Ashley Montagu

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ashley Montagu
Ashley Montagu in 1958
Born	28 June 1905 London, United Kingdom
Died	26 November 1999 (aged 94) Princeton, New Jersey, U.S.
Nationality	British
Citizenship	American
Known for	Popularizing the term "ethnic group"
Scientific career
Fields	Anthropology

Montague Francis Ashley-Montagu (June 28, 1905 – November 26, 1999), previously known as Israel Ehrenberg, was a British-American anthropologist who popularized the study of topics such as race and gender and their relation to politics and development. He was the rapporteur, in 1950, for the UNESCO statement "The Race Question". As a young man he changed his name from Ehrenberg to "Montague Francis Ashley-Montagu". After relocating to the United States he used the name "Ashley Montagu". Montagu, who became a naturalized American citizen in 1940, taught and lectured at Harvard, Princeton, Rutgers, the University of California, Santa Barbara, and New York University. Forced out of his Rutgers position after the McCarthy hearings, he repositioned himself as a public intellectual in the 1950s and 1960s, appearing regularly on television shows and writing for magazines and newspapers. He authored over sixty books throughout this lifetime. In 1995, the American Humanist Association named him the Humanist of the Year.

Early life and education

Montagu began life as Israel Ehrenberg, having been born on June 28, 1905, in London, England. He grew up in London's East End. He remembered often being subjected to antisemitic abuse when he ventured out of his own Jewish neighborhood. Montagu attended the Central Foundation Boys' School. He developed an interest in anatomy very early and as a boy was befriended by Scottish anatomist and anthropologist Arthur Keith under whom he studied informally.

In 1922, at the age of 17, he entered University College London, where he received a diploma in psychology after studying with Karl Pearson and Charles Spearman and taking anthropology courses with Grafton Elliot Smith and Charles Gabriel Seligman. He also studied at the London School of Economics, where he became one of the first students of Bronisław Malinowski. In 1931, he emigrated to the United States. At this time, he wrote a letter introducing himself to Harvard anthropologist Earnest Hooton, claiming to having been "educated at Cambridge, Oxford, London, Florence, and Columbia" and having earned M.A. and PhD degrees. In reality, Montagu had not graduated from Cambridge or Oxford and did not yet have a PhD. He taught anatomy to dental students in the United States, and received his doctorate in 1936, when he produced a dissertation at Columbia University, Coming into being among the Australian Aborigines: A study of the procreative beliefs of the native tribes of Australia which was supervised by cultural anthropologist Ruth Benedict. He became a professor of anthropology at Rutgers University, working there from 1949 until 1955.

Career

During the 1940s, Montagu published a series of works questioning the validity of race as a biological concept, including the UNESCO "Statement on Race", and his very well known Man’s Most Dangerous Myth: the Fallacy of Race. He was particularly opposed to the work of Carleton S. Coon, and the term "race". In 1952, together with William Vogt, he gave the first Alfred Korzybski Memorial Lecture, inaugurating the series.

Montagu wrote the Foreword and Bibliography of the 1955 edition of Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution by Petr Kropotkin, which was reprinted in 2005.

Due to disputes concerning his involvement with the UNESCO "Statement on Race", Montagu became a target for anti-communists, and, untenured, was dismissed from Rutgers University and "found all other academic avenues blocked." He retired from his academic career in 1955 and moved to Princeton, New Jersey to continue his popular writing and public appearances. He became a well-known guest of Johnny Carson's The Tonight Show. He addressed his numerous published studies of the significant relationship of mother and infant to the general public. The humanizing effects of touch informed the studies of isolation-reared monkeys and adult pathological violence that is the subject of his Time-Life documentary Rock A Bye Baby (1970).

Later in life, Montagu actively opposed genital modification and mutilation of children. In 1994, James Prescott wrote the Ashley Montagu Resolution to End the Genital Mutilation of Children Worldwide: a Petition to the World Court, The Hague, named in honor of Montagu, who was one of its original signers.

Montagu was a noted critic of creationism. He edited Science and Creationism, a volume which refuted creationist arguments.

A posthumous biography of Montagu, Love Forms the Bones, was written by anthropologist Susan Sperling and published in 2005.

Work

Statement on Race

Ashley Montagu wrote a book titled Statement on Race. In this book, Montagu explains every statement in extreme detail, even though Ashley Montagu only majorly participated in writing the first two UNESCO Statements. Montagu was one of the ten scientists invited to serve on a committee which later came to be known as the Committee of Experts on Race Problems. The main purpose of the organization was to contribute peace and security to others by using science and culture. The UNESCO Statements were developed to help others realize that humans are all one species and "race" is not a valid biological concept.

The first statement says, "Scientists have reached general agreement in recognizing that mankind is one: that all men belong to the same species, Homo sapiens." The first statement was put in such a way that laymen would be able to understand a scientist's point of view. They worded it so that people who were not knowledgeable about the subject would understand. "Homo sapiens is made up of a number of populations, each one of which differs from the others." That states that even though there is variability in the individual's genetic heritage, all belong to a discrete species and should be treated equally.

The second statement says that since human history is widely diverse and complex, there are many human populations that cannot be easily classified “racially”. However, some anthropologists believe that mankind is classified into at least three major human races. Even though it is believed that there are many human races, it gives no support that there is one race that is superior or inferior to any of the other races.

The third statement gives views on the biological aspect of the race question. It explains that different human groups diverged from a common stock and that is the reason for their biological differences. The third statement also goes into detail about human evolution and how important it is for H. sapiens to survive and grow.

The fourth statement says, "All men are born free and equal both in dignity and in rights." The fourth statement says that racism stultifies development and threatens world peace. "The division of human species into 'races' is partly conventional and partly arbitrary and does not imply any hierarchy whatsoever."

The UNESCO Statements were made to address the race question and to help provide clarity from a scientist's perspective. Even though Montagu did not contribute to writing all of the UNESCO Statements, his contribution helped to clarify the question against race.

Man's Most Dangerous Myth: The Fallacy of Race

One of his works, Man's Most Dangerous Myth, was written in 1942, when race was considered the determinant of people's character and intelligence. Montagu presented a unique theory for his time: "in biology race is defined as a subdivision of species which inherits physical characteristics distinguishing it from other populations of the species. In this sense there are many human 'races.' But this is not the sense in which many anthropologists, race-classifiers, and racists have used the term." He admits that in a biological sense, there is the existence of races within mankind. However, he also believes that not all of mankind can be classified. Part of his reasoning has to do with mixed origin, which has resulted in “overlapping” of physicalities. Instead of races and subspecies, he prefers mixed ethnic groups. His writing further emphasizes the complexity of our descent and rejects claims that support one race being superior when compared to others. He also says profoundly that the "so-called" main divisions of mankind are species instead of races. 

He says this idea or concept of race originated around the 18th century. The concept developing as a direct result of slavery and the slave trade. As a side effect of slavery, naturally, humanity has divided racism, this has carried and proceeded to dominate culture. The physical difference furthered the establishment of races and evident differences between individuals. He mentions Darwin and other forefathers who touched on this topic while they attempted to explain race to all. He touches on society, genetics, psychological, culture, war, democracy, eugenics, and social factors as contributors that enhance this idea of race. 

Man's Most Dangerous Myth was revised into new editions six times by Montagu, the last in 1997 when he was 92 years old, and is still in print over 75 years after its initial publication.

The Natural Superiority of Women

Originally produced as a magazine article, The Natural Superiority of Women, published in 1952, was one of the major documents of second wave feminism and the only one written by a man. Using his background as a physical anthropologist, Montagu points to the biological advantages that the women of the human species have for long term survival. The book was revised five times, the last edition published shortly before his death in 1999 and still in print.

The Elephant Man

Possibly one of Montagu's least significant works was the most famous one. His biography of a deformed 19th century British man, Joseph Merrick, dubbed The Elephant Man, was published in 1971 and formed the basis of the 1980 movie directed by David Lynch.

Legacy

An Ashley Montagu Fellowship for the Public Understanding of Human Sciences has been established at the University of Sydney, in Australia, and is currently held by anthropologist Dr Stephen Juan.

In popular culture

• Montagu is the writer and director of the film One World or None. Produced in 1946 by The National Committee on Atomic Information, this short documentary exposes the dangers of nuclear weapons and argues that only international cooperation and proper control of atomic energy can avoid war and guarantee the use of this force for the benefit of mankind.
• Footage of Ashley Montagu talking with Charlton Heston about his character in the movie appears as a bonus in the special DVD edition of The Omega Man.
• Archive footage of him, among others (including Carl Sagan), is featured in The X-Files episode "Gethsemane."
• The saying "International law exists only in textbooks on international law," which is often attributed to Albert Einstein, was in fact said to Einstein by Montagu.

Selected bibliography

• Coming Into Being Among the Australian Aborigines, New York: E. P. Dutton & Company, 1938.
• Man's Most Dangerous Myth: The Fallacy of Race, New York: Harper, 1942.
• On Being Human, New York: H. Schuman, 1950.
• The Natural Superiority of Women. Macmillan. 1953.
• The Direction of Human Development: Biological and Social Bases, New York: Harper, 1955.
• Toynbee and History: Critical Essays and Reviews (editor) (1956 ed.). Boston: Extending Horizons Books. ISBN 0-87558-026-2.. A critique of Arnold J. Toynbee's seminal A Study of History.
• Anthropology and Human Nature, Boston: P. Sargent, 1957.
• Man: His First Million Years, Cleveland: World Pub. Co., 1957.^[10]
• The Cultured Man, Cleveland: World Pub. Co., 1958.
• Human Heredity, Cleveland: World Pub. Co, 1959.
• Life Before Birth, New York: New American Library, 1964.
• The Concept of Race (editor), New York: Free Press of Glencoe, 1964.
• Man's Evolution: An Introduction to Physical Anthropology, (co-authored with C. Loring Brace), New York: Macmillan, 1965. Second edition published as Human Evolution: An Introduction to Biological Anthropology, New York: Macmillan, 1977, ISBN 0-02313-190-X.
• The Anatomy of Swearing, New York: Macmillan, 1967.
• Man and Aggression, New York: Oxford University Press, 1968.
• Touching: The Human Significance of the Skin. Harper & Row. 1978. ISBN 978-0-06-012979-8.
• The Elephant Man: A Study in Human Dignity, New York: Outerbridge and Dienstfrey, 1971.
• Culture and Human Development, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1974, ISBN 0-13195-578-0.
• Race and IQ (editor), New York: Oxford University Press, 1975.
• The Nature of Human Aggression, New York: Oxford University Press, 1976.
• Learning Non-Aggression: The Experience of Non-Literate Societies (editor), New York: Oxford University Press, 1978, ISBN 0-19502-342-0
• The Human Connection (co-authored with Floyd W. Matson), New York: McGraw-Hill, 1979, ISBN 0-07042-840-9.
• Growing Young, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1981. Second edition, Westport, Connecticut: Bergin & Garvey, 1989, ISBN 0-89789-166-X
• Science and Creationism (co-edited with Isaac Asimov), Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 1984, ISBN 0-195-03252-7. Features the writing of Roger Lewin, Kenneth R. Miller, Robert Root-Bernstein, George M. Marsden, Stephen Jay Gould, Gunther S. Stent, Kenneth E. Boulding, Garrett Hardin, Laurie R. Godfrey, Isaac Asimov, Sidney W. Fox, L. Beverly Halstead, Roger J. Cuffey, Roy A. Gallant, Robert M. May, Michael Ruse, WIlliam R. Overton, and Sidney Ratner.
• Living and Loving (edited with notes by Tsuyoshi Amemiya and Kazuo Takeno), Tokyo: Kinseido, 1986, ISBN 4-76470-470-6.
• The Peace of The World, Tokyo: Kenkyusha, 1987, ISBN 4-32742-050-6.
• The Dehumanization of Man (co-author with Floyd Matson), New York: McGraw-Hill, 1983.
• Nude and Natural, 12 (1), The Naturists, 1992
• Man's Most Dangerous Myth: The Fallacy of Race, 6th edition. Walnut Creek CA: AltaMira Press, 1997
• The Natural Superiority of Women, 5th edition. Walnut Creek CA: AltaMira Press. 1999.

"Negroid"

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Meyers Konversations-Lexikon (1885–1890)

Caucasoid:   Aryans   Semitic   Hamitic Negroid:   African Negro   Khoikhoi   Melanesian   Negrito   Australoid Uncertain:   Dravida & Sinhalese

Mongoloid:   North Mongol   Chinese & Indochinese   Japanese & Korean   Tibetan & Burmese   Malay   Polynesian   Maori   Micronesian   Eskimo & Inuit   American

Negroid (also known as Congoid) is a historical grouping of human beings, once purported to be an identifiable race and applied as a political class by another dominant 'non-negroid' culture. The term had been used by forensic and physical anthropologists to refer to individuals and populations that share certain morphological and skeletal traits that are frequent among populations in most of Sub-Saharan Africa and isolated parts of South and Southeast Asia (Negritos). Within Africa, a racial dividing line separating Caucasoid physical types from Negroid physical types was held to have existed, with Negroid groups forming most of the population south of the area which stretched from the southern Sahara desert in the west to the African Great Lakes in the southeast.

First introduced in the early racial science and anthropometry of the 1780s by members of the Göttingen School of History, Negroid denoted one of the three purported major races of humankind (alongside Caucasoid and Mongoloid). Many social scientists have argued that such analyses are rooted in sociopolitical and historical processes rather than in empirical observation. However, Negroid as a biological classification remains in use in forensic anthropology. The term today is usually considered racist, along with the term it derived from, Negro.

Etymology

Negroid has both Latin and Ancient Greek etymological roots. It literally translates as "black resemblance" from negro (black), and οειδές -oeidēs, equivalent to -o- + είδες -eidēs "having the appearance of", derivative of είδος eîdos "appearance". The earliest recorded use of the term "Negroid" came in 1859. In modern usage, it is associated with populations that on the whole possess the suite of typical Negro physical characteristics.

History

Illustrations of "racial types" from Man, Past and Present (1899) by Augustus Henry Keane

 

In the 19th century, Samuel George Morton posited a "Negro Family", which he grouped with the Caffrian, Hottentot, Oceanic-Negro, Australian, and Alforian families.

Distribution of the races after the Pleistocene according to Carleton Coon

 

	Caucasoid
	Congoid
	Capoid
	Mongoloid
	Australoid

In physical anthropology the term is one of the three general racial classifications of humans — Caucasoid, Mongoloid and Negroid. Under this classification scheme, humans are divisible into broad sub-groups based on phenotypic characteristics such as cranial and skeletal morphology. Later iterations of the terminology, such as Carleton S. Coon's Origin of Races, placed this theory in an evolutionary context. Coon divided the species Homo sapiens into five groups: Caucasoid, Capoid, Congoid, Australoid and Mongoloid, based on the timing of each taxon's evolution from Homo erectus Positing the Capoid race as a separate racial entity, and labeling the two major divisions of what he called the Congoid race as being the "African Negroes" and the "Pygmies", he divided indigenous Africans into distinct Congoid and Capoid groups based on their date of ancestral origin rather than just phenotype.

Afrocentrist author Cheikh Anta Diop contrasted "Negroid" with "Cro-Magnoid" in his publications arguing for "Negroid" primacy. Grimaldi Man, Upper Paleolithic fossils found in Italy in 1901, had been classified as Negroid by Boule and Vallois (1921). The identification was obsolete by the 1960s, but was controversially revived by Diop (1989).

In the context of the first peopling of the Sahara, there was a debate in the 1970s whether the non-negroid, mixed, or negroid fossils found in the region were older. Asselar man, a 6,400 year old fossil discovered in 1927 in the Adrar des Ifoghas near Essouk (now the Kidal Region of Mali), was claimed as the oldest known anatomically modern human skeleton of Negroid type.

Subraces

Illustration of Negroid, Caucasoid and Mongoloid skulls shown from above (Samuel George Morton, 1839)

 

In the first half of the 20th century, the traditional subraces of the Negroid race were regarded as being the True Negro, the Forest Negro, the Bantu Negro, the Nilote, the Negrillo (also known as the African Pygmy), the Khoisan (often historically referred to as Hottentot and Bushman), the Negrito (also known as the Asiatic Pygmy), and the Oceanic Negroids (consisting of the Papuan and Melanesian).

By the 1960s, some scholars regarded the Khoisan as a separate race known as the Capoid race, while others continued to regard them as a Negroid subrace. The term "Congoid" was frequently used interchangeably with "Negroid", with the main difference being that Congoid excluded the Capoid taxon.

Physical features

Craniofacial traits

A Hausa man of Western Sudanese Negroid type

 

A Zulu woman of Bantu Negroid type

 

In modern craniofacial anthropometry, Negroid describes features that typify skulls of black people. These include a broad and round nasal cavity; no dam or nasal sill; Quonset hut-shaped nasal bones; notable facial projection in the jaw and mouth area (prognathism); a rectangular-shaped palate; a square or rectangular eye orbit shape; a large interorbital distance; a more undulating supraorbital ridge; and large teeth.

According to George W. Gill and other modern forensic anthropologists, physical traits of Negroid crania are generally distinct from those of the Caucasoid and Mongoloid races. They assert that they can identify a Negroid skull with an accuracy of up to 95%. However, Alan H. Goodman cautions that this precision estimate is often based on methodologies using subsets of samples. He also argues that scientists have a professional and ethical duty to avoid such biological analyses since they could potentially have sociopolitical effects. Although widely used in forensic anthropology, some have also challenged the accuracy of craniofacial anthropometry vis-a-vis different human populations that have developed in close proximity to one another and those of mixed ethnic heritage. Since the distinguishing racial traits are not set until puberty, they are also difficult to ascertain in preadolescent skulls.

Variation in craniofacial form between humans has been found to be largely due to differing patterns of biological inheritance. Modern cross-analysis of osteological variables and genome-wide SNPs has identified specific genes, which control this craniofacial development. Of these genes, DCHS2, RUNX2, GLI3, PAX1 and PAX3 were found to determine nasal morphology, whereas EDAR impacts chin protrusion.

Neoteny

Ashley Montagu lists "neotenous structural traits in which...Negroids [generally] differ from Caucasoids... flattish nose, flat root of the nose, narrower ears, narrower joints, frontal skull eminences, later closure of premaxillary sutures, less hairy, longer eyelashes, [and] cruciform pattern of second and third molars". He also suggested that in the extinct Negroid group termed the "Boskopoids", pedomorphic traits proceeded further than in other Negroids. Additionally, Montagu wrote that the Boskopoids had larger brains than modern humans (1,700 cubic centimeters cranial capacity compared to 1,400 cubic centimeters in modern-day humans), and the projection of their mouth was less than in other Negroids. He believed that the Boskopoids were the ancestors of the Khoisan.

Hair

Human hair texture distribution

 

Afro-textured hair is tightly coiled, kinky hair. It is a ubiquitous trait among Negroid populations. By consequence, the presence of looser, frizzly hair texture in other populations has often been considered an indication of possible admixture with Negroid peoples.

Commenting on the lack of body hair (glabrousness) of Negroids and Mongoloids, Carleton S. Coon wrote that "[b]oth negroid and mongoloid skin conditions are inimical to excessive hair development except upon the scalp".

Skin pigmentation

Skin pigmentation in Negroid populations varies from very dark brown to light brown. As dark skin is also relatively common in human groups that have historically not been defined as "Negroid", including many populations in both Africa and Asia, it is only when present with other typical Negroid physical traits such as broad facial features, Negroid cranial characteristics, large teeth, prognathism, afro-textured hair and neoteny, that it has been used in Negroid classification. Populations with frequently dark skin yet on the whole lacking the suite of Negroid physical traits were thus usually not regarded as "Negroid", but instead as either "dark Caucasoid" (e.g. Hamitic/Ethiopid and Arabid) or "Australoid" depending on their other salient physical attributes. By contrast, populations with relatively light skin yet generally possessing typical Negroid physical characteristics, such as the Khoisan, were still regarded as "Negroid".

Criticism

Distribution Map of Modern Man (Horniman Museum)

Mongoloids	Negroids
Caucasoids	Australoids

The term "Negroid" is still used in certain disciplines such as forensic and physical anthropology. In a medical context, some scholars have recommended that the term Negroid be avoided in scientific writings because of its association with scientific racism. This mirrors the decline in usage of the term negro in English, which fell out of favor following the campaigns of the Civil Rights Movement, but was later re-introduced in the US Census of 2010 because it was found that members of the older generation of African Americans continued to identify with it. The Oxford Dictionaries website as of 2018 indicates that "the term Negroid belongs to a set of terms introduced by 19th-century anthropologists attempting to categorize human races(....) such terms are associated with outdated notions of racial types, and so are now potentially offensive and best avoided".

C.S. Coon's evolutionary approach was criticized on the basis that such sorting criteria generally do not produce meaningful results, and that evolutionary divergence was extremely improbable over the given time-frames. Monatagu (1963) argued that Coon's theory on the speciation of Congoids and other Homo sapiens was unlikely because the transmutation of one species to another was a markedly gradual process.

Anti-racism

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Anti-racism includes beliefs, actions, movements, and policies adopted or developed to oppose racism. 

According to the Anti-racism Digital Library "Anti-racism can be defined as some form of focused and sustained action, which includes inter-cultural, inter-faith, multi-lingual and inter-abled (i.e. differently abled) communities with the intent to change a system or an institutional policy, practice, or procedure which has racist effects." 

Soviet stamp 1960

European origins

The European colonization of the Americas by Christopher Columbus did not occur until 1492. However, two Papal bulls announced several decades before that event were designed to help ward off increasing Muslim invasions into Europe, which they believed would have an effect on the New World. 

When Islam presented a serious military threat to Italy and Central Europe during the mid-15th century around the time of the fall of Constantinople in 1453, Pope Nicholas V tried to unite Christendom against them but failed. He then granted Portugal the right to subdue and even enslave Muslims whether white or any other race, pagans and other non-Christians in the papal bull Dum Diversas (1452). While this bull preceded the Atlantic slave trade by several decades, slavery and the slave trade were part of African societies and tribes which supplied the Arab world with slaves long before the arrival of the Europeans. 

Increasingly, the Italian merchants from the wealthiest states in Italy, especially Genoa and Venice joined in the lucrative trade and some members sported exotic lackeys and few domestic or workshop slaves whereas before slavery was forbidden in Christendom and only formerly in Muslim Spain and Sicily and their buffer border marches were seen and legally allowed. Racial views of Superiority started developing and became more acute about these slaves, social views imported from the Court of Granada where they were highly stratified and classified. 

The following year saw the Fall of Constantinople to Muslim conquerors of the ever-growing Turkish Ottoman Empire which left the pope as the undoubted contested leader of Christendom when the Eastern Orthodox Church leadership became under submission. Several decades later, European explorers and missionaries spread Christianity to the Americas, Asia, Africa and Oceania. Pope Alexander VI had awarded colonial rights over most of the newly discovered lands by the Iberian Kingdoms of Castile and Portugal. Under their patronato system, however, Royal authorities, not the Vatican, controlled as in Europe all clerical appointments in the new colonies. Thus, the 1455 Papal bull Romanus Pontifex granted the Portuguese all lands behind Cape Bojador "allowing to reduce pagans and other enemies of Christ to perpetual servitude." Later, the 1481 Papal bull Aeterni regis granted all lands south of the Canary Islands to the Portuguese Empire, while in May 1493, the Aragonese-born Pope Alexander VIdecreed in the Bull Inter caetera that all lands west of a meridian only 100 leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands should belong to the Spanish Empire while new lands discovered east of that line would belong to Portugal. These arrangements were later confirmed in the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas.

American origins

The European origins of racism spread to the Americas alongside the Europeans, but establishment views were questioned when applied to indigenous peoples. After the discovery of the New World many of the clergy sent to the New World, educated in the new Humane values of the Renaissance blooming but still new in Europe and not ratified by the Vatican, began to criticize Spain and their own Church's treatment and views of indigenous peoples and slaves. 

In December 1511, Antonio de Montesinos, a Dominican friar, was the first man to openly rebuke the Spanish authorities and administrators of Hispaniola for their "cruelty and tyranny" in dealing with the American natives and those forced to labor as slaves. King Ferdinand enacted the Laws of Burgos and Valladolid in response. However enforcement was lax, and the New Laws of 1542 have to be made to take a stronger line. Because some people like Fray Bartolomé de las Casas questioned not only the Crown but the Papacy at the Valladolid Controversy whether the Indians were truly men who deserved baptism, Pope Paul III in the papal bull Veritas Ipsa or Sublimis Deus (1537) confirmed that the Indians and other races were deserving men, so long as they became baptized. Afterward, their Christian conversion effort gained momentum along social rights, while leaving the same status recognition unanswered for Africans of Black Race, and legal social racism prevailed towards the Indians or Asians. However, by then the last schism of the Reformation had taken place in Europe in those few decades along political lines, and the different views on the Value of human lives of different races were not corrected in the lands of Northern Europe, which would join the Colonial race at the end of the century and over the next, as the Portuguese and Spanish Empires waned. It would take another century, with the influence of the French Empire at its height, and its consequent Enlightenment developed at the highest circles of its Court, to return these previously inconclusive issues to the forefront of the political discourse championed by many intellectual men since Rousseau. These issues gradually permeated to the lower social levels, where they were a reality lived by men and women of different races from the European racial majority.

Quaker initiatives

John Brown's blessing

 

Prior to the American Revolution, a small group of Quakers including John Woolman and Anthony Benezet successfully persuaded their fellow members of the Religious Society of Friends to free their slaves, divest from the slave trade, and create unified Quaker policies against slavery. This afforded their tiny religious denomination some moral authority to help begin the Abolitionist movement on both sides of the Atlantic. Woolman died of smallpox in England in 1775, shortly after crossing the Atlantic to bring his anti-slavery message to the Quakers of the British Isles. 

During and after the American Revolution, Quaker ministrations and preachings against slavery began to spread beyond their movement. In 1783, 300 Quakers, chiefly from the London area, presented the British Parliament with their signatures on the first petition against the slave trade. In 1785, Englishman Thomas Clarkson, enrolled at Cambridge, and in the course of writing an essay in Latin (Anne liceat invitos in servitutem dare (Is it lawful to enslave the unconsenting?), read the works of Benezet, and began a lifelong effort to outlaw the slave trade in England. In 1787, sympathizers formed the Committee for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, a small non-denominational group that could lobby more successfully by incorporating Anglicans, who, unlike the Quakers, could lawfully sit in Parliament. The twelve founding members included nine Quakers, and three pioneering Anglicans: Granville Sharp, Thomas Clarkson, and William Wilberforce – all evangelical Christians.

Later successes

Later successes in opposing racism were won by the abolitionist movement, both in England and the United States. Though many Abolitionists did not regard blacks or mulattos as equal to whites, they did in general believe in freedom and often even equality of treatment for all people. A few, like John Brown, went further. Brown was willing to die on behalf of, as he said, "millions in this slave country whose rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel, and unjust enactments ..." Many black Abolitionists, such as Frederick Douglass, explicitly argued for the humanity of blacks and mulattoes, and for the equality of all people. 

Prior to and during the American Civil War, racial egalitarianism in the North became much stronger and more generally disseminated. The success of black troops in the Union Army had a dramatic impact on Northern sentiment. The Emancipation Proclamation was a notable example of this shift in political attitudes, although it notably did not completely extinguish legal slavery in several states. After the war, the Reconstruction government passed the Fourteenth Amendment and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution to guarantee the rights of blacks and mulattoes. Many ex-slaves had access to education for the first time. Blacks and mulattoes were also allowed to vote, which meant that African-Americans were elected to Congress in numbers not equaled until the Voting Rights Act and the Warren Court helped re-enfranchise black Americans.

Due to resistance in the South, however, and a general collapse of idealism in the North, Reconstruction ended, and gave way to the nadir of American race relations. The period from about 1890 to 1920 saw the re-establishment of Jim Crow laws. President Woodrow Wilson, who regarded Reconstruction as a disaster, segregated the federal government. The Ku Klux Klan grew to its greatest peak of popularity and strength. D. W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation was a movie sensation. 

In 1911 the First Universal Races Congress met in London, at which distinguished speakers from many countries for four days discussed race problems and ways to improve interracial relations.

Scientific anti-racism

Friedrich Tiedemann was one of the first people scientifically to contest racism. In 1836, using craniometric and brain measurements (taken by him from Europeans and black people from different parts of the world), he refuted the belief of many contemporary naturalists and anatomists that black people have smaller brains and are thus intellectually inferior to white people, saying it was scientifically unfounded and based merely on the prejudiced opinions of travelers and explorers. The evolutionary biologist Charles Darwin wrote in 1871 that ‘[i]t may be doubted whether any character can be named which is distinctive of a race and is constant’ and that ‘[a]lthough the existing races of man differ in many respects, as in colour, hair, shape of skull, proportions of the body, &c., yet if their whole structure be taken into consideration they are found to resemble each other closely in a multitude of points.’

At the start of the 20th century, the work of anthropologists trying to end the paradigms of cultural evolutionism and social Darwinism within social sciences—anthropologists like Franz Boas, Marcel Mauss, Bronisław Malinowski, Pierre Clastres and Claude Lévi-Strauss—began the initiative to the end of racism in human sciences and establish cultural relativism as the new dominant paradigm.

Racial equality: Paris 1919

Japan first proposed articles dedicated to the elimination of racial discrimination to be added to the rules of the League of Nations. This was the first proposal concerning the international elimination of racial discrimination in the world.

Although the proposal received a majority (11 out of 16) of votes, the chairman, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson, overturned it saying that important issues should be unanimously approved. Billy Hughes and Joseph Cook vigorously opposed it as it undermined the White Australia policy.

Revival in the United States

Opposition to racism revived in the 1920s and 1930s. At that time, anthropologists such as Franz Boas, Ruth Benedict, Margaret Mead, and Ashley Montagu argued for the equality of humans across races and cultures. Eleanor Roosevelt was a very visible advocate for minority rights during this period. Anti-capitalist organizations like the Industrial Workers of the World, which gained popularity during 1905–1926, were explicitly egalitarian. 

In the 1940s Springfield, Massachusetts invoked The Springfield Plan to include all persons in the community. 

Beginning with the Harlem Renaissance and continuing into the 1960s, many African-American writers argued forcefully against racism. 

During the Civil Rights Movement, Jim Crow laws were repealed in the South and blacks finally re-won the right to vote in Southern states. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was an influential force, and his "I Have a Dream" speech is an exemplary condensation of his egalitarian ideology.

Influence

Crowd rallying at a demonstration in Israel against manifestations of racism and discrimination.

 

Egalitarianism has been a catalyst for feminism, anti-war, and anti-imperialist movements. Henry David Thoreau's opposition to the Mexican–American War, for example, was based in part on his fear that the U.S. was using the war as an excuse to expand American slavery into new territories. Thoreau's response was chronicled in his famous essay "Civil Disobedience", which in turn helped ignite Gandhi's successful campaign against the British in India. Gandhi's example in turn inspired the American civil rights movement. 

As James Loewen notes in Lies My Teacher Told Me: "Throughout the world, from Africa to Northern Ireland, movements of oppressed people continue to use tactics and words borrowed from our abolitionist and civil rights movements." In East Germany, revolutionary Iran, Tiananmen Square, and South Africa, images, words, and tactics developed by human rights supporters have been used regularly and repeatedly. 

Many of these uses have been controversial. In Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe has used anti-racist rhetoric to promote a land distribution scheme whereby privately held land is confiscated from white Rhodesians and distributed to blacks, which has resulted in widespread starvation (see Land reform in Zimbabwe).

White genocide theory

The phrase "Anti-racist is a code word for anti-white", coined by high-profile white nationalist Robert Whitaker, is commonly associated with the topic of white genocide, a white nationalist conspiracy theory that mass immigration, integration, miscegenation, low fertility rates and abortion are being promoted in predominantly white countries to deliberately turn them minority-white and hence cause white people to become extinct through forced assimilation. The phrase has been spotted on billboards near Birmingham, Alabama and in Harrison, Arkansas.

Anti-racist organizations and institutions

International

• European Commission against Racism and Intolerance
• UN Human Rights Council Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance
• World Conference against Racism

Europe

• Aktion Courage (Germany)
• Anti-Nazi League (United Kingdom)
• Les Indivisibles (France)
• SOS Racisme (France)
• Rock Against Racism (United Kingdom)
• Aktion Kinder des Holocaust (Switzerland)
• Anti-Fascist Action (United Kingdom)
• Campaign Against Racism and Fascism (United Kingdom)
• Centre for Equal Opportunities and Opposition to Racism (Belgium)
• Félag Anti-Rasista (Iceland)
• Institute of Race Relations (United Kingdom)
• In IUSTITIA (Czech Republic)
• Love Music Hate Racism (United Kingdom)
• Mouvement contre le racisme et pour l'amitié entre les peuples (France)
• National Assembly Against Racism (United Kingdom)
• Newham Monitoring Project (United Kingdom)
• Residents Against Racism (Ireland)
• Show Racism the Red Card (United Kingdom)
• Stand Up to Racism (United Kingdom)
• Unite Against Fascism (United Kingdom)
• UNITED for Intercultural Action (all of Europe)
• Hepimiz Zokorayız (Turkey)

North America

• Anti-Racism and Hate (United States)
• By Any Means Necessary (BAMN) (United States)
• Anti-Racist Action (North America)
• One People's Project (United States)
• Roots of Resistance (Canada) [defunct]
• Southern Poverty Law Center (United States)
• Red and Anarchist Skinheads (United States)
• Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice (United States)
• Friends Stand United (United States)
• Catalyst Project (United States)
• Showing Up for Racial Justice (United States)
• The People's Institute for Survival and Beyond (United States)

Other

• All Together Now (Australia)
• Fight Dem Back (Australia and New Zealand)
• People's Front of Anti Racism (Japan)