MWP3 Articles 4 & 5 Summaries with Supporting Quotations

Article 4 Summary:
In his article, Sundquist examines the history and impact of race theory on modern science and how scientists and philosophers such as Darwin and Blumenbach contributed to the scientific study of race.  While Blumenbach is generally regarded as an extremely open-minded humanitarian considering the era of his work, Darwin's blatant racism and white-supremacist beliefs are revealed, and their long-reaching effects are examined in full.  Blumenbach is often regarded in an ironic light, since his open-minded and unifying theory on human races was taken and distorted to match the biased and racist studies of future generations, but in contrast, Darwin is often credited as being the forefather of race theory, leading to the rigorous search for the biological difference between races.

Supporting Quotations:
-"The skewed reasoning of Social Darwinism led to one conclusion as to how to resolve the “race problem”: eliminate the biologically inferior races from the genetic pool" (Sundquist 242).
-"While ethnologists and phrenologists were searching for scientific validation for their pre-formed views of black inferiority, Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution revolutionized biological study" (Sundquist 244).

Article 5 Summary:
In their work, Zuckerman and Armelagos re-examine the work of a L.S. Penrose, whose use of the term "mongolism" nearly botched his career, labeling him a racist.  They mention a conference held by UNESCO in 1950 that addressed the re-defining of the term 'race' in the scientific realm, where Penrose's work helped steer it in the anti-racist direction of being a cultural, historical difference, not a biological or genetic one.  However, this does not stand much in the light of his usage of Darwin's racial terminology, thus negating any positive regard for Penrose.  They also examine the studies and individuals whose thoughts and lives influenced the before and after of the 1950 decision, including Blumenbach, Darwin, and others.  They discuss how Penrose's racial use of "mongolism" may not have had much to do with the re-designation of race, but the endless search for the race gene may have not died out as much as it has if things hadn't played out the way they did.

Supporting Quotations:
-"Darwin and Wallace’s work on evolutionary theory...generated the widely accepted view that race formation was a distant and closed episode in human history, that the races were fixed categories, and that their distinguishing features were non-adaptive, neutral traits" (Zuckerman and Armelagos 15).
-"Despite increasing dissatisfaction with the old, pre-WWII racial science and recognition of the inaccuracies in the genetic rationale underlying eugenics and the craniometric and blood type data in anthropology, generating a coherent replacement for racial science and consensus on a new definition of race proved difficult for the scientific community" (Zuckerman and Armelagos 23).