Author: Shannon King

Today we discussed the New Negro Renaissance’s cultural response to cultural racism, represented by in popular culture and scientific scholarship. While scientific racism permeated different disciplines, especially anthropology, it was also made popular among the educated by Madison Grant. Here Grant, in his article “The Racial Transformation of America” published in the North American Review in 1924, discusses the consequences of the both the “negro problem” and the “immigrant problem” in the United States.  Grant, and other people involved in the eugenics movement, played a key were in shaping U.S. ideas about immigrant and especially the Immigration Act of 1924.

While these arguments about biological determinism might seem like the debates of the early 20th c., unfortunately, these kinds of discussions that employ “scientific” reasons to explain the behavior of entire groups continue to be discussed among scientists. The same kinds of claims are akin to the statistic claims of black criminality, as historian Khalil Muhammad notes, employed by some white nationalists, presently.

“FRED. DOUGLASS has issued another address to the colored men, urging them to come forward and enlist. He says:

The case stands thus: We have asked the nation for a chance to fight the rebels — to fight against Slavery, and to fight for freedom. Well, the chance is now given us. We must improve it, of sink [???]eper than ever in the pit of social and political degradation, from which we have been struggling for years to extricate ourselves. When the nationality of the United States is set in safety, in part by your hands, the whole world would cry shame upon any attempt to denationalize you.

To fight for the Government in this tremendous war is, then, to fight for nationality, and for a peace with all other classes of our fellow-citizens. I know that Congress has been pleased to say, deference to prevailing prejudice, that colored men shall not rise higher than company officers. They might as well have passed a law that black men shall not be brave; that they shall not learn to read; that they shall not shoot straight, and that they shall not grow taller than five feet nine inches and a hall. The law is even more absurd than mean. Enter the army and deserve promotion, and you will be sure to get it in the end. To say you will not go into the army until you can be a Colonel or a General, is about as wise as to say you won’t go into the water until you shall learn how to swim. When the priest told Patrick that he had prayed his father’s head and shoulders out of purgatory, and a little more money was wanted to complete the work, Paddy declined to give it, on the ground that, if his father had been so fortunate as to get his head out, he would risk his getting his whole body out. Pat’s wisdom will be good in our case. Once let colored men be made captains of companies, and demonstrate their capacity for such captaincy, and I will risk their upward progress. The great thing to be done first of all is, to get an eagle on your button and a musket on your shoulder. “It is the first step that costs.” Take it, and all will come right after that first step is well and firmly taken.”

“John Brown was a radical abolitionist who believed in the violent overthrow of the slavery system. During the Bleeding Kansas conflicts, Brown and his sons led attacks on pro-slavery residents. Justifying his actions as the will of God, Brown soon became a hero in the eyes of Northern extremists and was quick to capitalize on his growing reputation. By early 1858, he had succeeded in enlisting a small “army” of insurrectionists whose mission was to foment rebellion among the slaves. In 1859, Brown and 21 of his followers attacked and occupied the federal arsenal in Harpers Ferry. Their goal was to capture supplies and use them to arm a slave rebellion. Brown was captured during the raid and later hanged, but not before becoming an anti-slavery icon.”