Lecture 1: Culture, Difference, and Prejudice

Question 1

Linguistic Anthropology: Language

Answer 1

• linguists know that languages have a general form; differences are important but there are universals
• languages have words, sentences, nouns, verbs, etc.
• more advanced vs. less advanced languages
• the Indo-European were considered the most advanced
  
  • e.g. English, Italian, Hindi, Urdu, etc.
• there was a real fascination at the beginning of the Imperial Period with Persia and India
• there was a guy who said Indo-European languages were the most advanced because people spoke them all around the world
• not a very good argument; same as saying that Western cultures are the most advanced because they had the most development; these views were highly prejudiced
• above primitive people are barbarians
• above that are farmers, who live in civilizations (“civilized”)
• above that are the industrial/urban type of setting
• anthropologists are far from believing this today

Question 2

Biological Anthropology: Physical & Racial

Answer 2

• the most common source of prejudice; racial prejudice is the most violent
• famous poem by Kippling called “White Man’s Burden” talking about how white people thought that they had to take care of the rest of the world
  
  • talking about white men in the Philippines
• slavery; another complex in which racial prejudice developed
• “race” is not a scientific notion; it’s a “folk notion”
• it’s very hard to convince people that race isn’t a trustworthy classification
  
  • “what you see is what you believe”
• the language of race evolves as we contact into with different people
  
  • e.g. “Middle-Eastern” and “brown” were not terms until recently (past few decades)

Question 3

Do Races Exist?

Answer 3

• they might not be biological, but they can exist culturally
• race is a socio-cultural construction, which does not make it unreal
• the way we describe race using appearance does have genetic basis
  
  • the correlation is not consistent enough to use something like skin colour to define a race
• the division between those we recognize as “black” or “white” doesn’t have anything to do with their genetics
  
  • we don’t categorize blonde or brown-haired people as different races
• it’s not wrong to say that Barack Obama is black; it’s just a linguistic feature rather than a scientific one
  
  • it’s unusual that if someone is half-black, you can say that they’re black, but it’s strange to say that they’re white
  • either way, you’re just as right, so why is this?
  • it’s obvious from this that race is constructed by language
• the one-drop rule; introduced in the slavery age in the US, meaning that if you had even one drop of African blood in them they would be discriminated against
• it’s not that you can’t say things like “black” but how you classify it
• the classification doesn’t arise from the difference itself/nature, it arises from the circumstances
• when you choose your race on the census, you can choose whatever you want
  
  • the American census adds them all the time as language evolves

Question 4

Blackness and Whiteness with Slavery

Answer 4

• what does it mean that race was invented?
  
  • it doesn’t mean that it isn’t real, or that people don’t look different
  • it means that the different categories of race we have were invented
• “black” and “white” were invented at the time of slavery in the Americas
• what about before slavery?
  
  • e.g. Othello in Shakespeare’s writing—they were described as darker skinned
  • it’s not that people didn’t see darkness of skin, but they didn’t use the word “race” and didn’t have an idea that skin colour could characterize an entire culture of people or that they were inferior because of it
• when slaves were imported, skin colour was important
  
  • they were not imported from North of the Sahara because they looked different
  • as soon as they were brought into America, there was always the possibility of reproduction and the white people wanted to protect their privileges
  • many white people became defensive about their whiteness
  • white supremacy became about protecting white women from black men, because if your daughter had a child with a black man, the child wouldn’t be able to enjoy white privilege

Question 5

Socio-Cultural Constructs

Answer 5

• racial prejudice in the 19th century became important along with the help of anthropologists; they helped construct this pseudo-science
• so we came up with black, white, yellow, brown, and red, because they wanted to make sure their privilege was secure (since white was obviously the most superior race)
• invention does not happen out of scratch; it has to work with existing materials
  
  • it uses and reuses ideas that already existed before
  • examples of socio-cultural inventions: race, nations, gender
• the key to understanding invention of socio-cultural constructs is that invention does not happen out of scratch, but it is based on existing physical properties