Anthropology of the American negro. Historical notes

Hrdlička, Aleš

doi:10.1002/ajpa.1330100204

Cited by 23 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 80 publications

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“…Drawing on the work of British biometricians like Francis Galton, who coined the term "eugenics," for a then new science of the "well-born," anthropologists in the United States, most notably Ale s Hrdlic ˇka, measured the heads and bodies of southern and eastern European immigrants, Black people, Native Americans, and "Old American Whites" at the Smithsonian Institution from 1904 until the Second World War (Hrdlic ˇka, 1925(Hrdlic ˇka, , 1927(Hrdlic ˇka, , 1928. Eugenics was based on the assumption that heredity was the main determinant of anatomical, physiological, and behavioral phenotypes (Kevles, 1995;Turda, 2022).…”

Section: Ideas About Race and Eugenicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Racism, structural racism, and the American Association for Anatomy: Initial report from a task force

Sumner

Hildebrandt

Nesbitt

et al. 2022

The Anatomical Record

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In 2021, the American Association for Anatomy (AAA) Board of Directors appointed a Task Force on Structural Racism to understand how the laws, rules, and practices in which the Association formed, developed and continues to exist affect membership and participation. This commentary is the first public report from the Task Force. We focus on African Americans with some comments on Jews and women, noting that all marginalized groups deserve study. Through much of its 130 year history, some members were an essential part of perpetuating racist ideas, the Association largely ignored racism and had some practices that prevented participation. The Task Force concluded that individual and structural racism within the AAA, combined with the broader social context in which the Association developed, contributed to the current underrepresentation of African Americans who constitute 4.1% of the membership even though 13.4% of the U.S. population is Black. Intentional efforts within the AAA to reckon with racism and other forms of bias have only begun in the last 10–20 years. These actions have led to more diverse leadership within the Association, and it is hoped that these changes will positively affect the recruitment and retention of marginalized people to science in general and anatomy in particular. The Task Force recommends that the AAA Board issue a statement of responsibility to acknowledge its history. Furthermore, the Task Force advocates that the Board commit to (a) sustaining ongoing projects to improve diversity, equity, and inclusion and (b) dedicating additional resources to facilitate novel initiatives.

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Section: Ideas About Race and Eugenicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Racism, structural racism, and the American Association for Anatomy: Initial report from a task force

Sumner

Hildebrandt

Nesbitt

et al. 2022

The Anatomical Record

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…By 1927, physical anthropology, including the anthropological study of human growth, was firmly enmeshed in a race‐science and typological framework. Growth studies that appeared in the early years of the American Journal of Physical Anthropology belonged to one of two camps: the first camp studied growth from a racist, essentialist perspective, and were generally researchers trained as anthropologists or using the anthropological frameworks of the day (Appleton, ; Dodge, ; Herskovits, ; Hrdlička, ; Steggerda, ; a collaborator of Charles Davenport's); while the second camp tended to give descriptive reports of large‐scale population surveys or methodological advances that emerged from government and/or child welfare agencies (Baldwin, ; Boyd, ; Woodbury, ).…”

Section: State Of Growth Studies In 1927mentioning

confidence: 99%

The first Seriatum study of growth by R. E. Scammon

Miller

2018

American J Phys Anthropol

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Richard E. Scammon's article, "The First Seriatim Study of Human Growth," provided one of the best-known visuals in the field of human biology. Scammon resurrected longitudinal height data of one child from Buffon's Histoire Naturelle, converted them to metric, and plotted these measurements as a function of age. The result was the first graph of one individual's growth curve from birth to 18 years of age. This image was subsequently reproduced in numerous texts on human growth and biology. Published in 1927, Scammon's article provides a snapshot of the state of growth research at the time and gives a (literal) picture of the future of human biology. The graph of the growth of one child symbolizes the importance of process and variation in biological anthropology.

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“…In 1926, however, the Committee of the National Research Council on the Negro was organized by the archaeologist Alfred V. Kidder, the chair of the NRC's Division of Anthropology and Psychology at the time. Kidder appointed a diverse set of scientists to the committee: Robert J. Terry (chair), Franz Boas, Charles B. Davenport, Earnest A. Hooton, Aleš Hrdlička, T. Wingate Todd, and two psychologists (Hrdlička,1927a). (In its extensive discussion of Boas [1858–1942], the AAA project never mentions that he sat on the Committee on the Negro.)…”

Section: The Aaa's Documentationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Two faces of earnest A. Hooton

Giles

2012

American J Phys Anthropol

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The American Anthropological Association's multimedia project, “Race: Are We So Different?” alleges that Earnest A. Hooton (1887–1954) of Harvard University was a racist eugenicist who “perhaps more than any other scientist of his time… did more to establish racial stereotypes…” and infers racism from his having sat on a National Research Council Committee on the Negro in the 1920s. I take issue with this perspective to argue against Hooton as a racist by exploring Hooton's relationship with African American students, particularly Caroline Bond Day, and with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People when it awarded a medal to Charles R. Drew, M.D. In the heyday of eugenics, Hooton was an atypical eugenicist in espousing a resolutely nonracial view of the woes of humankind perpetuated by what he considered the biologically unfit. As eugenics and Nazism became conflated in the late 1930s, Hooton hewed to a path that was more antiracist than many of his anthropological colleagues and publicly disputed Nazi racial ideology. Am J Phys Anthropol 2012. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

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Anthropology of the American negro. Historical notes

Cited by 23 publications

References 80 publications

Racism, structural racism, and the American Association for Anatomy: Initial report from a task force

Racism, structural racism, and the American Association for Anatomy: Initial report from a task force

The first Seriatum study of growth by R. E. Scammon

Two faces of earnest A. Hooton

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