A Formula for Eradicating Racism DOI: 10.1057/9781137599759.0001 Other Palgrave Pivot titles Kevin Blackburn: War, Sport and the Anzac Tradition Jackie Dickenson: Australian Women in Advertising in the Twentieth Century Russell Blackford: The Mystery of Moral Authority Othon Anastasakis, David Madden, and Elizabeth Roberts: Balkan Legacies of the Great War: The Past is Never Dead Harold D. Clarke, Peter Kellner, Marianne Stewart, Joe Twyman and Paul Whiteley: Austerity and Political Choice in Britain Garold Murray and Naomi Fujishima: Social Spaces for Language Learning: Stories from the L-café Jonas Campion and Xavier Rousseaux (editors): Policing New Risks in Modern European History Amelia Manuti and Pasquale Davide de Palma: The Social Organization: Managing Human Capital through Social Media Sarah Kember: iMedia: The Gendering of Objects, Environments and Smart Materials Piyush Tiwari (editor): The Towers of New Capital: Mega Townships in India Indranarain Ramlall: Central Bank Ratings: A New Methodology for Global Excellence Stephen Paul Miller: The New Deal as a Triumph of Social Work: Frances Perkins and the Confluence of Early Twentieth Century Social Work with Mid-Twentieth Century Politics and Government Nicholas Pamment: Community Reparation for Young Offenders: Perceptions, Policy and Practice David F. Tennant and Marlon R. Tracey: Sovereign Debt and Credit Rating Bias Jefferson Walker: King Returns to Washington: Explorations of Memory, Rhetoric, and Politics in the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Memorial Giovanni Barone Adesi and Nicola Carcano: Modern Multi-Factor Analysis of Bond Portfolios: Critical Implications for Hedging and Investing Rilka Dragneva and Kataryna Wolczuk: Ukraine between the EU and Russia: The Integra- tion Challenge Viola Fabbrini, Massimo Guidolin and Manuela Pedio: The Transmission Channels of Financial Shocks to Stock, Bond, and Asset-Backed Markets: An Empirical Analysis Timothy Wood: Detainee Abuse During Op TELIC: ‘A Few Rotten Apples’? Lars Klüver, Rasmus Øjvind Nielsen and Marie Louise Jørgensen (editors): Policy-Oriented Technology Assessment Across Europe: Expanding Capacities DOI: 10.1057/9781137599759.0001 A Formula for Eradicating Racism: Debunking White Supremacy Timothy McGettigan Professor of Sociology, Colorado State University, Pueblo, USA and Earl Smith Rubin Professor and Director, American Ethnic Studies, and Professor of Sociology, Wake Forest University, USA DOI: 10.1057/9781137599759.0001 a formula for eradicating racism Copyright © Timothy McGettigan and Earl Smith, 2016. Soffftcover reprint off thehardcover 1stedition2016 978-1-137-59974-2 All rights reserved. First published in 2016 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN® in the United States—a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fift h Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN: 978–1–137–59975–9 PDF ISBN: 978–1–349–88809–2 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available from the Library of Congress. A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library. First edition: 2016 www.palgrave.com/pivot doi: 10.1057/9781137599759 The authors dedicate this book to the billions of poor souls whose lives have been needlessly ravaged by racism DOI: 10.1057/9781137599759.0001 Contents Preface vii Acknowledgments xxi Introduction 1 1 Aesthete Apes 5 2 Nature vs. Nurture 8 3 The Farce of Race 19 4 Scientific Racism 35 5 Species vs. Race 48 6 A Remedy for Racism 60 7 Planet of the Super-Adaptable Apes 70 8 Segregated Buses and Redefined Realities 76 9 What Is Excellence? 83 Appendix 1—The Origins of Excellence Email Exchange 86 Appendix 2—The Complete Text of the American Anthropological Association’s Statement on “Race” (May 17, 1998) 97 Appendix 3—The United Nation’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights 101 Bibliography 109 Index 127 vi DOI: 10.1057/9781137599759.0001 Preface We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal . . . (Declaration of Independence, 1776) Q: How do you murder a million people? A: Convince yourself that they aren’t really people. Democracy is supposed to be a form of government that treats all humans as equals. But does democracy actually do that? When we say all men are created equal, what do we really mean? Do we truly believe that everyone is equal, or do we secretly believe that a select group of Real Men are superior to all Others? From the outset, US democracy has given lip service to the former, but has unabashedly practiced the latter. How can a democracy confer first DOI: 10.1057/9781137599759.0002 vii viii Preface class citizenship on a privileged few while withholding Constitutionally guaranteed rights from the majority of Others? The trick lies in how one defines the word, men. It’s not surprising that the notion of racial superiority emerged in the 19th century, after European nations had established colonies in much of the world and sought a theoretical justification of their dominion over others. (Wade, 2014, p. 18) In the 21st century, we assume that the phrase, “. . . all men are created equal,” is just a rustic way of saying everyone is equal. But that isn’t true. Back in the day, “all men” referred a very thin slice of humanity. Instead of promoting equality, the 18th-century definition of men established a pernicious environment of white supremacy for the US’s founding patriarchs. To begin with, men meant men. America’s founding patri- archs treated women like pieces of property that they were entitled to transfer at a whim from fathers to husbands. It would take 150 years of ferocious political struggle for women to claim their due as full-fledged US citizens. In the early days of US democracy, “all men” were members of an exclusive club. Another way of limiting access to democracy was to define men as light-skinned descendants of Europeans. Democracy in the United States has always been a bastion of white supremacy. Where people of color are mentioned in the US Constitution they are singled out for disdain. Native American savages and African slaves did not qualify as Real Men and, therefore, did not merit the privileges of US citizenship. The residue of this abhorrent prejudice has persisted into the 21st century. Take, for example, the “birther controversy” (Corsi, 2011). Birthers insist that they are not racists; however, their inability to perceive Barack Obama as the legitimate occupant of the White House stems from the longstanding racist tradition that Others have no right to claim privileges that are reserved for Real Men. So, as the white suprema- cist logic goes, if Barack Obama is a person of color, he can’t be a Real Man. Further, if Barack Obama is not a Real Man, then regardless of what his birth documents might say, he cannot legitimately serve as the US President. Even though President Obama has taken the unprecedented step of putting his birth documents on public display, many birthers still refuse to acknowledge the legitimacy of Barack Obama’s presidency. In the US, white supremacists might tolerate black guys who clean toilets, but they refuse to accept a black man as their leader. DOI: 10.1057/9781137599759.0002 Preface ix Unabashedly exclusionary democracy has a long history in the US. In 1857 the state of Oregon went so far as to ban people of color from residing in its territory: No free negro, or mulatto, not residing in this State at the time of the adop- tion of this Constitution, shall come, reside, or be within this State, or hold any real estate, or make any contracts, or maintain any suit therein; and the Legislative Assembly shall provide by penal laws, for the removal, by public officers, of all such negroes, and mulattoes, and for their effectual exclusion from the State, and for the punishment of persons who shall bring them into the state, or employ, or harbor them. (Novak, 2015) It took until 2002 for Oregonians to remove the despicable racism from their state Constitution (Moreland, 2013), yet even at that late date a staggering 29 of Oregonians voted to retain Oregon’s white supremacist ban on people of color. It hardly needs to be stated, but America’s white supremacism has routinely made life a living hell for members of any ethnic group that deviates from the Real Man archetype: white, masculine, aggressive, stoic, prosperous, English-speaking, educated, heterosexual, Protestant, and so on. It takes little more than a glance at the US’s historical immigration policies to confirm that, from its inception, the US has aggressively pursued a white supremacist agenda. Just one year after the US Constitution came into effect, the US adopted the Naturalization Act of 1790, which specified that only “free whites” could aspire to US citizenship: Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America, in Congress assembled, That any Alien being a free white person, who shall have resided within the limits and under the jurisdiction of the United States for the term of two years, may be admitted to become a citizen. (LeMay and Barkan, 1999, p. 11, emphasis added) So, right from the outset, a nation that proclaimed itself as a democracy disqualified its native inhabitants from enjoying rights of citizenship in their own territorial homeland. This Machiavellian legal maneuver empowered “the world’s greatest democracy” to commit continent-wide genocide and property theft without technically violating any of its own laws. Democracy was for Real Men. Then as now, dispossession is nine- tenths of the law. Many subsequent immigration policies have been explicitly designed to obstruct access to US citizenship for people of color (Fitzgerald and DOI: 10.1057/9781137599759.0002