers and found that if you take into account height or sex, where known, the differences by race in skull size all but disappear. In fact, among Morton’s skulls from Ancient Egypt, Negroid males had a slightly higher average (1435) than Caucasian males (1419).
Of the times: Gould used Morton to showcase how science is unwittingly shaped by racism. Others, in turn, have used Gould’s 1978 study to showcase how science is unwittingly shaped by left-wing beliefs. But either way, science is being shaped by the reigning beliefs of the time. Science as a glorified Clever Hans trick.
Polygeny: Morton was a leading defender of polygeny, later disproved by Darwin. Polygeny is the idea that the Christian god created the races separate and unequal. Adam and Eve were just for White people. Since the Earth was assumed to be about 6,000 years old, and since Blacks and Whites have changed little since the days of Ancient Egypt, there has not been enough time for the forces of nature to account for the differences between the races, like, say, skull size. The Christian god, in other words, made it that way.
– Abagond, 2018.
Sources: mainly “The Mismeasure of Man” (1996) by Stephen Jay Gould; “Frederick Douglass: Selected Speeches and Writings” (1999) edited by Philip S. Foner; “The History of White People” (2010) by Nell Irvin Painter; “Race in North America” (2012) by Audrey and Brian D. Smedley; “A Troublesome Inheritance” (2014) by Nicholas Wade; Google Images (2018).
Update (April 14th 2021): Penn Museum at the University of Pennsylvania had these skulls on display till July 2020, when they were removed in the wake of the George Floyd protests. The museum “is now working with local communities to ‘understand their wishes for repatriation’ for the remains belonging to Black Philadelphians within the Samuel G. Morton Cranial collection.” CBS.
See also:
Earlier today, I was reading about Morton in the latest issue of National Geographic. The whole issue is about race. Article titles include:
“There’s No Scientific Basis for Race—It’s a Made-Up Label”
“For Black Motorists, a Never-Ending Fear of Being Stopped”
“Why Do We See So Many Things as ‘Us vs. Them’?”
“An Artist Finds True Skin Colors in a Diverse Palette”
“From Birth to School to Old Age: Inequality by the Numbers”
“The Many Colors of Matrimony”
I haven’t finished reading the whole issue yet, but so far I’m really enjoying it.
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@ Paige
Wow. I cant wait to see it.
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@ Paige
They did do an article on their own racism, right?
On stuff like this:
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In my life experience dealing with white people, and trust me, I’ve had quite a few incidents. I’ve come to the conclusion that most whites are incapable of seeing their racism or racist acts committed by one of their own kind. Most of them these days; ascribe to vain things either written or performed by their forefathers. They see glory where there is none. And praise some of these white scientists or Professors when in reality; they did nothing worthy of compliment.
As opposed to condemning these atrocious acts carried out by these white so-called scientists, they apparently feel a sense of connection, pride and get all giddy about gory behaviour referred to as science.
But quite noticeably, whites forget (or pretend to forget) about the acts of violence perpetrated against the Black man on a global scale; systems of oppression; zombie intellectualism and intentionally faulty researches conducted by white institutions in order to prop up their collectively fragile ego/manhood.
But yet, we still have people like Paige who quite unapologetically and blindly refer to an article regarding Morton in National Geographic Magazine: “I haven’t finished reading the whole issue yet, but so far I’m really enjoying it.” (smh)
To me, this is another great example of whites being incapable of seeing their own racism as a whole. I believe that they are afraid to look through the lens of truth; so as to avoid digesting; coming to grips with and truly seeing themselves as every other group see them. In short, they are afraid to look in the mirror for what may reflect back at them; Oh, … the revealing of the horrors of a truly ungodly people. Who knows, it may actually be on some level, … therapeutic, they should at least give it a try!
Max Weber, in his definitive study on religion, “The Sociology of Religion,” wrote: “When a nation can’t admit to the process through which it builds hegemony, how can anything but delusion be a reality?”
The monopoly of truth, including historical truth, is implied in the monopoly of power.” – Daniel Singer
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Ok
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“Ok!” – v8driver
Thanks v8, for somewhat proving my point, just as Paige did earlier. I appreciate your efforts to this end.
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@ abagond
They do have an article titled, “For Decades, Our Coverage Was Racist. To Rise Above Our Past, We Must Acknowledge It”. Unsurprisingly, there isn’t much criticism of their coverage in recent decades (like the 1970s and onward).
@ blakksage
The article I was enjoying describes the problems with Morton’s pseudoscience.
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So much racism in medicine and science and religion especially Christianity.
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@blakksage or to state in full,
@abagond ok thanks for getting back to me regarding the 6000 yrs thing
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I know we done been over forensic anthropology here before
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@ v8driver
The 6000 years thing comes from estimates done using the Bible; for example, adding up the lifespans given for Adam, Noah, etc. It’s a really old theory — check out the History section in the following Wiki:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_Earth_creationism
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@ Mary Burrell
“So much racism in medicine and science and religion especially Christianity.”
It is true some people have tried to justify racism and bigotry with Christianity.
Hinduism is far worse. Color based racism is baked right into the structure of the religion with the four “varnas” or castes. Those castes were originally based on color, occupation and family.
The caste structure still has a strong hold on Indian society. The people who suffer most are the outcast Dalits. Many (but not all) Dalits are also the darkest members of Indian society.
http://www.uwyo.edu/religionet/er/hinduism/horgs.htm
Christianity started out well. It was corrupted by its followers over the centuries.
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that’s rough, the hindus have so many ways to categorize aspects of the divine, metaphysically speaking of course, brahman
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@Afrofem:
You are absolutely right! They are not fans of Black people here in Toronto, I can assure you. They are very colour conscious. I questioned this Pakistani man I work with about that and he pretended to ‘misunderstand’ what I was asking him. I spelt it out and he got the drift. I told him he was being disingenuous, he tried to laugh it off.
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This man is a Muslin but I’ve come across others from the Indian sub-continent with similar outlooks. The South Asians from the Caribbean, are slightly more tolerable in these views.
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” The South Asians from the Caribbean, are slightly more tolerable in these views.”
Not V.S. Naipaul, the Trinidadian Nobel prize winner.
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@ Herneith
“They are not fans of Black people here in Toronto…”
They are not fans of Black people anywhere. They go out of their way to be mean to Black people. After numerous incidents where South Asians (many darker than me) acted out with me, I learned to avoid them altogether.
It wasn’t until I learned about some of the tenets of Hinduism that I understood how screwed up the Desi are about color issues. They put some of my colorstruck cousins in the South to shame with their obsession over light skin. South Asians are big consumers of bleaching creams, etc.
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A friend once recounted to me his experience in Malaysia of being denied service at an Indian own restaurant. Curious to know why they were unwilling to serve him food, they pointed out that he was too black and African. But what was most interesting about the whole situation was that the perpetrator of the act was himself as dark if not darker than my friend. I guess in his mind, his straighter hair places him a caste higher than black folks.
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@Dread when you are occupied by the English for more than 100 years and learn to hate yourself, not just because of your own complexion, you subtlety adopt the colonizer’s attitudes. This is the the great contribution that resulted in India. @Blakksage yes there’s no doubt that this denial by the colonizer is not only strong but holds true in many circumstances.
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@ TeddyBearDaddy
I agree with you about the effects of British colonialism. The British did have an effect on color perceptions among South Asians.
That being said, the color concepts (varna) of Hinduism pre-date the arrival of the British by thousands of years. They had a deeper effect.
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@ Dread
Been there, done that.
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I will say this; The ones who aren’t whitewashed, are quite ‘radical’ in their thinking. Too bad the most I have come across are whitewashed. It doesn’t help when whites exoticize the females as a group.
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@ Herneith
They will never discuss it with you, but the Desi who are not whitewashed are generally not upper caste Hindus. They are more likely Dalits or Muslims. Those two groups really catch h3ll in India, so they understand what it means to be on the sharp end of oppression.
Mostly. Not always.
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@ Paige
LMAO. Racism always seems to be in the past, never in the present.
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Update: Penn Museum at the University of Pennsylvania had these skulls on display till July 2020, when they were removed in the wake of the George Floyd protests. The museum “is now working with local communities to ‘understand their wishes for repatriation’ for the remains belonging to Black Philadelphians within the Samuel G. Morton Cranial collection.”
More:
(https://www.cbsnews.com/news/penn-museum-skulls-black-americans-return/)
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