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https://theconversation.com/racist-and-sexist-depictions-of-human-evolution-still-permeate-science-education-and-popular-culture-today-202011>
"Systemic racism and sexism have permeated civilization since the rise of
agriculture, when people started living in one place for a long time. Early
Western scientists, such as Aristotle in ancient Greece, were indoctrinated
with the ethnocentric and misogynistic narratives that permeated their society.
More than 2,000 years after Aristotle’s writings, English naturalist Charles
Darwin also extrapolated the sexist and racist narratives he heard and read in
his youth to the natural world.
Darwin presented his biased views as scientific facts, such as in his 1871 book
“The Descent of Man,” where he described his belief that men are evolutionarily
superior to women, Europeans superior to non-Europeans and hierarchical
civilizations superior to small egalitarian societies. In that book, which
continues to be studied in schools and natural history museums, he considered
“the hideous ornaments and the equally hideous music admired by most savages”
to be “not so highly developed as in certain animals, for instance, in birds,”
and compared the appearance of Africans to the New World monkey Pithecia
satanas.
“The Descent of Man” was published during a moment of societal turmoil in
continental Europe. In France, the working class Paris Commune took to the
streets asking for radical social change, including the overturning of societal
hierarchies. Darwin’s claims that the subjugation of the poor, non-Europeans
and women was the natural result of evolutionary progress were music to the
ears of the elites and those in power within academia. Science historian Janet
Browne wrote that Darwin’s meteoric rise within Victorian society did not occur
despite his racist and sexist writings but in great part because of them.
It is not coincidence that Darwin had a state funeral in Westminster Abbey, an
honor emblematic of English power, and was publicly commemorated as a symbol of
“English success in conquering nature and civilizing the globe during
Victoria’s long reign.”
Despite the significant societal changes that have occurred in the last 150
years, sexist and racist narratives are still common in science, medicine and
education. As a teacher and researcher at Howard University, I am interested in
combining my main fields of study, biology and anthropology, to discuss broader
societal issues. In research I recently published with my colleague Fatimah
Jackson and three medical students at Howard University, we show how racist and
sexist narratives are not a thing of the past: They are still present in
scientific papers, textbooks, museums and educational materials."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
