Race is a Social Construct : Western Racialization and its Downfall
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- Опубліковано 7 сер 2024
- Thanks to Historic Mail for sponsoring this. Go to historicmail.com/CYNICAL for 10% off their Holiday Sale when you use the code CYNICAL
Race is not as simple as epidural coloration or any phenotype for that matter. These racial borders are easily crossed and don’t even precisely map onto skintone nor anything deeper. Afterall, I do not become a different race by getting a good tan. Race is not biologically derived and indeed has a history to its social construction. Racialization is a distinct historical process. It has a story to it with consequences. This episode is ultimately about how race became a thing, as in how society constructed the ideology behind this abstract category
here is Drawn of History's channel: / @drawnofhistory
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Bibliography
Theodore W. Allen, The Invention of the White Race: The Origin of Racial Oppression, vol. 1 with introduction by Jeffrey B. Perry (1994, reprint; New York: Verso Books, 2014). amzn.to/3WtdMxb
----, The Invention of the White Race: The Origin of Racial Oppression in Anglo-America, vol. 2 with introduction by Jeffrey B. Perry (1997, reprint; New York: Verso, 2012). amzn.to/3WawxoR
Eric Arnesen, et al., “Scholarly Controversy: Whiteness and the Historians’ Imagination,” International Labor and Working Class History 60 (Fall 2001): 3-92.
Jacqueline Battalora, Birth of a White Nation: The Invention of White People and Its Relevance Today, 2nd ed. (2013; New York: Routledge, 2021).
Bruce Baum, The Rise and Fall of the Caucasian Race: A Political History of Racial Identity (New York: New York University Press, 2008). amzn.to/41LGIBp
Laura E. Gómez, Manifest Destinies: The Making of the Mexican American Race, 2nd ed. (2007; New York: New York University Press, 2018).
Toni Morrison, Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992).
Michael Omi and Howard Minant, Racial Formation in the United States, 3rd ed. (1986; New York: Routledge, 2015).
Nell Irvin Painter, The History of White People (New York: WW Norton, 2010), audible. amzn.to/3OkYAQG
Poliakov, Léon. The Aryan Myth: A History of Racist and Nationalist Ideas in Europe (Eastbourne, UK: Sussex University Press, 1974). amzn.to/3WqvnFR
Robert Wald Sussman, The Myth of Race: The Troubling Persistence of an Unscientific Idea (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2014), audible. amzn.to/3obeUIV
Magda Teter, Christian Supremacy: Reckoning with the Roots of Antisemitism and Racism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2023). amzn.to/3oMtBCt
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chapters
0:00 intro
8:50 Historic Mail
12:48 Spain
19:30 color racialization
23:17 science philosophy and anthropology
30:12 eugenics
37:00 Boasian cultural relativity
39:10 fascism and downfall
42:35 Don't Be a Sucker
46:38 revival
50:54 outtakes
My half Irish, half Puerto Rican wife has always had to check both "White, not Hispanic" and also "Hispanic" on the race boxes on forms, which always gets a little weird. Now my kids have heritage from 6 countries, 2 religions, and 3 "races" (depending on how you qualify them). So... American.
There are no such things as "races"!😊
Right, her ethnicity is american
I usually look for the "two or more races" box on those kinda things for myself and if they dont have one I pick whichever I feel would better fit what Im doing. If its a job I just pick "african american" because Im brown and people are stupid. They cant even say my name correctly, I definitely dont think theyll understand ethnic mixing or cultural identity...ugh, its especially bad here in the midwest. A looooooootttt of people are either subscribing to the "you wont replace us" or "lighter than a paper bag" white supremist idealogy here, fucking tragic.
@@scotthullinger4684 facts! I used to tell my mom I didn't like checking any of those boxes or would just put down whatever but she warned me against doing that because it'd make me look "suspicious". I think the fact that I am a brown individual I have to play the game with the rules they've put out there even though it's senseless and people know it...or choose to not accept it.
The concept of a "race box" on an official document has always been so weird for me :D
Gonna be nothing but the most rational responses to this one. No weird accusations of being a communist or other things will happen at all.
Yep. Already got 3 racists and the premier is still a day away. Bigots can't handle the truth
That is another part of the story that wasn’t covered here. Politicians and racists in the 1880s in the early 20th century utilized this science to declare certain groups of people as communists and fit for deportation. if you fought against poverty, racial discrimination, or the proper implementation of science, you are labeled even today as a communist, reflecting the movement to the 1880s. historian, Heather Cox Richardson has written quite a bit on this topic.
Ahhh, it's funny because those things _are_ gonna happen! 😁😃😮💨
@CynicalHistorian a paraphrasal from P.C. Hodgell - "That which can be destroyed by the truth, should be."
No, Carl Sagan did not say that!
*Seinfeld voice*
Mom, I'm not a communist...
Not that there's anything wrong with that!
Great to see such a comprehensive look at an issue that's difficult to explain to intransigent people. It's a pity that youtube demonitizes everything good on its site.
Holy heck, Stoneworks!
UA-cam has a sense of destroying good things and promoting bad things that even go against their own TOS.😂
@@raltzei8120 All too true. (Also, nice Ralsei pic!)
Good day Sciencey, fancy seeing you here!@@sciencey2858
@@sciencey2858 Thanks man
“I’m a poodle-labrador mix! Far superior in intelligence and beauty to the husky!” - people who expect to be taken seriously
@@user-rx162r No, I'm pointing out that the concept of "purity" is fiction. We're all related and mixed, just as all dogs are mixed. No dog has pure ancestry, all of them are members of the same subspecies with ancestors that may have looked nothing like them.
I find huskys much more beautiful. Their shape and colors work really well.
ikr lmao
@@PlatinumAltaria There is differences between dogs population in intellectual abilities, so? It is way smaller than in human population of course (there is no differences between dogs like it is between black and white/asian intellectual abities), but what does it change?
I’d argue that Race and the development of Racism is one of the most significant historical events in human history and sadly it has been either overlooked, or sadder still , ignored and downplayed. It had a major impact on our modern world in the worst way possible. Thankfully, videos like this can serve to educate people about this nightmare of a construct that continues to haunt us and help us course correct our history and right the wrongs of the past.
Race is the greatest tragedy of Modernity
You are seriously delusional
@teeldd Nah. Greatest thing actually.
@@antoniomosley9410 When you see someone or something as being something it is not according to the DSM Psychiatric manual that makes you delusional. Making shit up about people being something they are not makes you mentally ill. I'm sure you realize you are already? Get help. Ahahahahaahahahaha
It sad how it still affects us
The biggest example of race as a social construct I’ve seen is in Guatemala. Where the natives and “ladinos” are seen as distinct groups with strong divisions and prejudices that led to a genocide.
The different between the two groups? Culture. A native that leaves behind their cultural background and decides to follow a modern lifestyle “becomes” Ladino and vice versa.
Dang, I'm a Ladino who grew up in the US and you beat me to it.
And tribalism. Still has its influence in Somalia and led to a genocidal movement of one of the tribal people. Absolutely retarded how much people want to separate themselves from others. We are still so primitive
A native that leaves behind their cultural background is still a native lol. My family is from Guatemala.
@@themilitantvegan2515 look up the difference between Ladino and Native in Guatemala. It’s just culture.
Genetically and “racially” there is little to no difference between the two groups. Yet, the tensions between them is high and even led to a genocide in the past
@HGRAP1 Again, my family is from Guatemala. I just got back from Guatemala. I've been going there my whole life. I know the history well. Especially since my father was in the military. You are wrong. A Mayan can leave his ancestry behind. He will still be Mayan, and nothing changes that. How some people choose to see them doesn't change that they are Mayan.
I’m of the opinion that slavery caused racism instead of racism having caused slavery. Africa was simply a convenient slave market at the time and racism was invented to try and justify the utilization of said market after the fact.
Your foget Muslim wnslaving the slavs
@@rogeliovaldez6594 The same principle applies though. Slavs were enslaved by many, including themselves, simply because many of their population were vulnerable to being captured. Muslims were interested in acquiring European and African slaves because Islam didn’t allow them to enslave anyone who was already Muslim.
@@TheNightWatcher1385 It was more of whoever was convenient, and not organized well enough to make it too expensive.
@@tomhalla426 Precisely.
Africa was never "a slave market ", read a book , bigot! 😊
I believe in science and science says "races" are 99.999% genetically identical. We all have the same meat under our skin and our differences are just environmental adaptations.
Your half banana so what does that say.
@@Johnathan.David.Trewhitt. half is still around 12000 genes. Different skin tone is just one. Also, it makes me a carbon-based life form, no shit the base building blocks are the same, just having cells is probably most of it.
@@StainlessPot do families all tend to look like one another would u say they were more similar genetically to one another compared to the public.
@@Johnathan.David.Trewhitt. Do you know that statistically there's 6 unrelated people looking near identical to you? Also, "racial" traits become hereditary, cause that's how having babies works, my dude. What are even trying to get at?
@@Johnathan.David.Trewhitt. also your genes can change during your lifetime due to outside factors, like... THE SUN. And not all of your genes are active to begin with. Ever hear of developing allergies? It's something that was dormant, but then gets triggered.
43:00 "Tall like Göebbels, slender like Göring, blue-eyed like Hess and blonde like Hitler." That was common whisper- joke in Germany at the time.
The only one of the high command that did met these criteria was Reinhard Heydrich, who funnily enough was bullied as "half-jew' as a child (he didn't actually have any Jewish blood, but because he had lanky build and bigger nose than others, children made their own conclusions).
One of your best videos yet
Thx
Whoa! You are Mr. Beat!
You can even argue that the concept of race itself in the U.S has caused countless erasure of ethnic groups and identities, your average "White" American is mixed with various European ethnicities and are not connected at all to their ethnic culture. You would think there would be a strong community of German Americans given their percentage in the states but there isn't. I remember watched a video of a U.S civil war veteran speaking about the time during that time and not once did he mention "White", he would mention the Dutch or Irish and etc. It is not hard to believe that their was a once thriving German or Dutch community in the states that over time just assimilated into WASP culture.
Oh God - don't even get me started on the American use of the term "Anglo-Saxon" 😂
Oh this is gonna be an unfortunately controversial one, but it needs to be reiterated as many times as it takes to sink in
Yep. Funny thing is I've said this in videos about once a year since I began a decade ago, but even the offhanded mention of it brought so many hateful comments that I obviously needed to make this video. Their hatred fuels me, mwahaha
@@CynicalHistorian Does it also act as a net with bait from which to catch people for bans?
@@CynicalHistorianit's crazy because I've followed you for years and felt you believed white privilege don't exist. I mean look at Trump. How can he be the leader for a nomination of a political party and he is not even campaigning? Amd no one is questioning it or holding him accountable. I hope that this is an honest conversation about how race is used to include and exclude people from rights and resources, I looked at your sources and I think there are a few you should have included, however I still look forward to your perspective on this topic. By any chance have you watched any video on the topic of the alr right playbook by inundo studios? I think he has a grounded sense of how race has an impact on every aspect of each person's life. In addition , so does Step Back, F.D. Signifier and a few others who've been discussing aspects of race for a while. I greatly appreciate this discussion as this country never dealt with the hurt and pain of the social construct of race. That is why my auntie at 66 years old was offered when I said her grandma was not a slave but was enslaved. I had to explain to her that her grandma was born human and put into that position. And her response was yeah but she was a slave. Oh My God😮 we have a long way to go. So thank you for your part in this conversation and look forward to hearing what you have to say.
@@lljkgktudjlrsmygilug yep
@CynicalHistorian WOW, video! I have been looking for intro books or papers about the etymological evolution of racialization
linguistics, especially in America. Most don’t make the connection between the terms “black” and “white” and the implicit bias it perpetuates. Any recommendations on where a simple layman can start?
Btw, I really love the content good sir, especially about ol’ Woodrow (Wil-SONNNN!!!)
An important point you glossed over, Binet only ever intended his test to be used to determine which children needed how much help in school. It was never intended to be used to meaure general intelligence in reasonably functional adults or children.
Bitch come on 🙄 not all white people mean harm we DO get it you just gotta believe
When I was in high school, we were able to choose our research paper topics. I was a fan of Star Trek and knew only what I had heard about Eugenics from there, with Khan and Dr. Bashir. My teacher warned me about going down that path and that I might not like what I found. She was right. What I read was some of the darkest, most disturbing things about people who had such awful ideas. I learned about forced sterilizations of those deemed racially impure, even in the United States this happened. I am thankful to a degree she let me find out about this but there are days I wish I was still blissfully ignorant.
Its such a self report when people bring up The Bell Curve
To add to that, Filipino's with just mixed race can be called Mestizo despite not being Latino. Our simple association with our history of the Spanish colonization impacted how we call each other.
As a hardcore computer geek, I knew that William Shockley was an insufferable dickhead, which led to his employees rebelling and becoming the founders of silicon valley. But I had no idea he was such an outspoken eugenicist... wow.
Mad props to you Cypher, for your hard work, and your ability to condense what must be an insane amount of research into a small package that's easy enough for a layperson like myself to understand. This was a great video! One that I'll be sharing with some friends.
- a proud Patron
So, what you're saying is, Silicon Valley was founded by antiracists? That must mean that Silicon Valley can never become racist, just like how American police departments can never become non-racist, because the first American PDs were formed to catch escaped slaves. I learn such good history while loosely interpreting people's UA-cam comments.
@@coreyander286 With "loosely interpreting" being a euphemism for "reading things into what they're saying by purposefully misrepresenting it". :D
@@varana oof
Waiting for the day I can check “Human” on forms asking for my race
Would be nice. Maybe once aliens arrive, we will see that we aren't that different.
i can already imagine the comments. godspeed, soldier, i’m really looking forward to a good discussion of this topic.
This thesis was the same as Biological Anthropology's final exam at the University of Windsor. Almost fundamental concepts for social scientists, and yet so controversial among... well... those who aren't.
@@danieldelaney1377 what reason?
@@PedroHenrique-jd9zmbecause people understanding the reasoning behind others’ actions makes those people very upset.
I will give an answer to the why social sciences are looked down upon, I don't know if it's Daniel's answer. Because 100 years ago the social sciences said racism was good and because now it says racism is bad, what will it say in 100 years?
@KatanamasterV this is an absurd oversimplification of "what was said 100 years ago" by a bunch of white supremacists. Your standard becomes even more obvious as heinously counterproductive when you consider "what was said 100 years ago" in the physical sciences.
The development of ideas and changing them in light of diverse perspectives on the evidence available is a scientific ideal, even if its not perfectly practiced.
Man, I always love seeing you post videos. The ones you make regarding social issues and constructs have to be my favorite. You, Atun Shei, and Knowing Better are what pushed me from being more interested in ancient history towards modern & Civil Rights history.
Plus your dedication to stamping out bigotry on your channel is much appreciated, for what it's worth.
@@Joeonline26your love of crass bigotry has been noted!😊
Saying race is not a social construct is bigoted? Or did I get the wrong message from your comment?
Race is a social construct. This is a fact. Humans are practically imbred.
There are populations in Sub-Sahara Africa (IE black) that are more genetically related to Europeans than they are to other black Africans. Facial features that you may associate with one race can be found in any race (ie, an aquiline nose, associated with Mediterranean, Central and South Asian peoples can be found amongst East Asian peoples).
Your science is about eighty years out of date.@@Joeonline26
@@Joeonline26- You _like_ it when people are mistreated because of skin color, ancestry, religion, or other characteristics?
@@isan_pr4505 not sure if you were replying to me directly, but I was saying I appreciate him banning bigots and covering difficult topics regarding the social constructs that effect the lives of people. Sorry if I worded my comment poorly, I often struggle with expressing myself.
Doctor Cypher, as a leftist I actually loke Cykka's characterization. In our pursuit of a better world, we can sometimes be like that, unfortunately. It's good to have a rhetorical check from time to time, and you raise good points about people who belong to a dominant group being VERY important when speaking out about a bad system like racism.
Wokescolding is radlib nonsense & it's not based in leftism at all. Leftist political theory says nothing about the working class dividing themselves into subgroups to represent *only* people with the same skin color or eye color or hair color etc. 🙄 it actually says the opposite: that everyone must unite.
Nice try but radical liberalism is just like radical feminism or anything else that adds "radical" as an adjective: it's terrible & you should feel terrible for espousing it.
Only 3 shadow replies? I'm disappointed.
Good video!
Good luck with the comment section on this one.
If you want to know how ridiculous race gymnastics can get look into the "Hamitic Hypothesis" or the background behind the Rwandan Jenocide
Race is Important! Id place it right next to whether someone has an Innie or an Outie belly button.
😂
Can't forget the ultra-rare swirlies.
Sounds like something an Outie would say…
I think certain people will see the thumbnail, read the words, and misconstrue what it'll be about, I was pleasantly surprised by how nuanced you are with your observations.
For whatever reason, I read the title as "space is a social construct", and immediately clicked to see what the fuck we going on.
THANK YOU for saying this. It needs to be said, and I'm tired of all the racial/racist nonsense I see in the world around me.
Particularly when it comes to DnD
@@thomasrose2149would you care to elaborate what you mean by that? Because it sounds like you want all the races to have the same stats.
Thanks for the talk, doc. Here's to hoping people learned stuff from it.
Race, in the United States, is a legal construct dating back to the beginning of this country. Here's some examples of how the law constructed race:
Naturalization Act of 1790: Limited naturalization to "free white persons" only, explicitly excluding people of color from becoming citizens. This resulted in many legal cases of people suing to be declared white.
Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857): Supreme Court decision deemed Black people non-citizens, further solidifying racial separation in law. This resulted in many laws that defined a black person based on the percentage of black ancestry. Some laws declared a person was black if they had one drop of black ancesty - “the one-drop rule”
Chinese Exclusion Act (1882): First law restricting immigration based on race, targeting specifically Chinese laborers.
I
mmigration Act of 1924: Established a national origins quota system, prioritizing immigrants from Northern and Western Europe while severely restricting immigration from Asia, Africa, and Southern and Eastern Europe. This approach to immigration was in effect until 1964.
Bracero Program (1942-1964): Temporary guest worker program for Mexican nationals, exploitative and discriminatory in nature.
Yup , “race” can’t be detected genetically as theres no such thing. Ethnicities can be clustered genetically but thats also cultural and physical differences we have between ethnicities are environmental adaptions
There are races, but racial supremacy is the thing that’s made up.
It goes back to the end of henotheism and the beginning of Christianity which was pushed on everyone in the Roman Empire by death. the Bible saying “only take heathens from surrounding nations for your slaves” and Judas deceiving jesus, and Jewish usury etc when most likely Jesus and bar kokbha only wanted Roman coins to use without graven images on them is what’s responsible. Another thing that caused racial supremacy was the discovery doctrine and taking African slaves to lands where only white people would be their owners.
@@alphaomega938 Which is neither here nor there. All that says is that some markers are preserved - not that there is coherence over all traits, which the racial concept assumes.
@@alphaomega938 Follow your leader
@@alphaomega938 Which has zero to do with my comment. Physical traits are massively distinct from genetics, because they are, in all regularity, not monogenetic. And being able to tell someone's geographical ancestry by genetic markers says nothing about their other traits. And that's the crux of the issue.
I saw a brief screenshot of The Other Slavery by Andre Resendez @18:11 . I have very recently read his book with great interest. I have rarely ever felt so conflicted about a book. His examination of the widescale enslavement of indigenous Americans was an eye opener, particularly how it differed from African American enslavement in the Americas and focused on women and children. It's something most history fails to recognize and is an important contribution. However his central hypothesis that enslavement more than communicable disease created the demographic disaster of indigenous Americans is incredibly weak with virtually no supporting evidence produced. He even uses the language, " I hazard a guess," provides virtually no scientific, medical or epidemological information and essentially claims that his theory is correct if we just assume (once again without any supporting evidence) that the "high counters" of the indigenous population were overestimating by 97%, but provides little to buttress his claim that his count is somehow more trustworthy. In the entire book, other than in the introduction, I could only find a small section of 5 pages beginning at page 212 that even addressed the issue of communicable disease. It's an absolutely extraordinary claim and extraordinary claims that conflict with a mountain of contrary evidence, require extraordinary evidence to be taken seriously.
Unfortunately, the book jacket and almost all reviews of the book push this as proven truth that changes the entire historical narrative and I have yet to find any source that doesn't repeat his wild claims that actually examines them. I am convinced that very few people have actually read the book, but only the dust jacket, other reviews and summaries. Guns Germs and Steel, perhaps because it was a commercially successful best seller and so widely influential, has been appropriately re-contextualized and its signfiicant flaws addressed by a wide range of academic critics from multiple disciplines including you. The Other Slavery is a book well deserving of a similar more critical examination with a cynical eye and I hope you get to it in a video someday soon.
What's wrong with just doing the reverse of what white supremacy does though? Why not collect massive evidence regardless of how in depth it is and use it to further our agenda against a people? It's been ok when they do it for a long long time so it should sit well with anyone who opposes what they've been able to accomplish with such horrible attitudes in academics, as long as you don't believe we will accidentally gloss over some facts or truth that justifies the lie machine like maybe race IS real and these guys weren't so far off in their noble mission kinda thing. I'm not appalled if that book phoned it in like you say it did, I'm just happy they got the right spirit about it from what it seems, not the end of the world.
After I talked to an Arab that was questioning the legitimacy of subjugation of blacks in America by comparing it to the subjugation one Arab group over another from his native country I realized how trivial this type of thing was. On one front I realized how ignorant I was about how much people conflate religion, language, and ethnicity. On another front I realized how ignorant he was about issue of "blackness" vs "whiteness" in America as an issue of class and eugenics. They seem the same on the surface but, you just simply can't conflate phenotypes, with language and religion if we're going to have a proper oppression Olympics.
I studied Genetics in College. I took a class on population genetics and after only a few papers it became brutally clear race is absolutely a social construct. There simply no reasonable genetic categorization that separates people with white skin from people with black unless you want to split hairs and talk about skin pigmentation genetics. When one really looks at the population genetics it’s clear that people tried to see a pattern between peoples that just didn’t exist.
@thinkharder9332 So you're saying that West Africans and Oceanians are the same race?
@thinkharder9332 Yes they do, and are many times indistinguishable from one another, in so much that Europeans named the Oceanians "Negritos".
@thinkharder9332Africans have far more different phenotypes. There are some Africans more genetically akin to Europeans than they are Africans. Yes those Africans are black, and not just North African.
@thinkharder9332 yes I know what phenotypes means.
@thinkharder9332 yes I’m aware that the genetic similarities between some African groups and Europeans don’t have anything to do with phenotype.
The foundations of Racialism - now known as Racism, i.e. the belief in the ideology of race - started to be demolished by Anthropologist in the early 20th century who noticed that people from different origins in the Pacific Islands, for instance, shared the same culture (Malinowski); or by others (Franz Boas) who measured and did the statistics and found nothing that could be called race.
The concept of race played a fundamental role in convincing the German people that the mentally ill, physically challenged, Jews, Roma and other minorities should be exterminated. I guess it really played a fundamental role in the Jewish Holocaust since they were profoundly integrated into the German society. How do you convince a person that his long time friend, family doctor, teacher or inlaws should be killed? The cuckoo ideas at the time made it really easy for Germans to accept those people should be removed from the country but why kill them? Jacob is a childhood friend and he's a good German! Sarah has been teaching piano to our four kids for over 10 years!
Here's why: the nazis argued they were indeed good people but that was an accident and since *higher psychological characteristics* like character or moral principles were defined bioologically (how race was understood at the time and is still understood today) the only way to keep the aryan race clean was to kill all of them. After WWII the UN declared the concept of race invalid using anthropological or sociological concepts.
Then came DNA and molecular biology and now a hard science, Molecular Biology, has stated: among humans, there's only one race making, btw, the concept invalid and unecessary. (See en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jena_Declaration# )
The concept of race is like a virus that we do our best to make it go extinct. Central to the concept is biological determism of higher personality charachteristics and that is what makes teacher of small children to quickly give up teaching the ones that have some peculiar appearance.
My compliments to your video!
Observations about your video: it's complicated to criticize people before Darwin's work because of their views about people's looks. It's more productive to use the examples to learn the genealogy of the idea. For instance: 18th century anthropology is completely different from 20th century - and current - anthropology. Also, the meaning a word had in the 18th century is not the same it has today.
Race was invented by John Race to sell more shades of band-aid
One interesting point about "Casta Painting" is that it shows class more often than skin color. The tableau of people and clothing is a remainder that "Peninsulares" were always on top.
We live in a society
How cliché...
TRUE
Not so fun fact: sterilization of women of color continued even after eugenics fell out of favor. Tubal ligations were given to women under false pretenses or via coercion. In the 70s there was a 6 year period where up to 25% of indigenous women of childbearing age were sterilized. Forced sterilization was banned in hospitals in 1979, and it wasn’t banned in state prisons until 2010.
Unfortunately this is an ongoing problem. Migrant women have been sterilized in ICE detention centers as recently as 2020. Eugenics never went away, as much as I wish it had.
This is a whole rabbit hole I went down a little while ago. It’s incredibly upsetting.
They’re STILL sterilizing people??? WTF
Mississippi Appendectomies
Thank you for bravely taking on this subject with a scholarly eye. We need more public discourse like this.
Interesting! To be honest race is . pretty much just a social construct! Being white for example is kinda like a privileged status depending on how it’s used and by who. Very interestingly many groups of people here in North America who today would be considered white (such as Irish, Italian, etc.) we’re not when they first immigrated many years ago! Nowadays in the 20th and 21st centuries, we have all these other immigrants from Latin America, Middle East, Asia, and Africa who are considered to be . People of color. And apperently according to some white nationalists who are against immigrants for some reason something seems so great about the white race that they are scared it’ll be ruined by them lol!
2 minutes in and I already know this is going to be an amazing video. Black Americans have been making these same points for decades to no avail, so it's good to hear someone else say this stuff for a change. Maybe folks will actually listen this time instead of dismiss it.
There's a bit more to army IQ tests than is presented here. My father was studying sociology at Columbia when Pearl Harbor happened. He immediately joined the military and, after a tortuous route through various assignments, ended up administering intelligence tests to recruits. That experience confirmed for him the social basis of intelligence differences for the simple reason that northern Black people didn't perform as well as northern white people on the tests but performed better than southern whites. It was clear to him that what mattered was where and how recruits had been raised, not their race.
“There is only one race, human race. Color is just skin color.” I would add genetic is the third factor.
I mean, we're less than 0.01% genetically different from one another
I just noticed the reference to Ari Kelman ('Vanishing Indian'). He was my mentor at UC Davis in grad school. Great academic!
I've been watching you since 20k, so glad you've grown so much and make hitters every time!
To simplify it I always said humans are like dogs and cats. Where instead of different breeds we have different ethnic groups. In the same way that a chihuahua and doberman look entirely different on the outside but are the same on the inside
I read The Bell Curve in college, (which they just had on the shelves in the main library of the college I went to 🙄) for a report in a psychology class, when I was, like, a Republican, and even then I was shocked at how racist it was
Is it really such a bad thing for a college to have books with opposing opinions in it? If you hadn’t read that book you wouldn’t know why its so bad. And if it was banned in all colleges and libraries it would be understudied and not properly disected so that its shortcomings don’t result in something horrible down the road like massacres and genocide.
@@RC--ji2ov well, the point is that *it's not like it was banned* I guess 🤷🏻
Yeah I’m socked by how mask off that book is. Like they don’t straight up say “we should bring back Jim Crow” but they put up a bunch of bad statistics that suggest that race and IQ “may be connected idk man look at the numbers” before crediting a hundred Nazis and pointing the readers toward their work. Like if they were trying to get a regular person like you to fall for their bullshit they didn’t do a very good job at all
@@joeyrufo what?
The bell curve is truth
The Spanish Inquisition is involved, I wonder which joke CH will use, Monty Python or Mel Brooks?
CH: Por que no los dos?
Mr Beat sent me here and it was a great recommendation😁👍
Cypher, don't you lock up King Richard in another room while you do your videos? I could NEVER get anything done with such a cute kitty nearby!
I am at his mercy
No lock nor door could hold back the Great King Richard!
@@ElvesflameWe shall rally the Bannermen! Our Liegelord shall be free!
This is indeed very difficult, especially among those ethic groups of which their historical experiences were substantially determined through their 'race'. However, it is necessary to expound on this and must be necessary to acknowledge. I've independently dropped the word 'race', and my goodness it is difficult.
How much of racism’s beginnings was influenced by old roman and greek xenophobia/nationalism? I know that the romans didn’t believe anything that would be called scientific racism now but they certainly viewed themselves as superior. Did the renaissance breath new life into what became racism as it was during colonialism?
Genuinely asking btw.
I really like the video and your channel as a whole
Surprisingly, it often worked in the opposite direction of Roman chauvinism (nationalism is a modern concept). They despised Germans as barbarians, yet that ancient ethnicity became the foundation of whiteness by the late-18th century
@@CynicalHistorianthank you for the reply! I know nationalism is a modern concept, I just didn’t know what else to call it. (Probably should have said so in my initial comment.) I thought chauvinism was a synonym for sexism, and had no other meaning my bad. How did roman chauvinism work exactly?
Ronan chauvinism isn't a topic that a modern Americanist, llike myself, can adequately explain
Thank you for this video. I've recently lost a few friends to Sam Harris and the Bell Curve guy's push for race realism and their explanation for differences in racial outcomes (i.e. educational attainment and wealth) in the United States as being caused by race and IQ. It's impossible to "move beyond race" if most people in power quietly believe that achievement is a function of "bad genes" and not racist social policy.
It's important to have books like _Bell Curve_ available, no matter how racist they are. My university's library has _The Turner Diaries_ available, despite it's unambiguous call for genocide. What would be concerning is if they had placed it in the psychology section. It definitely doesn't belong there
@@CynicalHistorianIs there a non-racist book on the subject you recommend?
Are there any positions that you would accept other than differentiated outcomes are due to racist social policy?
@@KatanamasterV no! Especially not if all the evidence points to its being a result of racist policies, which always happens to be the case! Imagine that! 🤷
@@joeyrufo What is one type or example of evidence that you would accept as fairly disputing your position?
Thank you for such an extensively detailed and well thought out video. This is a very important video.
that was literally the most interesting ad i've ever seen on youtube
Why is it that people cringe when I say this? This isn't the same as "I don't see race"...
Probably one of the best and important videos you've ever made! I was just teaching my middle schoolers about Antisemitism and how the Reconquista and Inquisition led to this idea of race
25:16 So basically, Blumenbach named the "master race" after his favourite porn category?
Germans being seen as a different race with dark skin who were going to 'replace' the Anglos is some of the funniest shit
Well done dude. I’m reviewing your videos on my channel if it’s cool with you. Believe it or not some within my own group would find this coming from you more credible than the same info coming from me. Did you ever realize that possibility? We are affected by the idea of race beyond any rational understanding. Well done man. Appreciate you.
Race being born of some spanish christians being big mad about jews and making shit up is both surprising yet makes so much sense.
Thank you for this video. It is a breath of fresh air in a world filled with pollution.
I would like to add something to the conversation. There are lots of examples of “race” being a social construct but one is early Europeans. When our species, the Homo Sapien Sapiens left Africa and entered Europe tens of thousands of years ago, the first Sapiens in Europe would in today’s society be considered “black”. It wasn’t until after the commencement of the Holocene Epoch did lighter skin tone and thinner straighter hair develop in Eurasia, but it wasn’t all at once. Even just 6,000ish years ago, late Stone Age Europe would, by today’s standards, be considered very diverse. People living in the same region would have light skin and straight hair and dark skin and coursed hair. And yet, these early Europeans hunted, farmed, and lived together despite the fact they would be considered different “races” under today’s standards. (One more interesting fact, blue eyes developed in Europeans before light skin and straight hair, again really just shows how superficial our differences are). Not only that, there are people who look like they are part of a certain “race” but in reality are genetically part of another “race”. An example being indigenous peoples of Andaman Islands, on the surface look like they would be considered “Black” but are actually genetically closer to East Asians, so much so that indigenous Andamese peoples are just as closely related to say Japanese people as Japanese people are related to Koreans or Italians with Russians.
I just thought I would share this to show how much really “race” is made up from a scientific perspective. Just sad how pseudoanthropologists did all of this just to make it so they were placed at the top of the non-existent hierarchy for political gain.
I really appreciate this video, very needed as even now bigots still push this nonsense.
I heard once that the real pure white people came from Atlantis or something like that.
@@rasheed7934 I assume you are joking?
@@PremierCCGuyMMXVI No, I actually heard some white dude talking about that on a college campus. Wayne State University to be precise.
@@rasheed7934 seriously? That’s both funny and unfortunate at the same time
Love the video so far, with a very thorough debunking of nonsense that is unfortunately still prevalent today, but small nitpick: there are numerous errors with dates for various people cited in the video (Aristotle, Wilson and others).
I actually like the Latino example of rationalization. Took a whole class on this in my anthro undergrad. like most people identifying as Latino here would be considered white in Brazil or Mexico. America is weird.
I will say the caricatures of a Marxist and a racist were pretty lame tho. I'm a staunch Marxist and I have never heard a Marxist say anything like that. Maybe on the internet
Great work. I'd like to see you introduce Robert Malthus, and his "interesting" ideas about scarcity, and moral justification for euthenasia.
The point you make in clip 13:17 is very interesting in that the term Black/Negro/Necro
is more related to religion than science. Everything else you are saying I have been saying
for years. Thanx for producing the video.
Boy, some wild comments. Very well done and researched as usual. We all have a lot of this junk stuck in our minds regardless of the commonality of us all. I still mostly always describe myself as Caucasian because I was brought up to think that way, but now have to respond as white, both equally ludicrous because the government seems to want these statistics and I (dumbly) keep responding. I have a wife from Taiwan, who may be described as Chinese but prefers the Island name (formerly as I grew up Formosa - Formosian?). I have never had so many steaming pending circles as tonight, in fact I have fast internet and seldom get any, but sometimes comcast seems to priortize things wierd so it might be them. Just wierd. Also interesting, may be demonetized yet many ads including ... 'we have to stop this woke revolution and just say no' from Hillsdale college (me laughing).
Cypher this was a great video as always! Could you do a full video on Helen Keller. Gen Z thinks she’s a myth and it’s so upsetting 🤦♀️
Very well put together, the concept of race was solely created to justify social and economic hierarchies, particularly during periods of colonization and slavery. It served as a tool for categorizing and differentiating people based on physical characteristics, reinforcing power dynamics and discrimination. Anyone who disputes this perpetuate stereotypes, fuel prejudice, and contribute to social divisions, hindering efforts to build an inclusive and equitable society.
Are the books pictured in the video the best books for a beginner? I'd like one or two. Any recommendations of where to start would be appreciated!
My bibliography is in the description. Plenty there to dig into. My favorite is _the myth of race_
@@CynicalHistorian Thank you!
Great video!! Thank you for this. I learned a lot of this in an anthropology class in undergrad but i still learned new things from this video. Appreciate it so much!
Just in case you don’t get money for those video.
Just last week I was talking with a friend about this topic. And wondered what a race actually is. I knew humans are all the same species. Part of the confusion was, I realize now, that in our language breed (of animals) and race are covered by the same word. So there are several cat races, like Siamese and Persian cats. That’s where the confusion started, I suppose.
So your video is most welcome.
Thank you very much
Great video - and very enlightening.
Just discovered your channel. Thank you fro presenting a balanced and nuanced view of history without leaving out the inconvenient bits.
I admire your explanation of the perversion of the theories of genetics and speciation by eugenics. This is a difficult, sad story for you as a historian and me as a molecular biologist. The study of genetic haplotypes will never supplant the social construct of race but, maybe, with time and education the concept will evolve a less virulent form.
Feels very relevant today with some of the media coverage of recent events including rhetoric that de-humanises whole groups of people.
Ha. I didn't know I was in this video. Great!
Thank you! this video was incredibly helpful in my research project for finding sources to read!!!
Very happy to have found your channel :)
I completely disagree with you. I would say it’s a “lie,” rather than a “myth.”
¿Porque no los dos?
It would be nice if you can explore lesser known, African cultures and their history. I've enjoyed all your American history, and would love to use your videos, as reference point in the future.
I'd be interested in one on the development and spread of iron metallurgy in sub-Saharan Africa.
This is important information, and I appreciate that you make it fun. I hope you get many k more views.
Awesome video, explaining this topic to a friend and hopefully this video can get to him. ( hes been radicalized) and believes whites are the real oppressed (he’s nicaraguan and his father was forced to leave as the civil war was raging that was supported by the cia.
D'oh boy! Time to click newest first and see people say this video is false because aFrIcA diDn'T hAvE kIndGoms!1!
*_Spaniards have left the chat_*
I guess one could argue that the most minimalistic definition of race (African/"Caucasian"/Asian) does, to some degree, reflect the early history of human expansion around the globe, albeit in a highly simplified way. However, it's basically useless for describing modern human diversity and distribution. Also, racial classification isn't monophyletic, which is a big no-no in modern biology. So even without all the historical baggage and common misconceptions, of which there are a lot, we have every reason to move away from the term "race" in favour of more precise definitions, like ethnicity and population.
man, wish i could find you and tigerstar streaming Don't Be a Sucker, love that movie, would love to see you two talk about it in more depth, can't find the VOD
Great video.
I, of course, am quickly reminded of the recent “pollutes the blood of our country” comments that are picking up steam.
Also, “don’t be a sucker” was a fantastic propaganda short.
You should get a “Suck it Wilson” shirt from Vlogging Through History.
For being demonized this is getting a lot of ads
A very important video!
And a good one.
Aloha 😊🤙🏼👏🏼
Loved this one! Just the right amount of silliness mixed in with the tragedy
thx. It's always a weird balance trying throw a bit of humor in with such serious topics - but I believe it helps people pay attention and learn something. When I lecture, I try to get students laugh at least once a session
I can identify your race within 15 seconds of viewing the video: Common Garden Gnome, originating out of Azeroth
I appreciate your style & content
Hey Cyph, when you brushed off the label pseudoscience for phernology and scientific racism, that is very much in line with the late philosopher of science Paul Feyerabend's project, as he saw the use of differentiating science from non-science to be not so useful most of the time.
I personally just say I'm white because I have a white European last name and I look white, but I have ethnicly diverse parents however it's to hard to explain and most people just say that I'm trying to be diverse. Like my mom is a mix of five different ethnic groups and one of them is from a countrie that no longer exist and the other four are so random that I only consider two of them my actual heritage. My dad is three ethnicities so culturally different that I don't even consider identifying with them because I know that me being a white guy means some people will mad that I am celebrating my heritage that I don't look like. It's why I say racism is the most inclusive thing ever because no matter who you are you can be racist.
Someone told me that because race is phenotypic you don’t decide ur own race you are the race that the world perceives you as. In my case i’m girl who came from two black africans but has lighter skin than the stereotypical black person enough to make the world believe i have one non-black parent. Race is a social construct and it does make identification for racially ambiguous people like us hard to identify ourselves but it’s not the only measure of identity there is 😅
@sashhhaa4874 I love this response and this is exactly how I feel. I've had people ask me what what my ethnic background is and it's always a weird experience because I answer primarily white because it's easier than saying white and Hispanic / Latino without being glared at.
@@sashhhaa4874 I have one Black parent and one White parent. From a DNA test I know I’m 55% European (mostly Irish, 10% Russian, a little Norwegian and Western European), 44% Black African (split pretty evenly between West Africa proper and West Central Bantu/Congolese) and 1% North African. People looking at me assume I’m North African or similar and clerks have put down “White” on forms for my race without a second thought.
Brilliant, as ever
Absolute banger of a video. Good shit, man.
Knew that title alone would spark a wave of ire amongst racists