So, yea, let me talk about how this story, connects to this other story of yesterday about the Penn Museum so you can see the broader picture at play here about race and racism. (cracks knuckles) https://twitter.com/billy_penn/status/1384954101293850632

Yesterday's NYT story about the Morton Cranium "polygenesis" racist crap. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/20/arts/design/museums-bones-smithsonian.html

So, These two stories are connected by a horrible history about anthropology, race, and Religion.. but I'm telling you the religion and humanism part. To sum it up- You can treat the bones of black people like this because you don't have to consider them as human.

Yes, I know, there are all kinds of bones in the museum where I work at Penn, but the cranium collection of Morton's specifically interests me because of his belief in Polygenesis.. 2 creations stories in Genesis that people used to talk about how the races were formed.

Oh yes, there are still people who believe this today, I talk about a story like this in #WhiteEvangelicalRacism. But anyway.. short version, black people were a first, aberrational creation. The second creation story was about Adam and Eve.. perfect, and white.

In other words, the creation story was about different creations of races, each as a separate species. This was one of the ways in which slavery was justified through scripture. https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/04/22/white-supremacy-was-core-th-century-science-why-that-matters-today/

So Morton's cranial collection was about measuring differences in races.. the same shit that Andrew Sullivan was spouting over the weekend on twitter. I mention him only to place him where he belongs.

So if you think that, and you look at some of the old set up of the Penn Museum in particular, the hierarchy of races for many of these 19th century museums put Greek Roman, European exhibits on top.. and everyone else on different levels down to the basement.

also with charts like this

Not hard to see who's on top eh? Now let's get to the really hard stuff about polygenesis with a book that I found as a grad student that I presented a paper on back some years ago_ Charles Carrol's "The Negro A beast"

This folks, is how polygenesis was displayed in the book. Disclaimer This is a harsh image. I won't use the cover of the book, it's REAL RACIST. Like worse than this.

Notice the light of God shining down from Heaven on white Adam and Eve with the very racialized image of the black man off to the side?

This is the illustration of what Polygenesis meant to some Christians of the time. Carrol's book was refuted, but these ideas live on today. So while we are upset about the bones.. and the other things that are probably lurking in Penn's museum... (and rightfully so)

whether it's the cranial collection of Mortons or the missing bones of the Move children (which really grieves my soul) .. the premise linking the two is, these folks aren't really human. We should study them. We study them to point to differences that we can make about race

This plays out in so many ways, how drugs are fashioned, what doctors say to black people, what religious people and some EVANGELICALS think about interracial marriage and race, among other things....
Just read my colleague, @DorothyERoberts book Fatal invention for all of that.

This is at the core of so much of the racial climate of the country, Especially how police see black children as "men" or women, or the argument about all of the things the defense said was wrong with George Floyd.

The defense was, if you didn't catch it, that Floyd was already damaged, how could Chauvin kill him with just his knee? Sigh

So the crux of the issue about bones, from 19th c to 21st is this... If you don't see black people as human, either religiously or scientifically, or morally, then it is pretty clear to me why these shootings happen, or why black people are seen as threatening.. ect.

It's really messed up. And don't even get me started on the Native American holdings at Penn and many other museums . We have to come together to start dismantling this structure of oppression and racism on every level.

One last thing, the @washingtonpost article I cited earlier? the author's book is coming out soon go follow him! https://twitter.com/AntiquatedMeds/status/1384531460263141376?s=20