Race, Racism, and the Criminal Law – Harding – Spring 2011
SECTION I – INTRODUCTION
I. Concepts of Race
a. Race, Ethnicity, and Crime in America (Walker, Spohn, & DeLone 2d Ed. 2000)
i. Traditionally race referred to the “major biological divisions of mankind”
1. Distinguished by color of skin, color and texture of hair, body proportions, and other physical features
2. Few experts today accept the strict biological definition of race – it is not virtually impossible to identify exclusive racial categories
ii. Race as a social construct
1. Anthropologists and sociologists regard it as such – groups define themselves and have baleens applied to them by other groups
iii. Yinger argued that the critical categories for social analysis are the “socially visible ‘racial’ lines, based on beliefs about race and on administrative and political classifications, rather than genetic differences”
b. The Concept of Race – The Concept of Race in the Human Species in Light of Genetics (Ashley Montagu)
i. In short, there are neither four or five raves, nor exclusive varieties, on this Earth
1. Complexions run into each other
ii. Proposes to show that the concept of race is nothing but a conception which in light of modern experimental genetics is utterly erroneous and meaningless
1. It has done an infinite amount of harm, and no good at all
iii. Development of the idea of race can be traced from Aristotle à Age of Enlightenment when Linnaeus used the ideas to serve as systematic tools à term first introduced by Buffon in 1749 to describe 6 groups of man
1. Used to describe subdivisions of a species – even though the scientists, even then, knew that humans were just one species (used the term subdivisions for convenience)
2. Darwinian contribution – show that species were not as fixed as was formerly believed – ones species might give rise to another
a. It was still possible to think about the species as largely immutable
3. It was possible in the 19th Century to think about race being more immutable than scientists had thought of race in the 18th century
iv. Until recently, very little progress had been made in the scientific study of race
1. The psychologists failed to take into account the sociological and biological factors
2. Sociologists failed to give adequate consideration to psychological and anthropological factors
3. Physical anthropologists restricted their studies almost entirely to the morphological aspects of the subject
SECTION II – BIOLOGICAL CONCEPT OF RACE
I. Race: The Power of An Illusion, Episode 1 – The Difference Between Us (California Newsreel 2003), Booklet accompanying 3-part documentary, at 3
a. PBS video
II. The Concept of Race (Ashley Montagu)
a. Point – term “race” is a problem that requires investigation
b. The physical (biological) differences that exist between the varieties of mankind are so insignificant what when properly evaluate, they can be described mainly in terms of a particular express of an assortment of genes which are common to mankind as a whole
i. No evidence among ethnic groups that there has been any “mental selection” – meaning that evolution has produced different kinds of minds
ii. Compares human variation to the variation among a breed of dogs
c. The physical differences between “races” are quite superficial – if you remove the superficial characteristic, anatomically speaking a scientist would not know whether he was looking at a black person or white European
d. Cannot put value on certain characteristics
i. i.e. black skin – although science knows very little about why the skin is black, it has adaptive value; what he do know is black skin can withstand longer exposure to sunlight and is less inclined to develop skin cancers
e. ***The varieties of human species, for the most part, merely represents the expression of successful attempts at adaptation to the environment or habitat in which they have been isolated
i. Both black and white man have survived because they and their ancestors were possessed of characters of adaptive value which enabled them to survive
f. Arguments on why blacks are inferior – whites often claim their physical characteristics make them less appealing
i. Kinky hair, thick lips, and general lack of body hair
1. In a biological sense these are examples of trains which have progressed further in development than have the some physical characteristics of whites
a. Apes à hair is lank (straight), lips are thin, and bodies are covered in hair
III. Class Notes
a. Sam Morton – looks at skull size
i. He puts skulls in groups based on his evaluation of these skulls
ii. Conclusion à different brain sizes correlate with intelligence (biggest is smartest, etc.)
1. [small] black à native american à brown à asian à white à white males [biggest]
iii. Conclusion is correct, methodology was incorrect
iv. Problem: the data appeared to be objective, allowed T. Jefferson and others to stand on solid groups and gave persons a reason to accept notions of inferiority
SECTION III – GENETIC CONCEPT OF RACE
I. Chess from ‘hood isn’t Bobby Fisher’s brand (Washington Post – Sunday March 11, 2007)
a. Many consider the Washington area a hub of black chess – 2 of the African –American men to achieve the rand of chess master came from Washington
b. Black chess is not like European chess, where everybody sits there all quiet and doesn’t say anything – Black folks talk trash
i. A lot of the guys will ask each other as they sit down “are we going to have European chess, or chess from the ‘hood”
c. Its not lost on some players that the white moves first, Brown said in fact, it’s a life lesson
i. “You’ve got to take the initiative, no matter that someone else had it first”
ii. Brown honed his chess skills in prison – now teaches young people to play – “I teach them that the best chess players are the ones who make the best decisions”
II. Man’s Most Dangerous Myth (Ashley Montagu)
a. Conception of “ethnic group differences” is based on the following fundamental postulates
i. Original ancestral species population was genetically relatively homogeneous
ii. Migration away from this original ancestral group, individual families became dispersed over the earth
iii. Some of the groups thus dispersed became geographically isolated from one another a
from environmental and social factors that are probably far more important
i. NYU Professor – The reason why black people may be getting cancer more has to do with a combination of forces, not just their biological make-up
VI. Genetic variation, classification and ‘race’ (Lynn B Jorde & Stephen P Wooding – Nature Genetics, Vol. 36, No. 11, November 2004)
a. Data from many sources show that humans are genetically homogeneous and that genetic variation tends to be shared widely among populations
i. Genetic variation is geographically structured
b. Not fair to say that race is “biologically meaningless” – but at the same time the concept that populations are discrete types has been invalidated
c. Race and Drug treatment and other medical therapies –
i. Responses to these therapies will often involve nongenetic factors and multiple alleles
ii. Warning – shouldn’t be thought of typologically – may end up with misdiagnosis or failure to diagnose
d. Human behavior – genes that may influence behavior are identified, allele frequencies are often compared in populations
i. These comparisons can produce useful evolutionary insights but can also lead to simplistic interpretations that may reinforce unfounded stereotypes
1. Must be balanced by our knowledge that human behavior is complicated and is strongly influenced by nongenetic factors
e. Modern human genetics delivers the salutary message that human populations share most of the genetic variation and that there is no scientific support for the concept that human populations are discrete, non-overlapping entities
i. Genetics can and should be used as a tool to illuminate and defuse the race issue
ANTHROPOLOGICAL CONCEPT OF RACE
I. “Race: The power of an Illusion, Episode 2 – The Story We Tell” (California Newsreel 2003), Booklet accompanying 3-part documentary, at 5
a. Episode traces the race concept to the European conquest of the Americas, including the development of the first labor system where all slaves shared a physical trait: dark skin
i. Episode reveals how social inequalities came to be disguised as “natural”
b. Slavery was what eventually led to the development of “race” in the US
i. Indians were considered by Jefferson and many other to be “good” human material
ii. Indians were thought to have the same instincts/intelligence as Europeans, but were savages by virtue of their culture – thus the colonists sought to civilize them
II. The Meaningless of the Older Anthropological Conception of “Race” (Ashley Montagu, Man’s Most Dangerous Myth)
