How Were Race and Gender Constructed Under Colonialism, and Why Were They Intertwined to Define the Native Subject?

According to Robert Young, the question, 'Are human beings a single species or not,’ was one of the central issues at the heart of anthropological, cultural and scientific debates throughout the nineteenth century. During this time, colonial authority and hierarchal distinctions were structured in racial and gendered terms. Thus, this essay will explore the ways in which social and cultural meanings of gender, class, and racialised difference have been incorporated into and shaped by colonialism to define the native subject. With a close analysis of the American natives and the discourses surrounding European scientific racism, this essay will argue that racial difference is constructed and transformed into standard inequalities by colonialist and racial regimes and ideologies. This paper will first give a brief explanation of the term ‘scientific racism’ to then explore the importance of creating a sense of ‘otherness’ to categorise the natives as a ground for the colonisers’ biological and political superiority. It will then examine the writing of numerous nineteenth century evolutionists, with particular reference to the works of Samuel Morton and Charles Darwin, to underpin the science-basd racism that surrounded the discourse of white superiority.

Colonialism by its very nature has racist connotations. British colonialism in particular was structured as a dictatorship, using violence to pacify the colonial subjects and to maintain order. The advent of British colonisation of America coincided with the era of scientific racism as represented by social Darwinism, that is, survival of the fittest (Barbara, 2007). Scientific racism is ultimately the act of justifying inequalities between groups of people on the basis of science. It is founded on two cultural ideologies: that natural categories of the human species exist and have different worths, and that science is a source of authoritative knowledge (Barbara, 2007). Throughout American history, the idea of biologically inherited racial difference was used to create categories of ‘free’ and ‘slave,’ classes that are clearly political rather than biological. However, biology was used to ground the political reality of slavery in a set of beliefs about biology. One of these was that black natives and white Europeans represented dichotomous groups, which led to labelling the natives as ‘others.’ According to Barbara, the British believed that because they had superior weaponry and were therefore more technologically advanced than the Negros, that they had a right to colonise and exploit the resources of the natives in the name of promoting civilisation. This racial diversity was primarily invented to create a cultural divide between colonisers and colonised. Such oppositions were crucial for not only creating images of the outsider, but equally essential for constructing the insider, usually the white European male, ‘self,’ (Loomba, 2002). That is, there was no such term as ‘white’ before there was ‘black,’ no such term as ‘heterosexual’ before there was ‘homosexual,’ and so on.

Colonial rule relied on particular methods to socially subdue those ‘others’ they wished to colonise. Of these, race and gender played a primary part (Montrose, 1991). Perceptions of gender were intertwined with notions of race and class, and were thus used in classifying people and placing them in the social hierarchy. John Wallach Scott claims that: “Concepts of gender structure perception and the concrete and symbolic organisation of all social life…and so gender becomes implicated in the conceptions and construction of power itself” (Montrose, 1991). British colonialism did not allow for easy social or sexual contact with local people. However, mixed race relationships did often occur, usually with great encouragement at first as it was native women that: “Taught their new husbands the skills needed to survive,” (Welsh, 1997). It was only as Europeans began to settle in the New World that mixed unions became much of an issue; “mixed marriage came to be seen as hindering the creation of an orderly white settler colony” (Perry, 1997). Theories of race and racial classifications were often attempts to deal with this ‘hybridisation,’ (Morgan, 1998). A table from W.B. Stevenson’s ‘Narrative of Twenty Years Residence in South America’ (1825) detailing the “mixture of the different castes under their common or distinguishing names” is testimony to the constant transgression of racial boundaries in colonial America. The chart suggests that paternity is genetically dominant. For instance, a child born to a white father and an Indian mother will be six eighths white and “very fair,” and the offspring of a white father and Negro mother is seven eighths white, but that of a Negro father and white mother is four eighths white. In 1904, American scientist Charles Davenport who was considered the “father of the American eugenics movement” (Micklos, David; Carlson, Elof, 2000) became actively involved with the American Breeders Association (ABA). This led to Davenport's first eugenics text, "The science of human improvement by better breeding,” one of the first papers to connect agriculture and human heredity. Davenport taught that a woman should not marry a man without a thorough knowledge of his biological and genealogical history. He felt a woman should “act like a stock breeder who carefully checks the pedigree of a potential sire for his colts or calves,” (Micklos, David; Carlson, Elof, 2000). Davenport argued that the state should control who is able to breed, reasoning that if the state had the right to take a person's life, it could also deny permission to reproduce.

Many of the early evolutionists were outspoken racists, and racial inferiority views were assumed to be proven and were thus less a subject of debate than we would assume today. Haller (1971) concludes that: “Science became an instrument which verified the presumptive inferiority of the Negro and rationalised the politics of disenfranchisement and segregation into a social-scientific terminology.” Although racial stereotyping dates back to early Greek and Roman periods, one of the first tests of science-based racial diversity was Samuel Morton’s measurements of human skulls. Morton was a nineteenth century scientist, whose work “Crania Americana” - a collection of nearly 1,000 human skulls he obtained from around the world - helped rise him to presidency of Philadelphia’s Academy of Natural Sciences. Morton took detailed measurements of these skulls with a particular focus on cranial capacity, the skeletal equivalent of brain size. From these measurements he hoped to determine whether different human populations were separate species resulting from multiple divine creations (polygenesis) or a single species created once (monogenesis), a major question in pre-Darwinian science (Stanton, 1960). Before the time of Darwin it was almost universally regarded that all humans were descendants of Adam and Eve (monogenism), most concluding that all humans must literally be biological brothers. This of course had implications for the colonisers as it made it difficult to define ‘savages’ and ‘barbarians’ since all humans were supposedly made in God’s image. Some individuals even developed hypotheses to justify the conclusion that Blacks were inferior, as God created them as a separate race, some concluding that the 'beasts of the earth ' discussed in Genesis was the Black race (Haller, 1971). Morton’s work divides the human race into the following categories: Europeans, Asians, Native Americans and Africans. His observations of the European race followed as such:
"The Caucasian Race is characterised by a naturally fair skin, susceptible of every tint; hair fine, long and curling, and of various colors. The skull is large and oval, and its anterior portion full and elevated ... This race is distinguished for the facility with which it attains the highest intellectual endowments.”
In comparison, his description of the Native American race followed as:
"The American Race is marked by a brown complexion; long, black, lank hair; and deficient beard ... In their mental character the Americans are averse to cultivation, and slow in acquiring knowledge; restless, revengeful, and fond of war, and wholly destitute of maritime adventure ... They are not only averse to the restraints of education, but for the most part are incapable of a continued process of reasoning on abstract subjects."
What was assumedly meant to be an exploration of polygenism and monogenism became a discourse of intellectual capacity based on biological differences. This idea was further emphasised in Sander Gilman’s illustration in his book “Difference and Pathology: Stereotypes of Sexuality, Race, and Madness,” (1895) where he distinguished racial classifications by physical characteristics, such as cranial shape and size. This attempts to explain racial differences in terms of the races' biological attributes, and with the arrangement of the races on the diagram, a kind of hierarchy is implied. However, in a 1978 paper and later in “The Mismeasure of Man,” (1981), Stephen Gould asserted that Morton had selectively reported data, manipulated sample compositions, made analytical errors, and mismeasured skulls in order to support his prejudicial views on intelligence differences between populations. Gould used the Morton case to argue that biased results were common in science because scientists are not immune to prejudice and ambition, he stated that: “unconscious manipulation of data may be a scientific norm ... scientists are human beings rooted in cultural contexts, not automatons directed toward external truth,” (1981). Ironically, according to a paper published in PLOS Biology, research shows that Morton’s measurements and results are accurate, and in fact it was Gould who may have fudged the numbers to make his case (PLOS Biology, 2011).
Darwin's theory of evolution suggested that humans had evolved over hundreds of thousands, even millions of years, and that the races of men had diverged while adapting to the diverse conditions of different locations. Darwin - often referred to as the Father of Evolution - was recognised as having a “decent hatred of slavery,” (Koster, 1988), his writings often reflected various contempt for ‘primitive’ people. Darwin regarded white Europeans as more ‘advanced’ than other human races - while he presumed that man evolved from ape-like creatures, he theorised that some races developed more than others and that the former still conveyed simian features. In his book, The Descent of Man, (1874) he commented on "the greater differences between men of distinct races.” By this, he asserted that Blacks and Australian Aborigines were equal to gorillas, and then stated that these would be "done away with" by the "civilised races" in time. He wrote:
“At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace, the savage races throughout the world. At the same time, the anthropomorphous apes. . . will no doubt be exterminated. The break between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilised state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as now between the Negro or Australian and the gorilla.” - Charles Darwin, 1874.
As such, racism was culturally conditioned into Western thought. Darwinism led to racism and anti-semitism and was used to show that only ‘superior’ nationalities and races were fit to survive. Thus, among the English-speaking peoples were to be found the champions of the “white man’s burden,” an imperial mission carried out by Anglo-Saxons.
The Western ideology that whites were 'superior ' and blacks 'inferior' was frequently demonstrated in science and biology books published during the nineteenth century. The textbook drawings which depicted our supposed ancestors, such as Homo erectus and Homo habilis, typically have distinct Negro characteristics, such as dark skin, kinky hair and Negro facial features. In comparison, the modern man (Homo sapiens) were often drawn as having light skin, straight hair, a flat forehead, a narrow nose and small lips (Constable, 1973). The popular American high school biology textbook by Hunter, ‘A Civic Biology’ (1914) further constructs the concept of human divergence by categorising humanity into five separate categories. In the section on evolution, ‘The Races of Man', Hunter acknowledges that humanity exists under five races or varieties of man, each very different from the other in instinct, social customs, and to an extent, in structure. The five races were then ranked from inferior to superior as follows:
“There are the Ethiopian or Negro type, originating in Africa; the Malay or brown race, from the islands of the Pacific; the American Indian; the Mongolian or yellow race, including the natives of China, Japan and the Eskimos; and finally, the highest type of all, the Caucasians, represented by the civilized white inhabitants of Europe and America,” -Hunter, 1914.
The textbook states that the highest race is the Caucasians, who are fundamentally further developed in terms of instincts, social customs, and structure. The book was widely adopted by American public high schools for over 30 years, an ironic implementation since the Butler Act, a 1925 Tennessee law, prohibited public school teachers from denying the Biblical account of man’s origin (Law2.umkc.edu, 1925). Negros were ultimately viewed by evolutionists as being in certain ways unredeemably, unchangeably, and irrevocably inferior to whites, (Burnham, 1972). According to Burnham, during the nineteenth century questions were raised as to whether native Americans could survive competition with their white relations. The answer, according to scientists of the time, was a resounding no: “The African was inferior - he represented the missing link between ape and Teuton,” (1972).
In conclusion, gender and race played a central role in colonialism as it enabled colonialists to create divisions throughout the New World. Through race and gender roles, certain behaviours could be construed as uncivilised and inappropriate for one’s position in society. Thus, biological factors acted as one of the primary means of dividing the races, creating a European standard which contrasted any found in the New World. Biology had become a political issue. Aspects of Darwinism, including ‘survival of the fittest’ that has been previously applied to plants and animals were applied to human societies, which proved to be a much more complex phenomenon. Darwinism became a racist concept. It provided a scientifically formulated vehicle for inequality based on cultural meanings of gender, class and racialised difference, all of which were constructed by colonialism and European ideologies. Ultimately, scientific-based racism was utilised to secure a foundation upon which a social hierarchy could be based, and colonialist dominance could be obtained.