The first article, "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack", as well as our second article this week, "Theories of Gender and Race" really have opened my eyes up to many things. Firstly, reading through the list of privileges that was provided by Peggy McIntosh I began to understand the ways in which I enjoy unearned skin privilege, which is something that I always just overlooked. This first article make an interesting point in stating that, "white are taught to think of their lives as morally, neutral, normative, and average, ad also ideal, so that when we work to benefit other, this is seen as work which will allow "them" to be more like "us". After reading that statement I began to think about its validity. I think of myself as "normal", but I don't think of myself as "normal" because of the color of my skin and still I have defining exactly what "normal" means, which is something I feel that we are continually trying to accomplish in the classroom. Also, this statement makes me think about so many events that have occurred in the history of human nature, where other races have been persecuted to make them more "white", or "normal" as this argument says. I do not believe that the color of ones skin makes them "normal". The second aspect of the quote states that white people work to benefit others, which means to make them more like us, "white people". I do believe that many people think that their situation may be better, but I do not believe that skin color makes anyone better than anyone else. Why then would I always feel scared or just unsure of myself when I volunteer in a soup kitchen in downtown Philadelphia? I would always be one of the few white people in the building, but thinking about it now, I was never timid because of the race of the people I was serving, but rather because of the whole situation I was in. On a lesser note, the quarterback of the Philadelphia Eagles is Donovan McNabb. I was recently watching an interview of him on sports center where he was saying that he is criticized harsher than other quarterback because of this race. Again, I just don't get what race has to do with physical ability on a sports field? Why can't elements of race and other aspects of life just remain separate? I think by reading the second article I developed a greater understanding about the fixation that many people have about race and the need that they have to prove superiority over another race to better they. The levels that they have stooped to over the centuries still amaze me.
The second article, "Theories of Gender and Race", by Londa Schiebinger first begins by discussing differences between genders prior to her theories on race. She states that scientific communities regarded women, and non-European men as deviations from the European male norm. This statement refers back to the idea of white privilege, which in many instances should be better defined as white male privilege. One way of dividing up race and gender was the great chain being and the question of women's position on the chain was never actually made clear. White males of course were placed at the top of the chain. How then were the positions decided? This is where anthropology came into play, and scientists devoted their studies to examining the relationships between apes, Africans, and Europeans. Within in these studies performed, females were rarely if at all used unless they were just studying a specific aspect of females. Scientists went to far as measure the degree angles of skulls to determine that Africans must have evolved by whites pro-creating with apes. Such a statement is absolutely absurd. Also, when women were compared, they were not compared based on bone structure, or anything involving the skull or cranium, which was used in male research to demonstrate intelligence, but rather women were studied by how red their lips were or by the shapes of their pelvises. Neither of which relate to any level of intelligence because their intelligence was simply not recognized. Such ideas of measuring skulls or pelvises or the color of lips to establish a location on the greater chain of being just seems ridiculous to me. I just don't get why it all so important? Why does the male body remain the touchstone of human anatomy? Why is it so important to understand the differences between races, because after all we are all one race of human?
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In order to understand why all the research on skulls and pelvises was so important you need to view it from the stand point of the anthropologists. The Enlightenment as Londa Schiebinger points out centered on the idea that all men are naturally created equally. However, since the word “man” had an ambiguous definition, the idea of equality was seen by groups that had very few rights or had been suppressed, such as women and non-European men, to also apply to them. Of course, though, elite European men considered equality to apply only to them. To justify their case they needed proof that not everyone was created equal. So anthropologists used science to prove that there were natural differences between races and sexes, and from which they could conclude that women and non-European men did not deserve the same natural rights. By coming up with the great chain of being and supporting it with data such as measurements of the male skulls of different races, anthropologists were able to justify social inequalities by proving there were differences in intelligence.
Though to us the idea that measurements of a skull can determine intelligence is absurd, back then it was credible. Why? As we have agreed in class, science is perceived to be a respectable and an objective method for gathering and interpreting data, so not many people tend to question it. But as we now know, how a scientist interprets results can be influenced by society and personal prejudices. The anthropologists of the Enlightenment were influenced by the idea of their being a hierarchy and they made their data fit to that idea. The horribly designed methods of collecting data and interpreting it were accepted during the Enlightenment and for over 200 years because that is what people wanted to believe even though the evidence was completely ridiculous.
To answer your second question, Schiebinger ends her article saying that that in the eighteenth-century Europe, the male body continued to be used as the basis for human anatomy. I don’t think this is the case presently or at least I hope not.
I’m not sure why it is so important for us to understand differences between races when race is only a social construct. It seems race is based on variations of physical appearance and at one time some people believed there was no scientific basis for race. However according to the article “Is There a Genetic Basis to Race After All?” recent research has shown that while races have the same genes, they may have different levels of expression. http://discovermagazine.com/2007/may/is-there-a-genetic-basis-to-race-after-all. Scientists are hoping to uncover why some ethnic populations suffer more from a certain genetic disease than other populations. So I guess in this way it is important to find out differences, but from a social stand point I would agree that we should consider ourselves as just part of the human race.
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