General

Postcolonian American Racism, Superiorism, and Bigotry

[url=http://www.scribd.com/doc/79158907/Binder-1]Link to PDF on Scribd[/url]

Linked are a few excerpts from a number of books I found lying around while I was going through my bookshelves. I felt compelled to make copies and post them here to ask for opinions/an open discussion. The excerpts include papers, mainly on the study of Eugenics and the superiority and assimilation of races, done by major colleges (and not so much major professors as you'll read to prove), such as University of Penn & Stanford. Judging from the time period, studies on Eugenics began to take place in the United States (mid-19th century onwards), and we can infer that either scientists back then were extremely bigoted and their opinions skewed (obviously not what they thought factual) and/or -- they were producing this information to keep certain races from coming (immigration) into the United States. Remember that with the closing of the 19th century, as pressure was put on Congress, several suspensions to immigration took place, such as the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 that barred any Chinese from coming into the USA.

This brings me to the table with the multiracial cranium/brain sizes on Pg. 2 and the literacy test on the 2nd to last page. With some of the text presented on Eugenics here, this table of brain sizes both blatantly and indirectly yells out that it's evidence for that text and that certain races are smarter than others. Again, the evidence is skewed and again, we have these scientists using a table so immediately the reader may assume that there is no bias.

Moving onto the literacy test. Try it yourself? What's wrong with it? What if an immigrant came from some place where electricity, a postal system, or Swiss army knives didn't exist? Literacy tests were also skewed to keep out certain races of people that the white man didn't deem had ways "similar" to his, especially specific Europeans. This is because, and you'll see if you read the papers, they thought that characteristics acquired during a person's lifetime were hereditary, i.e. smartness. The solution? Keep out all races that "shouldn't" be in the gene pool to create the perfect human.

When I came across these papers, I hadn't seen them for a long time, so I thought to myself:
Did scientists back then really have nothing else to do?
How could anybody call that science?
Reading pg 1 made me revel in happiness that I live in this time period, educated and all!

Discuss!

*Superiority