Social Documentary & Race

Gordon Parks  ( 1912 - 2006 )

Story of parks ..   http://layersofmeaning.org/archives/000246.html  ( cant find link )

http://www.gordonparksfoundation.org


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Parks

gordon parks   - images


More on Malthusian eugenics and the Harlem Project.

http://www.eugenicsarchive.org/eugenics/list3.pl

http://citizenreviewonline.org/special_issues/population/the_negro_project.html  ( cant find )

http://www.princeton.edu/president/tilghman/speeches/20100309/


SCIENTIFIC RACISM : The Eugenics of social Darwinism


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FmEjDaWqA4

The Eugenics of social Darwinism

Millions over the years have died.  In the 1830’s Britain brought a stop to slavery in the Caribbean sugar plantation hoping that this would lead to the workers to integrate and become more Christian like, this was lead by the Christian alliances. Even though they were fellow men and brothers, there was still an unequalness about them.  The Christians still thought they were better.

In 1803 the British began to settle in Tasmania, Australia where there were 5,000 aborigines – they thought them to be culture less, with no religion, godless brutes.  Savage and violent.

They began to fight amongst themselves, the British built a new capital and they displaced and abused the aborigines. 

The Black War was a hidden conflict and it was OK to kill aborigines and whole groups were destroyed.  It was the savages versus the Europeans, the hatred was extreme. The aborigines had to fight back to defend themselves.

The Christains managed to replace themselves but the aborigines were not capable of this so their numbers diminished. They were at risk of annihilation by the end of 1820’s.

Colonial Governor George Arthur set about to save them.  Not doing so would have been disastrous for his career. He produced a poster showing an inter racial community living happily together and saying not to kill and if they killed each other they would be hanged. But sadly this didn’t have the desired effect.

In 1830 he offered a bounty to bring in all the aborigines alive but only two were caught.

George Augustus Robinson was hired to bring in all the aborigines in a government agreement – peace treaty – it was negotiated that neither side could win so the Aborigines were gathered and taken to an island, with the understanding they would be able to return one day.

300 or so were taken to Flinders Island where they were fed and watered.  Robinson was the chief protector and was paid £8000 to do so. The island had a settlement with chapel and school and it was the idea to civilise them.

They became vunerable to human diseases and depression and they began to die.  260 were dead. In their 10,000 year history they were almost extinct.

This wasn’t a unique event, all over the world settlers were destroying the deciduous people. 

The sugar producers started to lose money and they blamed the black people for being lazy and having no drive. Also an inability to learn quickly.

The vision for civilisation was doomed.

In 1849, Thomas Carlisle called for a return to slavery. He said there was a necessity for inequality.

Men to rule women

The educated to rule the uneducated

Whites to rule blacks.

1865, rebels decided to fight at attack a court house in Marant Bay Jamacia .. the governor odered marshall law and killed 500 people, thousands of homes were torched.  The rebels didn’t fight back because they wanted a sense of justice.  The british anti slave parties called for him to be chaeged with mass murder, but he got off.  He saif they rebels were bruts and he was supported by many authors and writers all backing him.

The Victorian age suffered from scientific racism. 

1840 Robert Knox – wrote Races of men – said, Race is everything and the superior race will dominate.

Samuel George Moreton started to collect skulls to measure the eye sockets, features and brain size, figuring that the blacks had smaller skulls so smaller brains. Not fully human !

Darwin – the Origin Spieces  - the great british race were successful at expanding – and they would be encouraged to do so so the others diminished. He predicted a future without them hoping we would look back as we do with extinct animals.

Racism was also in India.  1870’s El Nino caused starvation amongst the peasants.  Whilst this was happening Lord Litton was celebrating queen Victoria’s Coronation and he was feeding 60,000 troops and friends of the British empire as millions died around him.

The British forced the indians to produce crops for GB and USA the global market and then had no food for themselves.

They were also cruel to them, made them walk miles for food, worked them to death, and the children were too weak to work or walk.

1870 – 8 million Indians died.

1880 – 1890 – 30 million died under British rule.

Different classes and regions were studied along with criminals to see what was happening and at one point they thought the lower classes were gaining strength.  They encouraged the middle classes to have more children to keep them strong. And the lower classes to have less.

This is called Eugenics …

1904 – Namibia – the hererro people under German rule – many were massacred.  The Germans turned these into concentration camps where they were worked to death, raped and beaten.

They had a death camp called Shark Island – you knew if you went here you were to die, 3,500 people were killed. 1904-9.

Shark Island now is camp site but the bones are beginning to show themselves. Mass grave sites.

Skulls were sold for racial science. There was a trade for them.  1908 Fisher made records and measurements of the inhabitants and kept books discussing the characteristics of races.

He noted that the black gene would always dominate the white gene.

The 20thC immigration to the USA encouraged eugenics.

Charles Davenport – if they found you genetically unfit in any way race or mental illness or deformities then your fertility was controlled.

They wanted no interracial marriages and 27 states passed the laws to stop it.  They wanted to protect the white race.

Mass sterilization was forced to try to extinct the races. A master race – Eugenics.

Germany was most receptive to this they began to sterilize the mentally ill and deformed.  1939. Which lead to adult euthanasia -  Nazi.

Mentally ill first – 70,000

Sick and infirm – 20,000 from concentration camps.

Which then lead to the killing of jews of Europe and Poland..

RACE HYGIENE ……..

THE SUBJECT AS OBJECT - Photography and the human body.

Read chapter four of the course reader.