Let's Make Some People Uncomfortable
Dec. 28th, 2023 07:29 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eyelessgameI was thinking, some, about "judging the past by the standards of the present."
So. Um. Fellow antiracist rational people. Let's get a little uncomfortable, before going into how we should judge, say, "liberal by 19th century standards" people. Hopefully my little blog here will not trigger problems based on words I'm going to use, because the context is important.
We've found paleontological records of what are clearly not-quite Homo sapiens sapiens from the very recent past. I don't propose to discuss specific finds, but we can certainly agree there were entities, not all that long ago, who were genetically distinct from anyone we today consider human, and by their remains we conclude these beings had more limited cognition capabilities than modern humans. And by "not long ago" I mean in the tens of thousands of years - when genetically modern humans had already been around for a long time.
So let's be disquieted for just a minute. Consider that this means, had certain unknown paleontologically-recent events played out differently, we could have been living in a world today where the racists were right. Racists who believe in, or profess to believe in, real differences in human capability and cognition based on ancestry are demonstrably wrong, today, but consider that had such protohuman entities not vanished when they did, there would be a racist view that would be correct - there really would be "inferior races" living today, genetically incapable of, say, understanding multiplication, or writing a five-paragraph essay.
How would society treat such beings? If they were, say, able to talk and learn language, and basically looked like us, but demonstrably unable to perform as a responsible adult in society?
Moreover, how would their existence impact the acceptance (which parts of our society obviously still struggle to accept) that all ancestral branches of Homo sapiens sapiens are genetically equivalent, cognitively? Would it have been easier, or even harder, to abandon the prejudices that led to the assumption that people from one continent and one hue of skin were different than ("inferior to") those from another?
That's only one part of the disquiet. Prepare to be more uncomfortable.
A species or subspecies can die out for any number of reasons, with any number of contributing factors, but outcompetition by a better-adapted similar variant is very often among them. Which means we're quite likely spared that moral dilemma of how to deal with near-human but non-human cousins, in part, because of the ruthless genocidal decisions of our own ancestors.
We're all ultimately genocidal colonizers, aren't we.
But I get even more uncomfortable when I think about the history of the evolving understanding that the racists were wrong, and about judging the past by the present's standards.
What is it that society ought to expect of an educated, literate, non-expert in a given field? (And thus, how should we reasonably judge such a person in retrospect?)
We expect in general that this non-expert person would respect the opinions of experts, and defer to their expertise. If the experts happen to be wrong, but not demonstrably so in a way that an ordinary person can easily experience, it is not reasonable to expect non-experts would transcend the understanding that experts in the field provide.
(Note how big a problem it is that we as a society don't do this today. Think about how much trouble we get into because so many people reject the information provided by experts.)
Now consider educated American or European persons of the 19th century. They are not experts on the science of "race". The expectation would be that they would accept and follow what the scientists tell them.
Science is always imperfect, always evolving, always pursued by individuals with varying perceptions, varying agendas, and so on. But there's no question that the science of the 19th century held the consensus that there were real "racial" differences among humans, determinable by superficial physical appearance (phrenology, anyone?) or knowledge of continental ancestry. The science of the time said, in short, that black people were an inferior race.
That science was, of course, wrong - but better conclusions had to await more understanding of human cognition, more understanding of genetics, more willingness to discard invalid or presumptive data, more ability to shake science free from convenient falsehoods. So during the long period when "essential racial differences" was the published scientific consensus, what expectation should we reasonably have had for the educated non-scientist? What is a reasonable standard to apply for what conclusions that person, living in that time, should have made?
Ah, you say, but there were people who transcended that understanding, and rejected the scientific consensus, and they were, we now understand, reaching the correct conclusion. So why should our judgment spare those who held racist views, since not everyone did?
Yes, there were people who rejected what the experts of the time said. But if, like me, you're something of a skeptic or rationalist, I have just a bit more discomfort to share.
Almost without exception, the objection to the "scientific consensus of the 19th century" on race was a religious exception: the conclusion that there was a fundamental division between man and beast, that every soul was redeemable and saveable, and that human dignity was bestowed by God and should be extended to all who could hear and understand scripture and accept saving grace (one might vary that wording a bit, depending on from which sixteenth century sect their beliefs proceeded.) It was religions, not scientists, who were calling for abolition, civil rights, and so on.
The science didn't get it right until later. A person who was convinced, before science caught up, of the equal worth and equal capability of all humans, was likely convinced by religious argument. The science of the time gave them no support.
Anyway. All this is just to exorcise some discomfort, shaking it loose, letting it go. But sometimes it bugs me just how much rhetorical discarding we do of past people because their experience and writing incorporated the conclusions of past people.
So. Um. Fellow antiracist rational people. Let's get a little uncomfortable, before going into how we should judge, say, "liberal by 19th century standards" people. Hopefully my little blog here will not trigger problems based on words I'm going to use, because the context is important.
We've found paleontological records of what are clearly not-quite Homo sapiens sapiens from the very recent past. I don't propose to discuss specific finds, but we can certainly agree there were entities, not all that long ago, who were genetically distinct from anyone we today consider human, and by their remains we conclude these beings had more limited cognition capabilities than modern humans. And by "not long ago" I mean in the tens of thousands of years - when genetically modern humans had already been around for a long time.
So let's be disquieted for just a minute. Consider that this means, had certain unknown paleontologically-recent events played out differently, we could have been living in a world today where the racists were right. Racists who believe in, or profess to believe in, real differences in human capability and cognition based on ancestry are demonstrably wrong, today, but consider that had such protohuman entities not vanished when they did, there would be a racist view that would be correct - there really would be "inferior races" living today, genetically incapable of, say, understanding multiplication, or writing a five-paragraph essay.
How would society treat such beings? If they were, say, able to talk and learn language, and basically looked like us, but demonstrably unable to perform as a responsible adult in society?
Moreover, how would their existence impact the acceptance (which parts of our society obviously still struggle to accept) that all ancestral branches of Homo sapiens sapiens are genetically equivalent, cognitively? Would it have been easier, or even harder, to abandon the prejudices that led to the assumption that people from one continent and one hue of skin were different than ("inferior to") those from another?
That's only one part of the disquiet. Prepare to be more uncomfortable.
A species or subspecies can die out for any number of reasons, with any number of contributing factors, but outcompetition by a better-adapted similar variant is very often among them. Which means we're quite likely spared that moral dilemma of how to deal with near-human but non-human cousins, in part, because of the ruthless genocidal decisions of our own ancestors.
We're all ultimately genocidal colonizers, aren't we.
But I get even more uncomfortable when I think about the history of the evolving understanding that the racists were wrong, and about judging the past by the present's standards.
What is it that society ought to expect of an educated, literate, non-expert in a given field? (And thus, how should we reasonably judge such a person in retrospect?)
We expect in general that this non-expert person would respect the opinions of experts, and defer to their expertise. If the experts happen to be wrong, but not demonstrably so in a way that an ordinary person can easily experience, it is not reasonable to expect non-experts would transcend the understanding that experts in the field provide.
(Note how big a problem it is that we as a society don't do this today. Think about how much trouble we get into because so many people reject the information provided by experts.)
Now consider educated American or European persons of the 19th century. They are not experts on the science of "race". The expectation would be that they would accept and follow what the scientists tell them.
Science is always imperfect, always evolving, always pursued by individuals with varying perceptions, varying agendas, and so on. But there's no question that the science of the 19th century held the consensus that there were real "racial" differences among humans, determinable by superficial physical appearance (phrenology, anyone?) or knowledge of continental ancestry. The science of the time said, in short, that black people were an inferior race.
That science was, of course, wrong - but better conclusions had to await more understanding of human cognition, more understanding of genetics, more willingness to discard invalid or presumptive data, more ability to shake science free from convenient falsehoods. So during the long period when "essential racial differences" was the published scientific consensus, what expectation should we reasonably have had for the educated non-scientist? What is a reasonable standard to apply for what conclusions that person, living in that time, should have made?
Ah, you say, but there were people who transcended that understanding, and rejected the scientific consensus, and they were, we now understand, reaching the correct conclusion. So why should our judgment spare those who held racist views, since not everyone did?
Yes, there were people who rejected what the experts of the time said. But if, like me, you're something of a skeptic or rationalist, I have just a bit more discomfort to share.
Almost without exception, the objection to the "scientific consensus of the 19th century" on race was a religious exception: the conclusion that there was a fundamental division between man and beast, that every soul was redeemable and saveable, and that human dignity was bestowed by God and should be extended to all who could hear and understand scripture and accept saving grace (one might vary that wording a bit, depending on from which sixteenth century sect their beliefs proceeded.) It was religions, not scientists, who were calling for abolition, civil rights, and so on.
The science didn't get it right until later. A person who was convinced, before science caught up, of the equal worth and equal capability of all humans, was likely convinced by religious argument. The science of the time gave them no support.
Anyway. All this is just to exorcise some discomfort, shaking it loose, letting it go. But sometimes it bugs me just how much rhetorical discarding we do of past people because their experience and writing incorporated the conclusions of past people.
no subject
Date: 2023-12-28 05:58 pm (UTC)