OPINION THE BIG IDEA

The struggle to overcome racism The linking of skin colour with inferiority has been one of the most powerful and destructive intellectual ideas of all time, leading directly to slavery, civil war, and, more recently, segregation and apartheid. Nina Jablonski tells the extraordinary and troubling story of the “colour meme”

“The rights of the people shall be the same, race, grading from white to black. The regardless of race, colour or sex… all laws persistence of hidden and strong racism, then, which discriminate on grounds of race, colour is rooted in a deep-seated and unscientific or belief shall be repealed” acceptance of genetic determinism, the conviction that different groups of people are THESE uplifting and momentous sentiments born with different inherent capacities, and come from the Freedom Charter of South that these determine a natural social order. Africa of 1955. They were to be echoed later in the country’s 1996 constitution. Similar phrases were enshrined in the US Civil Rights Protective pigment Act of 1964 and the UK Race Relations Act of To make a start at unravelling the origins and 1965. By the latter half of the 20th century, persistence of this erroneous belief system, discrimination on the basis of race, colour, let us consider first how the diversity of gender, religion or national origin was skin colouration evolved. considered a violation of basic human rights. pigment is responsible for the nearly infinite Despite this, the differential treatment of gradations of brown that characterise human people by race and colour has persisted, skin. Melanin in its darkest form, eumelanin, especially in countries like the US and South is the most important and common pigment Africa, with long histories of legalised in skin and is one of the most effective segregation and discrimination. That such sunscreens in nature because of its ability to ideas continue into the 21st century is viewed absorb (UV) radiation. with disbelief by academics and scientists, All evolved in Africa under strong penetrated the hinterland of western Asia who are quick to cite evidence that biological equatorial sun and had skin that was dark and with its considerably less sunny and more races don’t exist and that races are “only” rich in protective eumelanin. For more than seasonal regime of UV radiation. Some of social constructs. Yet for many of the world’s half of the history of our species, from roughly those hinterland populations eventually people, the lived experience of race cannot be 200,000 to 80,000 years ago, we were moved into eastern Asia, whereas others made ignored. Despite ever more genetic evidence Africans and our pigmentation was fine-tuned their way into central and eventually northern confirming the nonexistence of races, belief in as we moved and adapted to local conditions Europe. The migrations brought people into the inherent superiority and inferiority of across Africa. places that were less and less sunny, and peoples remains a strong enough influence to Small groups of darkly pigmented people genetic changes – mutations – occurred to make lives miserable. began dispersing out of the continent about produce lightly pigmented skin. Many of these ideas of innate superiority 80,000 years ago. Some early migrants moved Ultraviolet radiation is mostly harmful, but are based on a belief in a hierarchy of skin along the coasts of southern Asia. Others small amounts of UVB are necessary for colour. When we explore the roots of this producing in the skin. The problem, we see it is based on the mistaken “For more than half of of depigmented skin meant that people living belief that differing intellectual capacities and in places with low levels of UVB could produce potential, moral resolve and behavioural the history of our species, vitamin D. The fact that it evolved wherever predilections are related to skin colour and we were Africans” UVB was scant attests to the power of natural

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26 04/09/2012 15:55:27 For more opinion articles and to add your comments, visit newscientist.com/opinion rr/MAGNUM PHOTOS rr/MAGNUM a P tin r a M selection to produce similar phenotypes in with one another. What occurred there is Noticing skin colour doesn’t mean we are response to similar environmental conditions. instructive and salutary. From the art and genetically programmed to be prejudiced Some lightly or moderately pigmented historical records of ancient Egypt and Greece, populations moved back into strong sunlight we know that people recognised differences observe people around us keenly, and when and intense UV and, predictably, became in skin colour, but that these differences did we don’t know what to do, we often decide by darker again. So changes in skin pigmentation not affect their relationships or business watching the actions of those we know well or were adjustments to prevailing conditions. transactions. Skin colour was noticed, but it respect. When we are small, we observe and Because of the skin’s importance as the body’s was not equated with human worth. imitate our parents and caregivers, and pay primary defence against the environment, it We notice skin colour because it is our most close attention to the social nuances conveyed has been under intense natural selection for visible trait and because we are highly visually by body language. Heightened visual most of our history. oriented animals. This doesn’t mean we are awareness and adept imitation help to ensure As human populations expanded, many genetically programmed to be biased, rather that we fit into our social group. groups that had previously been isolated from that we form our impressions of others and These activities are also conducive to being one another began to make contact and trade: the world primarily through what we see. We liked and having positive behaviours directed along the Nile river and the shores of the compare new perceptions to visually based towards us. We not only look at how authority Mediterranean, people with visibly different memories. Our reliance on vision permeates figures act, but we listen carefully and imitate skin colours began to have routine contact every aspect of our lives as social beings. We their social categories. As small children, we >

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learn a lot from subtle visual and verbal cues The first scientific taxonomy of humans about who is in our extended family and who was created by Carl Linnaeus in the first is not. We learn to prefer individuals or groups edition of his Systema Naturae in 1735, when that adults around us have emphasised, even he separated humans into four varieties by if the adults have never said anything skin colour and continent. By 1758, Linnaeus explicitly good or bad about them. had further defined these groups by So the transmission of bias starts slowly and temperament – sanguine for Europeans, subtly. We learn to put people into categories melancholic for Asians, choleric for Native on the basis of similarities in the way they look Americas and phlegmatic for Africans. or act and by how authority figures around us The combining of folk beliefs about act around them. Our minds seem to be aptitudes and character with physical traits organised in a way that makes it easy to in an authoritative classification created the classify people into distinct groups and then intellectual foundation for racism as we know to favour our own group, the “in-group”. it. From this point, demeaning associations of But our reactions towards members of out- character, culture and physiognomy could be groups are not automatically negative, nor are included in treatises on human variation and they all-or-nothing. They are determined by be considered scientific rather than as neural responses in the brain (especially in the personal and emotional expressions of amygdala) that develop as we detect fear or disgust, discomfort and prejudice. anxiety in those around us and begin to feel or mirror it ourselves. Brain reactions to “Lightly pigmented or ‘white’ out-groups by themselves don’t create stereotypes, but repeated reinforcement of skin became the norm from positive or negative associations do. It is which others deviated” especially the verbal labels that count. In fact, the nature of the social contacts Less than 30 years after Linneaus’s revised and trading networks between the peoples taxonomy, Immanuel Kant published his own living along the Nile and the shores of the influential ruminations on human variation Mediterranean from about 3150 BC until in 1785, in which he named, for the first time, around AD 476 were determined by the “races” of humanity (Rassen in German) similarities and differences in culture and that were defined by skin colour and place of language, not by skin colour. Slavery existed, origin. For Kant, races were fixed and but the enslaved were usually captives of war immutable. He graded according to his ideas regardless of colour. of their talents, with Europeans on top, But all this changed after the Middle Ages as “yellow Indians” possessing meagre talent, long-distance sea travel became faster, safer “Negroes” being far below them, and at the and more common, making it possible for lowest point, “Americans”. Although Kant was people to come into contact with distant challenged by powerful critics from among his “others” abruptly, often without previous contemporaries , including philosopher knowledge of each other’s existence, and Johann Gottfried von Herder and naturalist being mutually startled by each other’s and anatomist Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, appearance. Such meetings were rarely on he remained wedded to his definitions. equal social or military grounds. European For Kant and most theorists that followed, the inherent superiority and inferiority explorers travelling by sea were looking for the equation of skin colour with character of races were readily embraced by the plunder and were hardly egalitarian in their signified that lighter coloured races were intelligentsia of western Europe and attitudes. Darkly pigmented skin astonished superior and darker coloured ones inferior, eventually by the general populace because most Europeans and their travelogues of the and that members of the latter were destined they supported existing stereotypes. For those time described the colour of distant peoples to serve the former. Kant’s ideas about colour who subscribed to the belief that originally in lurid and often pejorative terms. and character achieved wide and lasting light people turned black because of exposure acceptance because his writings were widely to extreme heat, the transformation from Profile circulated, his stature as a philosopher and light to dark was a form of degeneration and Nina Jablonski is Distinguished Professor of scholar was great and, for the most part, his a departure from the norm. at Pennsylvania State University, audience was naive and had no personal The negative association of with University Park, and a fellow at the Stellenbosch experience with the darkly coloured – mostly human worth became profitable with the Institute of Advanced Study in South Africa. African – people whom he disparaged in his development of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. This essay is based on her new book Living Color: writings. And so the “colour meme” was born. Industrial-scale enslavement of Africans was The biological and social meaning of skin color The linking of blackness with otherness is made socially tolerable by the idea that those (University of California Press) one of the most powerful and destructive being enslaved were considered fit only for intellectual constructs of all time. Views on servitude. Belief in the inferiority of the dark-

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1968: civil rights activists march for black equality on Beale Street in Memphis, Tennessee

of natural law, and to have silenced the reproofs of conscience. They are strangers to every sentiment of compassion, and are an awful example of the corruption of man when left to himself.” By the early 19th century, darkly pigmented skin signified inferiority and the prospect of profit through slavery, and the possession of lightly pigmented or “white” skin became the norm from which others deviated. The domination of white Europeans over the darker races was “justified” because of the unshakeable but incorrect belief that skin colour was inextricably linked to morality, economy, aesthetics and language.

Collective reinforcement The rise of social Darwinism in the late 19th century further reinforced the notion that the superiority of the white race was part of the natural order because certain “stocks” were more highly evolved and culturally superior because of their “fitness” and “adaptations”. The notion of colour had taken on full scientific trappings. In the US and South Africa, where the subjugation and exploitation of dark-skinned labour was the cornerstone of economic growth, hierarchies of colour were maintained by legal institutions and rhetorical traditions of superiority and inferiority. Over many generations, ideologies of colour-based race became rigid as they were collectively

BIS reinforced by stereotypes and multiple

R /CO cultural traditions. Races persisted along with the implicit hierarchies they imposed.

B ettmann Race labels associated with negative depictions and narratives have powerful skinned peoples of Africa intensified with shew that it is sufficient to produce a new effects both on members of out-groups and the growth of the slave trade. blackness like that of the negroes.” of in-groups by planting the idea that their The dramatic and negative shift in rhetoric By 1823, however, the entry was suffused own group is superior, inferior, smarter, toward darkly pigmented Africans is vividly with pejorative “descriptions” and poisonous stupider, stronger or weaker than another. illustrated by comparing two entries in the invective: “NEGRO, Homo pelli nigra, a name The label itself becomes determinative of Encylopaedia Britannica. This one comes from given to a variety of the human species, who personality and individual experience, and the first, 1771, edition: “NEGROES, properly the are entirely black, and are found in the torrid is itself a destination. inhabitants of Nigritia in Africa, also called zone, especially in that part of Africa which Knowing all this means that the colour blacks and moors; but this name is now given lies within the tropics. In the complexion of meme need not direct our destiny. Human to all the blacks. Negroes, we meet with many various shades; attitudes are constantly subject to revision “The origin of the negroes, and the cause of but they likewise differ far from other men in through experience and, more importantly, this remarkable difference from the rest of the all the features of their face... Vices the most conscious choice. Biases can be modified and human species, has much perplexed the notorious seem to be the portion of this eradicated on the basis of experience and naturalists. Mr. Boyle has observed, that it unhappy race; idleness, treachery, revenge, motivation, and stereotypes can be changed cannot be produced by the heat of the climate: cruelty, impudence, stealing, lying, profanity, when people are motivated to think about for though the heat of the sun may darken the debauchery, nastiness, and intemperance, someone, in any way, as a member of their colour of the skin, yet experience does not are said to have extinguished the principles own group. We are all one people. n

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