ANTHROP 1AB3 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Samuel George Morton, Brain Size, Scientific Racism
30 Mar 2017
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February 27th & march 2nd anthropology of race and racism. Race is not biological and why it is a cultural construct = will find out more tomorrow. Race is a misunderstood concept: somehow biological (biological basis for particular behavioural traits; this belief only serves to justify racism and social hierarchies) and the term race is interchangeable with ethnicity (wrong; two very different things) The presumed hereditary characteristics of a group of people. A culturally/socially constructed identity (all made up) Race is a political tool to describe social status and devalue an entire category of people. Imagined as an ascribed status; it is imagined as something you are born with and cannot change - something that is not flexible. Used erroneously as a form of social stratification and legal classification. I. e. birth certificate in the us to indicate racial background. Create systems of inequalities; more access to power than others.
