Hi again,
For those that wanted some more
information on Carleton Coon, you might check out:
Science for Segregation: Race,
Law, and the Case Against Brown v. Board of Education
John P. Jackson, Jr., NYU Press,
2005.
“Offering a trenchant assessment
of the so-called scientific evidence, Jackson focuses
on the 1959 formation of the International Society for the Advancement of
Ethnology and Eugenics (IAAEE) whose expressed purpose was to objectively
investigate racial differences and publicize their findings. Notable figures
included Carleton Putnam, Wesley Critz George, and Carleton Coon. In an
attempt to link race, eugenics and intelligence, they launched legal
challenges to the ruling [of Brown vs. Board of Education], each chronicled
here, that were tried and ultimately unsuccessful.”
By way of a little more
background: In “The Origin of Races,” Coon was quite clear about which
races were inherently superior to others, e.g., “If Africa was the cradle of
mankind, it was only an indifferent kindergarten. Europe and
Asia were our principal
schools.” Coon helped his cousin, segregationist Carleton Putnam, put
together materials from Coon’s work for legal challenges to desegregation.
In 1963, the American
Association of Physical Anthropologists censured Putnam’s book
“Race and Reason:
A Yankee View.”
Coon, who was president of the Association at the time, resigned in
protest.
Ashley Montagu was Coon’s great
adversary, as staunchly *against* highlighting racial differences as
Coon was *for* doing so. In the 1960s, Coon tried to discredit Montagu
by “exposing” Montagu’s “secret” – that he was born Israel Ehrenberg, son of
Jewish immigrants to England.
Apparently, Coon thought it would be self-evident that a Jewish scholar was
not to be trusted. Unfortunately for him, others found his attack
repugnant.
Peg
Peg Yacobucci
Assistant
Professor
Bowling Green
State
University
Department of
Geology
190 Overman Hall
Bowling Green,
OH
43403
(419) 372-7982
-----Original
Message-----
From:
paleonet-owner@nhm.ac.uk [mailto:paleonet-owner@nhm.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Peg Yacobucci
Sent: Monday, March 28,
2005 8:18
PM
To: paleonet@nhm.ac.uk
Subject: RE: paleonet ID in the
Classroom
Hi all,
Sorry, but I can’t let this
go. Carleton Coon was a quite famous racist, who worked quietly behind
the scenes in the 1950s and 1960s to help those arguing FOR segregation in the
U.S. Publicly, he
claimed to be “agnostic” on the issue, but in private he was
not.
Peg
Peg Yacobucci
Assistant
Professor
Bowling Green
State
University
Department of
Geology
190 Overman Hall
Bowling Green,
OH
43403
(419) 372-7982
-----Original
Message-----
From:
paleonet-owner@nhm.ac.uk [mailto:paleonet-owner@nhm.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Andy Rindsberg
Sent: Monday, March 28,
2005 5:28
PM
To: paleonet@nhm.ac.uk
Subject: RE: paleonet ID in the
Classroom
Fair enough. I regard the
multiple-origins hypothesis as one of those ideas that can be, and has been,
used for racist purposes although the idea is not inherently racist and people
who hold it are not necessarily racist. I'm a bit out of my depth here, but I
first read about it in this widely read book:
Coon, Carleton S. (1962) .
The Origins of Races.
New York: Alfred
A. Knopf.
Coon's work was engagingly
written and not overtly racist, though he was accused of racism, e.g., by
anthropologist Ashley Montagu, and I do not know the truth of that matter.
Coon was certainly curious about how humans developed and whether their
physical differences represent climatic adaptations. The results, although
often interesting, were inconclusive and further research in this area is
evidently discouraged.
Setting all thoughts of racism
aside, a scientific question can be framed whether isolated populations of a
species can all develop simultaneously into another species -- perhaps under
the influence of simultaneous climatic change. To me, this hypothesis seems so
complex as to make it extremely unlikely. How many identical mutations would
have to occur at once on different continents? Or are we supposed to believe
that a preexisting genetic switch was turned on, like industrial melanism in
several species of moths?
Warning flags are also raised by
these considerations:
(1) I know of no other species for
which such a complex history has been proposed.
(2) Coon based his hypothesis on a
very small number of specimens.
One can posit nearly isolated
populations receiving new genes from a common source as a far more likely
scenario, but this compromise is not what Carleton
Coon proposed. Coon thought that H. erectus races in
Europe,
Asia, and
Africa developed
regionally and independently into H. sapiens races in the same places. But so
far, the molecular evidence, such as the "mitochondrial Eve" tree, seems to
indicate that this sort of "genetic leavening" of various races of Homo
erectus never happened. Instead, a great wave of Homo sapiens erupted out of
Africa and
replaced the preexisting populations.
I'm at the extreme edge of my
knowledge on the topic, so that will be all for me. But if anyone has heard of
another totally interfertile species that is supposed to have developed from
multiple lines of ancestors, it would be apt to hear about it
now.
-----Original
Message-----
From:
paleonet-owner@nhm.ac.uk [mailto:paleonet-owner@nhm.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Bill Chaisson/Deirdre
Cunningham
Sent:
Monday, March 28,
2005 3:04
PM
To: paleonet@nhm.ac.uk
Subject: RE: paleonet ID in the
Classroom
I'm not convinced that it's racist,
but I still don't agree
with it. -And my grandfather was from
Alabama, so we could
be cousins! I'm just a few
miles away from Dayton, Tn,
home of the
Scopes trial.
Isn't this issue something that can be
settled with DNA evidence?
I also don't understand why it seems
unlikely that a large highly mobile and highly adaptable organism
like Homo sapiens could not
become globally distributed after originating from a single population
of H.
erectus.
Please provide a reference where the
multi-origins evidence is presented.
--
---------------------------------------------------
William
P. Chaisson
Adjunct Assistant Professor
Department of Earth and
Environmental Sciences
University of
Rochester
Rochester, NY
14627
607-387-3892