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This philosophy explains the logic used by the South to justify establishing the Confederacy.
     When the Confederate States of America was formed in 1861 to succeed from the Union to protect its right to own slaves, Alexander H. Stephens, Vice-President of the Confederacy declared: “The Confederacy's foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests upon the great truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and moral condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.”

On May 25, 1911, Laura and L.D. Nelson were lynched near Okemah, Okfuskee County, Oklahoma. District Judge Caruthers convened a grand jury in June 1911 to investigate the lynching. In his instructions to the jury, he said:
     The people of the state have said by recently adopted constitutional provision that the race to which the unfortunate victims belonged should in large measure be divorced from participation in our political contests, because of their known racial inferiority and their dependent credulity, which very characteristic made them the mere tool of the designing and cunning. It is well known that I heartily concur in this constitutional provision of the people's will. The more then, does the duty devolve upon us of a superior race and of greater intelligence, to protect this weaker race from unjustifiable and lawless attacks. [Note: No one was ever charged with the murders.]

"Science" to justify racial discrimination
Beginning around the end of the eighteenth century, as Enlightenment rationalism replaced faith and superstition as the source of authority, the pronouncements of science became the preferred method for reconciling the difference between principle and practice. In societies in which there has been systematic discrimination against specific racial groups, inevitably it has been accompanied by attempts to justify such policies on scientific grounds. Broadly speaking, there have been three types of scientific explanations offered in putative support for racial discrimination, each of them having a lengthy history.

(1) One approach has been to claim that there are biological dangers involved in racial interbreeding.The first supposed evidence for this conclusion was provided in the mid-nineteenth century primarily by physicians, who claimed that, as a result of their mixed blood, "mulattoes" were considerably more susceptible to disease than either of their parents and thus exceptionally short-lived. In addition, were persons of mixed race to intermarry, according to leading anthropologists at the time, they became progressively less fertile, eventually becoming completely sterile.

(2) In the early twentieth century, shortly after the scientific community's discovery of Gregor Mendel's work led to a new, exciting branch of biology, geneticists warned that the intermarriage of "far apart" races could produce what they called genetic "disharmonies". Charles Benedict Davenport, a world renowned researcher at the time, observed, for example, that if a member of a tall race, such as the Scots, should mate with a member of a small race, such as the Southern Italians, their offspring could inherit the genes for large internal organs from one parent and for small stature from the other, resulting in viscera that would be too large for the frame.

(3) Finally, the most common way in which science has been used to support racial discrimination is through pronouncements that some groups are systematically less well endowed than others in important cognitive or behavioural traits.

At present, the most well known researcher to emphasize the importance of racial differences is Canadian psychologist J. Philippe Rushton who asserted that the behaviour of blacks, whether in Africa or the diaspora, reflected what he called a "basic law of evolution", in which reproductive strategy was linked to intellectual development, such that the more advanced the latter, the fewer the number of offspring and the greater the investment of time and effort in the care of each of them. Thus, he declared, in comparison to Caucasians and Asians, blacks tended to be more sexually active and aggressive, while less intelligent and less capable of self-control, complex social organization and family stability.

Studies of Dr. Samuel A. Cartwright
In 1849, in doing a study of diseases unique to Black people, claimed they were very different physiologically from white people, possessing smaller brains, more sensitive skin, and overdeveloped nervous systems. These unique traits, he claimed, gave Black people an especially high propensity for servitude. Citing "scientific" evidence and scripture, Dr. Cartwright argued that "the Negro is a slave by nature and can never be happy . . . in any other condition." Couched in pseudo-science and presented as medical assertions, Dr. Cartwright's report was an effort to justify and defend the institution of slavery as natural and optimal for both white enslavers and the Black people they enslaved.​

Studies of Robert Knox
In 1850, Robert Knox concluded that people of color were intellectually inferior, not be-cause of brain size but rather because of brain texture and lack of nerve endings. Later it was found that his conclusion was based on the autopsy of only one man of color.Knox’s studies and others were taken very seri-ously, which can be seen as the origins of the 20th Century Eugenics movemen

Excuses for prejudice
When outright racism is stigmatised, people may need justifications for publicly expressing anti-minority views. Using two large-scale online experiments, this column argues that people use justifications, such as the claim that immigrants cause crime, to excuse their anti-immigrant behaviour, even if they do not privately believe them. Prominent public figures such as populist politicians can thus generate waves of anti-minority behaviour by serving as suppliers of excuses.

 

 

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