280 CHAPTER 12 | Modern Human Diversity: Race and Racism
a Jewish scientist who immigrated to the United States be-
cause of rising anti-Semitism in his German homeland and
who became a founder of North America’s four-field an-
thropology. As president of the American Association for
the Advancement of Science, Boas criticized false claims
of racial superiority in an important speech titled “Race
and Progress,” published in the prestigious journal Science
in 1909. Boas’s scholarship in both cultural and biological
anthropology contributed to the depth of his critique.
Ashley Montagu (1905–1999), a student of Boas and
one of the best-known anthropologists of his time, de-
voted much of his career to combating scientific racism.
Born Israel Ehrenberg to a working-class Jewish family
in England, he also felt the sting of anti-Semitism. After
changing his name in the 1920s, he immigrated to the
United States, where he went on to fight racism in his
writing and in academic and public lectures. Of all his
works, none is more important than his book Man’s Most
Dangerous Myth: The Fallacy of Race. Published in 1942, it
debunked the concept of clearly bounded races as a “social
myth.” The book has since gone through many editions,
the last in 2008. Montagu’s once controversial ideas have
now become mainstream, and his text remains one of the
most comprehensive treatments of its subject. (For a con-
temporary approach to human biological variation, see
this chapter’s Anthropologist of Note.)
Generalized references to human types such as “Asiatic”
or “Mongoloid,” “European” or “Caucasoid,” and “African”his supposedly cannibal nature. After intensive protest,
zoo officials released Ota from his cage and during the day
let him roam free in the park, where he was often harassed
by teasing visitors. Ota (usually referred to as a “boy”) was
then turned over to an orphanage for African American
children. In 1916, upon hearing that he would never re-
turn to his homeland, he took a revolver and shot himself
through the heart.^2
The racist display at the Bronx Zoo a century ago was
by no means unique. Just the tip of the ethnocentric ice-
berg, it was the manifestation of a powerful ideology in
which one small part of humanity sought to demonstrate
and justify its claims of biological and cultural superiority.
This had particular resonance in North America, where
people of European descent colonized lands originally in-
habited by Native Americans and then went on to exploit
African slaves and Asians imported as a source of cheap
labor. Indeed, such claims, based on false notions of race,
have resulted in the oppression and genocide of millions
of humans because of the color of their skin or the shape
of their skull.
Fortunately, by the early 20th century, some schol-
ars began to challenge the concept of racial hierarchies.
Among the strongest critics was Franz Boas (1858–1942),
Anthropologist of NoteFatimah Jackson
While at first glance Fatimah
Jackson’s research areas seem
quite diverse, they are unified by
consistent representation of African
American perspectives in biological
anthropological research.
With a keen awareness of how
culture determines the content of
scientific questions, Jackson chooses
hers carefully. One of her earliest ar-
eas of research concerned the use of
common African plants as foods and
medicines. She has examined the
co-evolution of plants and humans
and the ways plant compounds serve
to attract and repel humans at various
stages of ripeness. Through laboratory
and field research, she has documented
that cassava, a New World root crop
providing the major source of dietary
energy for over 500 million people, also
guards against malaria. This crop has
become a major food throughout Africa
in areas where malaria is common.Jackson, who received her PhD from
Cornell in 1981, is also the genetics
group leader for the African Burial Ground
Project (mentioned in Chapter 1). In a
small area uncovered during a New York
City construction project, scientists found
the remains of thousands of Africans
and people of African descent. Jacksonis recovering DNA from skeletal remains
and attempting to match the dead with
specific regions of Africa through the
analysis of genetic markers in living Afri-
can people.
Jackson, one of the early advocates
for appropriate ethical treatment of
minorities in the human genome proj-
ect, is concerned with ensuring that
the genetic work for the African Burial
Ground Project is conducted with
sensitivity to African people. She is
therefore working to establish genetic
laboratories and repositories in Africa.
For Jackson, these laboratories are
symbolic of the fact of human com-
monality and that all humans today
have roots in Africa. As Director of the
Institute of African American Research
at the University of North Carolina,
Chapel Hill, Jackson continues with
her own research while connecting
and advancing scholars from diverse
academic disciplines.© Courtesy of Robert T. Jackson(^2) Bradford, P. V., & Blume, H. (1992). Ota Benga: The Pygmy in the zoo.
New York: St. Martin’s.