Hannah Liscomb

An Analysis of Stephen J. Morse’s “Scientific Challenges to Criminal Responsibility”: How Recent Neuroscience Research is Challenging Traditional Legal Ideas About Whether People Should Be Held Responsible for Their Actions

Hannah Liscomb

Philosophy 330 – Dr. Laura Weed

Ever since law was invented to manage human behavior, traditional ideas of responsibility to obey the law and culpability to punishment if one disobeys the law have prevailed. Everyone who has a basic understanding of law knows that these traditional ideas of responsibility and culpability are that everyone has a responsibility to obey the law and if they do not, they are subject to punishment. However, recent discoveries in neuroscience and genetics have dramatically complicated, challenged, and questioned these traditional ideas about responsibility to obey the law and punishment as a result of criminal activity. The profound questions that research in neuroscience and genetics have provoked are, “Are people morally responsible for their actions like we think they are or are everyone's actions completely determined by brain chemistry and genetics?” and “If people can't help engaging in criminal behavior because their actions boil down to their brain chemistry and genetics, can they be held legally responsible for actions they hypothetically have no control over?” In his work, “Scientific Challenges to Criminal Responsibility,” Stephen J. Morse gives an articulate, in-depth explanation as to why he believes traditional legal ideas about responsibility for human actions and why he does not believe recent scientific research that challenges conventional ideas about responsibility. Though he is articulate and thorough in his writing, there are some aspects of his arguments that I dispute and take issue with. I will cover each general argument he includes in his piece and explain why I reject some of the ideas he proposes.

Morse starts off the piece by acknowledging recent research and discoveries in genetics and neuroscience but rejects the impact that these discoveries could have on law and morality. In his own words, “Despite the rapid advances in both sciences in the last decade –including sequencing of the human genome and the increasing use of functioning magnetic resonance imaging [fMRI] to measure brain physiology – there have been no revolutionary breakthroughs in morality and law.”1 Morse is correct in saying this because discoveries in neuroscience, though hugely influential and important in the scientific/medical community, have been not nearly as influential in reforming the US Legal system. According to a scientific article posted on the PBS Nova website, “...adoption of neuroscience in the courtroom has been gradual...”2 Part of this reluctance on behalf of US courts to take these groundbreaking research developments into serious consideration could be explained by philosopher Jerry Fodor, who Morse quotes in his piece: “If commonsense intentional psychology were really to collapse, that would be, beyond comparison, the greatest intellectual catastrophe in the history of our species; if we're that wrong about the mind, then that's the wrongest we've ever been about anything,” and “We'll be in deep, deep trouble if we have to give it up...”3 There seems to be a strong tone of fear in Fodor's words of the idea that humans may have been woefully wrong all along about how the human brain operates and also a tone of stubborn reluctance and refusal to entertain the possibility that we need to change our current thinking about how the brain works in relation to actions. The problem with this situation is that science doesn't care about people's inability to accept changing ideas about how the material world works. The nature of scientific study is to fearlessly pursue new information about how the material world operates without regard to people's fears about the effect that changing theories will have on material existence. In this regard, science and the law are at odds with each other. Morse acknowledges this conflict between science and the law by saying, “The law is in many respects a conservative enterprise and will always resist the supposed reforms other disciplines suggest.”4 Science moves too quickly for law, and this difference plays a role in the issue of whether neuroscience research should affect how law is administered. After acknowledging scientific research that challenges law but rejecting its impact on the law, Morse goes on to sum up the argument resulting from neuroscience research. The argument is that brain chemistry and activity is entirely responsible for people's actions, therefore people cannot be held responsible for their actions because we can't help what our brain chemistry is.5 An analogy to this issue would be laws criminalizing people who are too short or too tall. (Of

course, there have never been such laws, but the purpose is to use them as a hypothetical analogy). Such laws would be holding people responsible for something they can't help: their height. Morse argues that people's actions are not something they can't help due to brain chemistry. He prefers the traditional legal definition of human actions: “Law views human action as reason-governed and treats people as intentional agents, not simply as part of the biophysical flotsam and jetsam of the causal universe.”6 In other words, he flatly rejects the idea that human actions can't be helped because they are a result of brain chemistry and embraces the idea that human actions are dictated by reason and carried out by people who are “intentional agents.”7 One could challenge his claim further though by saying that reason is a product of brain chemistry and that “intentional agents” can also be reduced to their brain chemistry. Biological anthropologist Dr. Helen Fisher developed a method of classifying people's temperaments based on neuroscience.8 It naturally follows that some personalities have more reasoning capabilities than others (based on physical activity in the brain) making some people engage in behavior that the law views as criminal and others not engage in such behavior. This is contradictory to what Morse is saying, which is that brain chemistry is not necessarily connected to people's actions and behavior. So what does Morse think dictates people's actions if he doesn't believe the theories of neuroscience? His answer ultimately is that he doesn't know what dictates our actions. He writes that he does not believe the spiritual explanation for human behavior and actions—“I am not positing the existence of nonnatural or mysterious properties, such as a soul. Nor do I assume that our nonmaterial minds are somehow independent of our physical bodies but yet are in causal connection with our bodies,” he writes.9 Instead he believes that our brain dictates the activity of our minds and our minds dictate the activity of our bodies, but admits that there is currently no explanation as to how this works.10 He concludes the question of what he believes dictates human actions by stating that people as a whole (not just their brain or soul, for example) dictate how they act through reason. But again, the question remains of where this reasoning comes from. Does reason come from our soul, from brain chemistry or from somewhere else that we don’t understand? The remaining question weakens the validity of his argument. In the next section of his piece, Morse argues that even if actions are caused by physical activity such as brain chemistry, this does not excuse people from being responsible for their actions. He writes that “Although all behavior may have physical causes in a physical, material universe, it does not follow that all behavior is

excused, because causation per se has nothing to do with responsibility.”11 There are flaws to this argument, though, because if people's actions are a result of something they cannot help, (brain chemistry and/or genes) then they should not be held responsible for their actions. Careful scientific study of brain chemicals that cause different types of behavior is problematic for traditional legal theories that Morse believes because people can’t control what chemicals control their brain. Scientists know for sure that there are chemical compounds circulating in our brain called neurotransmitters. They cause different brain functions, and brain functions cause different behaviors and actions.12 There are four major chemicals active in the brain: serotonin, dopamine, glutamate, norepinephrine. All of these chemicals affect the way people think and feel in different ways, and an abnormal imbalance in these chemicals, can lead to mental illnesses such as schizophrenia, depression, and bipolar disorder.13 If everybody has these chemicals in their brains and an imbalance in these chemicals can happen to anyone, thus changing their behavior negatively, then why should people be held responsible for their actions? Some of the most famous criminals who have committed atrocious acts were medically diagnosed with mental illnesses that are caused by imbalances of chemicals in the brain. According to The Atlantic, the majority of inmates are mentally ill. The U.S Department of Justice issued a set of statistics in 2007 showing that most inmates in state and federal prison suffer from depressive disorders, mania, bipolar disorder, manic-depression, schizophrenia, post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety disorders, and personality disorders.14 According to research done by neuroscientists, an imbalance of the chemicals dopamine, glutamate, and serotonin cause schizophrenia.15 So the question is, should Berkowitz have been held legally and morally responsible for the murders he committed, or should he not have been held responsible because he can’t control the chemical imbalances in his brain? Many neuroscientists would say he should not have been held responsible, but Morse would say that the punishment he got was the correct solution to his criminal activity. Morse does admit that if neuroscientists and geneticists discover that human beings aren't capable of “minimal rationality,” then more legal excuses can be made for people so that they aren't responsible for their actions, but he maintains that the idea that people are not capable of “minimal rationality” is a dubious claim.16

In the next section of the piece, Morse goes on to further discuss what he thinks of as extreme neuroscientific views on responsibility. The idea that people’s state of mind has no connection to their behavior is a new hypothesis that neuroscientists have come up

with. Morse refers to the idea that people are reduced to their brain chemistry as “VNC” or “victims of neuronal circumstances.”17 This idea that people are “victims of neuronal circumstances,” if true, would completely undermine and delegitimize all previous “folk psychological” theories about the connection between people’s mental states and their behavior. “Folk psychological” theories posit that people’s mental states cause their behavior, but neuroscience research developments posit that it’s actually just brain chemistry that causes different behaviors and actions, not a general state of mind. To clarify what the neuroscientists hypothesize, Morse quoted an article written by Jonathan Cohen and Joshua Greene (both neuroscientists): “What neuroscience does, and will continue to do at an accelerated pace, is elucidate the ‘when,’ ‘where’ and ‘how of the mechanical processes that cause behavior.”18 The two neuroscientists continued on to describe the irresponsibility of denying that behavior is caused by “mechanical processes” in the brain, when these processes can be displayed by fMRI scans and how they work can be described through equations.19 The important distinction here is between mental states and brain mechanisms controlling how we behave and act, as Morse points out.20 People like Morse believe that mental states are the cause of behavior, and neuroscientists believe that brain mechanisms are responsible for behavior. There is a critical difference between the two causes, and which cause courts and judges decide to believe affects the legal system in very different ways. Neuroscientists Jonathan Cohen and Joshua Greene hypothesize the “VNC” concept, but Morse is against the “VNC” concept for a couple reasons. One of the reasons he is opposed to the “VNC” concept is because it could possibly render the US legal system completely pointless. This is a valid concern because what he’s talking about is the issue that treating criminals like they aren’t morally responsible for their actions because they are “victims of neuronal circumstances” would, in fact, make the criminal justice system useless. In Morse’s words, “If Cohen [Jonathan Cohen] and Greene [Johusa Greene] are right, we are all allegedly ‘merely victims of neuronal circumstances.’ But are we? And will the criminal justice system as we know it, which includes robust notions of personhood and desert, wither away as an outmoded relic of a pre-scientific and cruel age?”21 Though it is a perfectly valid and thought-provoking challenge to the “VNC” claims of neuroscientists, an easy and equally valid rebuttal could be, “What’s the big problem with the criminal justice system becoming useless as a result of advanced neuroscience research?” Even if the criminal justice system is weakened or made useless by this research, one could argue that other non-legal systems

could replace the criminal justice system to keep criminals from committing criminal acts. Solutions that could be suggested to keep criminals from behaving in harmful ways are medicating them, putting them in therapy, or sending them to mental asylums (voluntarily or involuntarily), instead of legally punishing them for actions that, neuroscientists hypothesize, they are not responsible for (due to their brain chemistry). On both sides of the coin, I think traditional legal theorists and neuroscientists have wholly unhelpful approaches to how studies of the human brain should impact legal responsibility for criminal acts. Traditional legal theorists like Morse seem to not take into account the importance of brain science research and how the legal system will need to adapt to the research that is currently unfurling. As a result of the conservative nature of the legal system, there are mentally ill people who are thrown in jail for actions that they are not responsible for because it is truly their abnormal brain chemistry that causes their criminal behavior (something they cannot control or change). On the other side of the coin, there are neuroscientists making, as Morse puts it, “scientific overclaim”22 about how no human beings are morally responsible for their actions because, according to the reductionist theory, we are all reduced to our brain chemistry. If this were to be true, then nobody would be held responsible for their actions, mentally ill or mentally well. Why does the truth have to be black or white? Can’t it lie somewhere in the middle? I tend to believe that abnormal brain chemistry (mental illness) is grounds to excuse somebody from being legally punished for criminal actions. Instead of being prosecuted and put in jail, they should be treated for their mental illness. But if somebody has normal brain chemistry and commits a criminal act, then they do have responsibility for criminal behavior and actions. This middle ground theory seems to be totally ignored between the extremist points of view of neuroscientists who believe in the “VNC” theory and traditional legal theorists who often believe that how the brain works on a neuronal level should have no effect on how much people are held responsible for criminal behavior. The prison system in the Netherlands is an interesting example of how an understanding of the complexity of human mental illness can lead to appropriate treatment of criminals. Though criminals are held legally and morally responsible for their actions, there are varying degrees of responsibility for crimes based on the mental health of the criminal and varying degrees of psychiatric care in prisons for criminals based on how mentally unwell they are.23 This is in stark contrast to the U.S. legal system where there is a serious mental health crisis in prisons due to a lack of understanding of mental illness among corrections officers and a lack of willingness on behalf of prisons to accommodate

psychiatrists who know a lot about how the human brain works.24 So, the controversy over whether human brain chemistry is what causes criminal behavior is not just a lofty philosophical debate, it is also a critical issue that has real-world implications, like mental health crises in prisons. Owen D. Jones, a professor of the biological sciences at Vanderbilt University studies this issue and gave a lecture at Georgia State University’s College of Law where he stressed the importance of “having an interdisciplinary approach to complicated legal issues” (by including neuroscience research in criminal cases). He explained in the lecture that the law deals directly with human behavior and neuroscience is producing evidence that human behavior is caused by chemical processes in the brain, complicating how the legal system deals with criminals. Jones, unlike Morse, believes that neuroscience research can be used as an advantage for the criminal justice system. He claims that if judges and courts pay more attention to the findings of neuroscientists, the information can be handled in such a way that benefits the criminal justice system, not tears it apart and creates a postlegal dystopia like Morse claims.25 In conclusion, the field of neuroscience has uncovered some potentially world-changing evidence that suggests that all human behavior, criminal or benevolent, can be traced back to chemical reactions in the brain. Proponents of the “VNC” (victims of neuronal circumstances) theory claim that nobody is truly responsible for their behavior because their behavior is a direct result of their brain chemistry and nobody is responsible for the kind of brain chemistry they were born with (or that environmental factors influenced). Proponents of traditional legal theories about justice and moral responsibility like Stephen Morse believe that people are responsible for their actions and that the neuroscience research claiming that people are not responsible for their behavior is woefully incomplete and therefore invalid. I, personally, think that both claims are too extreme and imbalanced, but that there are grains of truth to both stances. These grains of truth make up a more nuanced understanding of human behavior and how it relates to brain chemistry which is that brain chemistry may have a lot more to do with human behavior than traditional legal theorists thought, but that there are other factors that control human behavior other than brain chemistry, making some criminals more responsible for their actions than others. It is clear to me that the situation is more complicated than simply saying that everyone is responsible for their actions no matter how much brain chemistry has to do with our behavior or saying that nobody is responsible for their actions because we are all “victims of neuronal circumstances.” The question of whether the criminal justice system is in need of revision is

one that I am unwilling to answer due to the fact that the “VNC” theory has yet to be explored in- depth by lawyers and neuroscientists alike. Whether the fate of the criminal justice system is left up to the research of neuroscientists and geneticists is something that my generation might never know.

Endnotes 1 Stephen J. Morse, “Scientific Challenges to Criminal Responsibility,” Philosophy of Law: Ninth Edition, Joel Feinberg, late, Jules Coleman and Christopher Kutz (Boston: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning, 2014), 840.

2 PBS Nova, “Can Neuroscience Determine Guilt or Innocence?” Public Broadcasting Service, last modified 2018, https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/law-neuroscience/ 3 Stephen J. Morse, “Scientific Challenges…,” 849. 4 Ibid., 851. 5 Stephen J. Morse, “Scientific Challenges…,” 840. 6 Ibid., 841. 7 Ibid., 841. 8 “Dr. Helen Fisher on How Brain Chemistry Determines Personality and Politics,” YouTube video, 45:14, posted by “ReasonTV,” April 18, 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lOPtTbFCMY 9 Stephen J. Morse, “Scientific Challenges…,” 841. 10 Ibid., 841. 11 Ibid., 842. 12 Bret Stetka, “Cocktail of Brain Chemicals May Be a Key to What Makes Us Human,” Scientific American, January 24, 2018. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/cocktail-of-brain-chemicals-maybe-a-key-to-what-makes-us-human/ 13 University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, “How Brain Chemicals Influence Mood and Health,” UPMC HealthBeat, last modified 2018, https://share.upmc.com/2016/09/about-brain-chemicals/ 14 Olga Khazan, “Most Prisoners are Mentally Ill,” The Atlantic, published April, 2015, https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/04/more-than-half-ofprisoners-are-mentally-ill/389682/ 15 Mental Health America, “Schizophrenia,” last modified 2018, http://www.mentalhealthamerica.net/conditions/schizophrenia 16 Stephen J. Morse, “Scientific Challenges…,” 844. 17 Ibid., 844. 18 Ibid., 845. 19 Ibid., 845. 20 Ibid., 845. 21 Stephen J. Morse, “Scientific Challenges…,” 845. 22 Stephen J. Morse, “Scientific Challenges…,” 846.

23 Melissa Hogenboom, “The Unique Way the Dutch Treat Mentally Ill Prisoners,” BBC Future, published April 25, 2018, http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20180423-the-unique-way-the-dutch-treatmentally-ill-prisoners 24 Alisa Roth, “The ‘Insane’ Way Our Prison System Handles the Mentally Ill,” The New York Times, May 22, 2018. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/22/books/review/insane-alisa-roth.html 25 Georgia State University, “Owen D. Jones to Discuss How Neuroscience Plays a Role in Law at Georgia State Law’s Miller Lecture,” http://www-lexisnexiscom.proxy4.athensams.net/hottopics/lnacademic/

Works Cited

“Dr. Helen Fisher on How Brain Chemistry Determines Personality and Politics.” YouTube video, 45:14. Posted by “ReasonTV,” April 18, 2018. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lOPtTbFCMY

Feinberg, Joel, Jules Coleman, Christopher Kutz. Philosophy of Law: Ninth Edition. Boston: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning, 2014.

Georgia State University. “Owen D. Jones to Discuss How Neuroscience Plays a Role in Law at Georgia State Law’s Miller Lecture.” http://www.lexisnexiscom.proxy4.athensams.net/hottopics/lna cademic/

Hogenboom, Melissa. “The Unique Way the Dutch Treat Mentally Ill Priosners.” BBC Future. Published April 25, 2018. http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20180423-the-unique-waythe- dutch-treat-mentally-ill-prisoners

Jensen, Emily. “New York’s Biggest Police Manhunt: The Son of Sam.” StMU History Media. Published December 5, 2018. https://www.stmuhistorymedia.org/new-yorks-biggest-policemanhunt-the-son-of-sam/

Mental Health America. “Schizophrenia.” Last modified 2018. http://www.mentalhealthamerica.net/conditions/schizophrenia

PBS Nova. “Can Neuroscience Determine Guilt or Innocence?” Public Broadcasting Service. Last modified 2018. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/law-neuroscience/

Roth, Alissa. “The ‘Insane’ Way Our Prison System Handles the Mentally Ill.” The New York Times, May 22, 2018. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/22/books/review/insanealisa-roth.html

Seigel, Max H. “Berkowitz Given 25 Years to Life in Each of 6 ‘Son of Sam.’” The New York Times, June 13, 1978. https://www.nytimes.com/1978/06/13/archives/new-jerseypages-berkowitz- given-25-years-to-life-in-each-of-6-son.html

Stetka, Bret. “Cocktail of Brain Chemicals May Be a Key to What Makes Us Human.” Scientific American, January 24, 2018. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/cocktail-of-brainchemicals-may-be-a-key-to-what-makes-us-human/

University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. “How Brain Chemicals Influence Mood and Health.” UPMC HealthBeat. Last modified 2018. https://share.upmc.com/2016/09/about-brainchemicals/

Nutrition in College Is Nutrition for Life

Elizabeth Mattair

English 105 - Professor Danielle Elly

One of the most stressful and time-consuming aspects of college life is nutrition. Some students can find themselves overwhelmed with options in the dining hall, and other students may find that the options with which they are presented do not suit their taste. Paired with the added challenges of time management and independence, mealtime in college can be a draining chore. With that being said, nutrition for college students is often an afterthought. Between registering for classes and shopping for dorm decorations, teens and young adults are often ill-equipped to make educated decisions at mealtime. Why do college students so often lack the knowledge and skills to select nutritious sources of nourishment? It could be due to the lack of healthy options presented to them in the dining hall. While some colleges are working towards providing more balanced choices for students, the average university dining hall still needs improvement. Another struggle could arise from the lack of structure and newfound independence. College first-years are used to action-packed high school days, in which they were not only busier than they are in college, but they also most likely had someone else preparing healthy meals for them each day. Lastly, cultural standards and expectations can lead to body image issues and eating disorders, which are likely to manifest themselves in a new, stressful environment like college. Given the struggles college students have faced regarding nutrition for decades, college administrations and students should work together to inform and improve the average college student’s approach to mealtime. Proper nutrition during college years can set the tone for a lifetime of health and wellness. According to Lindsay Boyers in an article for the San Francisco Gate, “Regularly eating at night, consuming a lot of fast food, skipping breakfast, eating oversized portions and drinking sugary beverages all contribute to weight gain that can eventually lead to obesity, according to MayoClinic.com.

Obesity puts you at risk of several health conditions, including high cholesterol, high triglycerides, type-2 diabetes, high blood pressure, stroke, heart disease, gallbladder disease, cancer, depression, osteoarthritis and skin problems.” (Boyers). In other words, typical unhealthy eating patterns and behaviors of college students may lead to more serious health issues later in life. These eating patterns are often functions of the hustle and bustle of college life, and students who slip into these patterns by default often suffer the long-term consequences as they get older. Given this information, colleges and universities have the opportunity to impact nationwide health by informing and assisting students at mealtime. According to the New York University website, “a balanced diet can help students increase energy levels, promote a functioning immune system, improve their ability to cope with stress, and increase concentration and performance in school.” (NYU). In other words, good nutrition has many benefits for students during their time at college and beyond. This means that, in the interest of promoting their students’ success, colleges and universities should invest more time, energy, and resources into helping students plan and provide balanced meals for themselves. It is no secret that a lot of college dining halls leave much to be desired. Many students count the days until they can return home and eat a home-cooked meal. The lack of quality of the food served in many dining halls may be a contributor to the lack of balance present in the diet of the average college student. An article by Hayley Tillet for Buzzfeed called on the internet to submit their own college dining hall horror stories. The story includes photos of caterpillars and newts in the salads, moths in the ice cream, undercooked eggs, and purple chicken, among other nauseating exposures of the daily health code violations in many university dining halls (Tillet). Given this information, it is no wonder that college students desperately seek out other options, such as high-fat, high-calorie takeout, or skip meals altogether. When these behaviors become habits, college students may begin to see their lack of nutrition show up in other areas of their life, such as their academic or athletic performance, or their general health. Aside from lack of quality in the dining halls, another reason for poor nutrition in college can be the circumstances of the average college student. A ChildMind article by Rae Jacobson explains that the typical challenges of college life include a larger amount of schoolwork, a more open schedule, and an emphasis on peer relationships and social activities. “College can be a time of a lot of excitement and stimulation and also a lot of stress,” explains Dr. Baker, a child and adolescent psychopharmacologist. “It asks young people

who are not yet adults to act in a very adult way.” (Jacobson). Students at colleges and universities are faced with more freedom than they have likely experienced before. This freedom and independence, mixed with the pressures and demands of college life, can result in young people making poor decisions in seemingly meaningless areas of their day such as their food. Due to their busy schedules and other distractions, college students tend to select the quickest and easiest source of food. This is often not the healthiest option, and as a result college students may not get the proper nutrition due to lack of time and energy. College is full of transitions. School administrations should make more of an effort to acknowledge these transitions, and to funnel resources into removing the difficulties of meal planning and preparation for students.

College students may experience issues with getting proper nutrition as a result of pressures from pop culture and the media. Dr. Douglas Bunnell, the clinical director of New York’s Monte Nido treatment center, states:

The stress of a college schedule, managing a new social context, and dealing with independent living can trigger reemergent anxiety or, in some cases a new mental illness… If you have a heavy dose of anxiety and you’re in a social environment, and you’re constantly exposed to the thin body ideal, that’s a perfect storm convergence of factors that can drive a vulnerable individual into an eating disorder. (Jacobson).

As discussed previously, college brings many transitions and challenges. Paired with pressure from social media and peers, even more obstacles are created. For 25% of college men and 33% of college women, these obstacles tend to manifest themselves as eating disorders (Campbell). Between horror stories about the “Freshman 15” (the fifteen pounds college first-years supposedly gain), images on social media, and outside pressures from peers, the taste of freedom and lack of supervision for a college student may spiral into disordered eating or a full-blown eating disorder. In a New York Times article about a study debunking the idea of the “Freshman 15” altogether, Tara Thean states, “The study authors urge the media and universities to stop using the term ‘freshman 15,’ since it’s not only misleading, but may also add to the problem of distorted body image among college students, particularly young women.” (Thean). In other words, the term “Freshman 15” does not paint an accurate picture of what happens to the majority of college

students’ weights, and it can be damaging to their mental health and self-esteem. In fact, Thean’s article states that the average female college student only gains about 6 pounds across four years, and the average male student gains about 12. These numbers may also be attributed to natural body aging and changing and not a massive gain of weight due to junk food or overeating (Thean). However, an impressionable college student may hear “Freshman 15” and panic, triggering disordered eating habits and anxiety. By understanding proper terminology and taking into account the relatively fragile mental health of many college-age students in this day and age, universities have an opportunity to make choosing and planning meals an enjoyable and educational experience rather than a stressful one. Given all this information, how exactly can colleges and universities assist their students with their dining choices? According to an article by Emily Kerr for U.S News and World Report, various institutions across the nation have come up with unique ideas. Sterling College in Craftsbury, VT, in particular has an interesting plan for providing nutritious options for students. They take pride in involving students behind the scenes, proving that exposure is the best form of education. “Considered among the best of the best in sustainability, the college grows its own food from seed to compost, and students are required to do their part: All students do one week of dish duty each semester, and many cook alongside the college's professional chefs to prepare meals.” (Kerr). Elon University in North Carolina is another trailblazer in educating students about nutrition through hands-on experiences. “The university allows its students to get involved in the Oxford College Organic Farm, a living lab that provides produce for the school's dining hall and a weekly farmers market on campus.” (Kerr). By allowing students to get involved in the kitchen and in the garden, the lessons they learn about nutrition are likely to last a lifetime. The dining practices at Elon and Sterling are examples of ways that universities can not only remove some stress and confusion about nutrition for students, but educate them about proper nutrition as well. There are other simpler ways universities can assist their students at mealtime. “Point-of-purchase interventions provide cues to action about the nutritional value of certain food items to guide individuals in making healthier selections.” (NYU). New York University provides transparent information about the nutritional value of the food they provide for their students with labels, signs, and symbols. This transparency encourages students to make educated decisions and helps them to know exactly what they are putting into their bodies. Another way colleges can help students with nutrition is through required educational courses. Universities already require

students to take online course modules about alcohol, drugs, and sexual assault. Given the prominence of eating disorders and stress about healthy eating on college campuses, nutrition should be talked about just as much as these other issues. Universities can also help by not scheduling classes at mealtimes. A student with an 8am class will most likely not eat breakfast, and a student with a night class may not be able to squeeze in a proper dinner. By creating two or three breaks in their schedules each day, colleges can encourage students to get a quality meal in between classes. Every little bit helps, but there is definitely a need for more education, assistance, and intervention from universities when it comes to helping students eat a balanced diet. Nutrition in college is a well-known but widely unaddressed issue. Given that health habits during the college years can set the tone for general health later in life, it is imperative that universities make more of an effort to improve their dining options and assist students in their decision-making at mealtime. By taking steps to educate and inform their students about nutrition, colleges have an opportunity to create lasting health habits in students and rewrite the landscape of obesity and heart health statistics in America.

Works Cited

Boyers, Lindsay. “Long-Term Effects of Bad Eating Habits.” Healthy Eating | SF Gate, 2 Dec. 2018, healthyeating.sfgate.com/longterm-effects-bad-eating-habits10555.html

Campbell, Leah. “Here's Why Eating Disorders On College Campuses Are On The Rise.” Healthline.com, 1 Oct. 2018, www.healthline.com/health-news/eating-disorders-on-collegecampuses-are-on-the-rise#The-role-universities-play.

Jacobson, Rae. “Eating Disorders in College Students.” Child Mind Institute, 21 Aug. 2020, childmind.org/article/eatingdisorders-and-college/

Kerr, Emily. “10 Colleges With Unique Dining Options.” U.S. News & World Report, 3 Dec. 2019, 9:59 am, www.usnews.com/education/bestcolleges/slideshows/collegethat-offer-unique-healthy-dining-options.

NYU Web Communications. “Nutrition.” NYU, www.nyu.edu/life/safety-health-wellness/live-wellnyu/priority-areas/nutrition.html.

Sogari, Giovanni, et al. “College Students and Eating Habits: A Study Using An Ecological Model for Healthy Behavior.” US National Library of Medicine , National Institutes of Health, 23 Nov. 2018, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6315356/.

Thean, Tara. “Debunking the Myth of the 'Freshman 15'.” Time, 2 Nov. 2011, healthland.time.com/2011/11/02/debunking-the-mythof-the-freshman-15/

Tillett, Hayley. “18 Times College Dining Halls Tried To Food And Failed Miserably.” BuzzFeed, 30 July 2020, www.buzzfeed.com/hayleyrochelletillett/college-dining-hallfood-fail

Irish Female Sports Fans: Unwittingly Political

Aileen K. Burke

Undergraduate Research Grant Project (Summer 2019) Political Science

Introduction

The Irish and their descendants have a long, storied history in the United States after their emigration from Ireland due to the massive potato famine that drove 1.5 million families to rapidly leave the country in the late 1840’s. The Irish, in addition to eastern European and Italian immigrants, were met with great discrimination by Americans when arriving to North America in the early 1800’s. They were “othered” by the “typical” white members of the American communities in large cities in a way that was similar to the recently “freed” African American slaves of the south; it is imperative to state that the discrimination that these two ethnic groups faced were nonetheless not identical. By way of illustration, an image associated with this time in American history was the help wanted signs with “No Irish Need Apply” boldly annotated underneath. The Irish were “othered” because of where they came from, and early depictions of their new culture in American mass media; this includes political cartoons by historically significant cartoonist Thomas Nast. These images also depicted personality traits that are still associated with people of Irish heritage, such as laziness, drunkenness, volatility, and unintelligence. Those immigrants were not born within the borders of the United States and were competing for limited work within major cities at this time in American history. The fear of losing jobs to people who would work for less money manifested itself in hatred and discrimination. The Irish and other immigrant groups moving into the United States at the time did not receive the same level of discrimination as other “others,” because they were ultimately still white. Therefore this group faced the discrimination that is taught in

some history classes today, and paralleled in modern white fears about Mexican immigrants; the power structure aims to remain the same in both cases, and hatred is the tactic selected to enforce the structure. Although the Irish demographic has become increasingly and permanently brought into the socially constructed fold of American “whiteness,” there are many people who still believe in the salience of the Irish-American hyphenated identity; some of these people choose to still identify as such. Being Irish and or Irish-American has not been politically salient in a significant amount of time, as there are no phenotypic markers that make it easy for people to “other” those who identify as such; although there were depictions in media by elite whites that presented markers that became normalized. Nonetheless, there is a particularly significant community of people who still believe in the salience of the identity from West Brighton; this is a small community on the northernmost shoreline of Staten Island, New York. Staten Island is one of the five boroughs that make up New York City, and is frequently referred to as “The Forgotten Borough.” It stands as the most politically conservative of the boroughs, and inhabitants, including those responding participants, sometimes feel neglected by the city’s government. This is a problem dating back to the 1960’s: there was even a short film made called “The Forgotten Borough.” Originally settled by the Dutch, the borough diversified once it was absorbed into New York City on the whole. Irish currently make up roughly four [4] percent of the city’s population, and approximately 60 percent of the residents of Staten Island identify as Roman Catholic (U.S. Census Bureau, 2017.) There is overlap between these two demographics, especially within the community of West Brighton. West Brighton, New York is home to a great portion of the Irish population of the borough, and many families have lived there intergenerationally. I hypothesize that their Irish identity is salient to them, especially those who identify as female, but not for the reasons that created the historic incarnations of the identity. The Irish-American identity, along with the reasons that people identify with it, has evolved with time. How this identity applies to different people depends on the rest of their constructed identity. Women who identify as such, or as anything at all, gesture to the political salience of their individual experiences within a particular context. Women, especially women of color, have been historically discriminated against and the compounding of these interactions between women and men have resulted in the political salience of identifying as a woman, as women have been and still continue to be marginalized; therefore they do not possess the same collective power as cisgendered men.

Furthermore, an individual who chooses to actively recognize their heritage manifests itself in many ways, and one that is distinctly notable is self-affiliation with particular sports teams. While barely studied, affiliation with sports teams can be a direct reflection of regional, national, socioeconomic, and political alignments. This is typically intergenerational, and it is of interest to see whether or not identifying as Irish-American will present through alignments of sports teams within the region. The intersection of these four identities is specific but are filled with great intergenerational depth when examined collectively and qualitatively. These identities should not compete with each other and are no longer “othering” like they were in previous centuries. It is important to note that there are other identities or components of identities that are present within each participant of the study, and unless they informed the identities that are part of the study, they are not addressed in the later components of the work.

Literature Review

All aspects of various identities are inherently political. Choosing to identify with groups that are outside of the straight, white, landowning males who wrote the rules that the country has stood by for centuries is revolutionary. It is difficult within the American context to take up space as someone who stands in opposition to what has been historically accepted by society, and it is imperative to note that many of the identities that people align with in the 21st century are ones that are placed upon them by those in a position of historic power. Identities serve to legitimize this maldistribution of power, and only some identities can truly be chosen. Over time, depending on what is happening in a given time during eras of this American context, different identities come to possess more or less political charge. It is simple to see them in the same way as a second-string ball player getting activated, and suddenly they are carrying the weight that once belonged to someone else. This independent research project will delve into the social construction of identity as shown in the work of Charles Tilly and Sidney Tarrow in their 2003 work The Politics of Collective Violence, and the construction of race from Omi and Winant’s Racial Formation in the United States. Tilly, and other scholars who work on ideas pertaining to identity look at specific aspects of different types of salient identities. This project examines the construction and politicization of whiteness according to Matthew Frey Jacobson as well

as the scholarly literature on state identification, sports team identification, and feminist theory. All human identities are invented and inherently political, according to Tilly’s book Identities, Boundaries, and Social Ties (Tilly 6). This project will argue that white [caucasian] female sports fans that self-identify with a “hyphenated” Irish identity, especially those living within New York State, are extremely political and are the direct result of their intergenerational economic, social, and political conditioning. I hypothesize that there will be a significant correlation between “hyphenated” Irish-American identities and self identification with Roman Catholicism. Identities, according to Tilly in the aforementioned title, are the result of compounded transactional social interactions that create “us/them” boundaries that increase the salience of different constructed identities throughout points of history. The existing body of work shows that these identities are concrete but depend on a large variety of factors that contribute to their manifestation. The intersection of these five aspects of identities are not average, but of interest when looking at how they could possibly be constructed, and under what conditions. Matthew Frey Jacobson’s book, Whiteness of a Different Color, addresses these categories discussed by Tilly, but looks closely at the idea of whiteness as it pertains to the historic Irish and other ethnic immigrant populations in the United States of America. The reracialization of these identities has allowed for populations such as Irish and Jewish persons to enjoy the hierarchical benefits of whiteness while maintaining the existing American power structure. This work, and the work of Noel Ignatiev’s How the Irish Became White, grants more specificity to the broader strokes of Tilly’s theories. The intersection of the Irish-American and female identities is of interest as they both are socially constructed but widely accepted, even beyond the American context. Both race and gender are constructions that allow those who have relative power to suppress others and keep the status quo. Although things have become easier for Irish, or really white European immigrants, people still believe in the “plight,” or racialized discrimination of Irish-Americans as it stands today.

There is currently no work that examines the people who exist in this pocket of Irish-Americans, and limited research outside of the aforementioned works. It is important to note that political science, and the disciplines that compose the studies, are relatively new within the limits of academia. The literature that exists mainly comes from sociologists, and contributions like this one are based in the political implications of the behaviors and groupings that these sociologists have

observed. It would be easy, but rather erroneous, to chalk these identities up to human nature or human nature argument. Nothing is ever truly that simple, though it is not yet fully addressed within the body of work. The contribution to the standing body of work here comes in the form of the intersectional case study and practical application of Tilly, Omi, and Winant’s work in order to increase cognition in populations that do not realize the political nature of their daily existence. For further understanding of the work, race is taken into consideration based on the operationalization of Omi and Winant, who wrote that is a master category; a concept that is arbitrarily founded in social, political, and economic divides that ebbs and flows based on the salience of certain identities at a certain point in history. Race is a category that is assigned meaning rather arbitrarily, and although the average member of the attentive public takes the idea of race as something given or natural, it is only because that same attentive public was conditioned to see race in this way.

Methodology

I recruited the sample through convenient referral and canvassing at Silver Lake Park and Mount Bethel Fire House in Staten Island, New York and Mount Bethel, Pennsylvania respectively. I shared an Institutional Review Board-approved contact speech with those interested in participating, which is included in the appendix of the paper. The overall sample size for the preliminary work [6 weeks] was ultimately seven [7] individuals. The referrals came from personal contacts who were conveniently members of the target demographic. The hypothesized connection between Irish-American self identification and practicing Roman Catholicism was apparent from the interviews, and this helped with further demassification of the answers from the participants. The context of these interviews was non-medical; there was no discussion that could have posed physical harm to the participants in the study. There was no conversation that asked for familial or personal health histories as they applied to their identification. The study’s participants all had at least a high school diploma and had seemingly healthy social circles that they referenced their interactions with during these interviews. The institutions they interact with on a daily basis vary, from their workplace to their choice in finding stories through national news media.

Principles of Selection

Those who participated had to identify as Irish-American and female; the two demographics that compose the identity of interest. Those potentially interested in participating in the study from referrals and the canvassing locations were given a contact speech outlining the project and providing. The speech is located in the appendix. If contact was reciprocated, an interview was set up and the following guide was used for conversation:

1. What is your name? 2. How “Irish” are you? 1. Both parents? 2. One parent? 3. What can you tell me about your growing up? Where did you grow up? Did you self-identify as Irish during this time? 4. How does that inform how you live now? Are you raising your children, if you have them, to identify as Irish? 5. What sports teams do you follow? 6. Can you cite any distinct experiences you have had as a female sports fan? Experiences that you may not have had if you were or identified as a male? 7. How did you decide to follow them? Were these the teams that either of your parents followed, if they followed sports? 8. Where do you currently live? 9. How long have you lived there? 10. Do you plan on staying or eventually moving elsewhere?

The conversation changed based on the content of the answers from the participants. This guide was exactly that: a guide. The points within the questions were important to address, but there were differences in each case that needed to have flexibility in order to take into consideration. It is important to note that there was no difference in questioning for someone who followed team sports over someone who followed individual sports. If a participant stated that they followed team sports or individual sports, it was noted, but it was not a component of the initial interview questions.

Analysis

Using this guide for conversation, the participants in the study spoke about themselves and their experience as a self-identifying IrishAmerican, and how that informs the rest of their experience involving

their identities. The conversations took the same broad strokes, but the finer details of each interview were different depending on other components of the identity that inform being Irish-American. Being Irish-American informs many other components of existence for the women who participated in the study. Ultimately, identifying as Irish-American stands at the top of the figure, and different parts of the identity plays off of other components. This is rudimentarily illustrated in figure 2 in the Appendix. Self identification as an Irish-American, according to the participants in these interviews, has a great deal to do with what I refer to in the appendix figure as Ancestry Anecdotes. Stories from older members of family conglomerates are directly related to the Irish and or Irish-American experience. These two aforementioned items directly inform what is marked as Religious Affiliation, Parenting Tactics, and the participant’s ideas surrounding the “Role of the Woman in the Home,” and what it means to identify as female. These smaller facets of the Irish-American identity can influence each other in various ways, even down to the respective sports team affiliations of each participant. These trends tend to repeat themselves intergenerationally. Identifying as Irish-American leans itself towards a further affiliation with the Roman Catholic church. 8 out of 9 participants attested their religious affiliation to Catholicism, and claimed this to be a direct result of how they were raised by their “Irish-American” parents. 5 out of the 8 who claimed religious affiliation of any kind were also students in parochial schools from kindergarten through high school, and claimed that religion was an important part of their educational experience. Being raised in the church affected these women in a number of ways, including how they saw themselves existing in the family structure and in society. On a much more detailed scale, 3 of the women claimed that their Irish-American heritage “informed” their parenting, or what I have labeled on figure 2 as Parenting Tactics. This means that their children have been or are being raised with some respect for what these women perceive to be Irish culture; in many cases this is inextricably linked to traditions that come directly from the Catholic church. One participant cited an Ancestral Anecdote that was central to her Parenting Tactics; “Never take a day off of work, my Grandparents and Great Grandparents couldn't... It made them look lazy, and so I don't do that myself... I am raising my children to have that similar Irish grit, it’s important to me.” As indicated in the Principles of Selection portion of the paper, there was guided discussion towards the sports team affiliation of each participant. All of the participants who were born in the state of

New York affiliate themselves with the team that parents affiliated with, no matter what the sport. The two participants from Pennsylvania claimed different sports affiliations; one aligned with the teams that their parents chose to affiliate with, and one had a varying list of teams that she attached to on her own, mainly from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. “Philly is known for having particularly rowdy sports fans, and as someone who is incredibly competitive and passionate... I love that culture and cannot picture myself supporting the teams of any other city.” The intersection of womanhood, being a woman, and affiliation with sports teams was an important topic of discussion for all of the participants in the study. Each participant had a specific instance that they cited as a woman who follows sports professionally or otherwise. 6 of the participants cited that men think it’s ‘cute’ and usually assume that they do not know what they are talking about until further discussion takes place. Two participants, both from West Brighton, Staten Island, did not feel as though they had been treated any less seriously than they would have been if they were a man. All of the participants use sport as a means to build community within their immediate nuclear families and or with other people that they meet in their daily lives. One participant’s story was particularly striking. She currently lives in San Diego, California, after being raised in West Brighton, Staten Island, New York. This participant was raised Irish-American and chooses to raise her 4 children with Irish-American traditions, and she uses sport to build community for herself nationally. She takes organized trips to seasonal games to follow her two favorite sports teams, the New York Mets and the New York Football Giants, as personal time to submerge herself in something that she is passionate about. She has met many new people through these trips and plans to continue to take them for the foreseeable future. This participant claims to face “interesting conversation” about her team affiliations, but never anything “gross or misogynistic.” The choice to identify with a sports team is subtly political, until it’s analyzed through the lens of Tilly’s work. One can only hypothesize that these Irish-American families have such strong allegiance to sport because of the factors that were mentioned throughout the course of their interviews. Competition, no matter what the regional component, appeals to a sense of hard work that underlies all of the other informative bits of the Irish-American identity that is being examined here. These families champion a sense of hard work that breeds success, and hard work from sports teams displays itself in wins and championships.

Conclusion

While the Irish-American identity is no longer politically salient, it seems to be intergenerationally significant in some pockets of New York City for lesser political reasons. Within these pockets, there is an inextricable link between identifying as Irish-American and practicing Roman Catholicism, or what participants would refer to as Irish Catholicism. This stands as the most significant difference between those participants from Staten Island and those Pennsylvanians who were used as a control population, who did not claim a religion at all in interviews. There are other ways in which different parts of the IrishAmerican identity manifest, especially in the experience of female Irish-Americans. All of the participants cited a sentimental intergenerational anecdote about the families that they grew up in, and these anecdotes were tied more frequently than not to experiences growing up within the Roman Catholic church and the practices of Roman Catholic faith tradition. Although the United States has moved away from blatant discriminatory practices, such as the ‘Irish Need Not Apply’ signs of the past, the anger towards those on the other side of the “us/them” boundary is still palpably present. This hostility is applied to those who present as a phenotypic “other” from the white standard that is commonplace in the United States; those groups such as selfidentifying Irish and Italian Americans monitor the boundary between white and “other”, as they still stand as lesser in the socially constructed spectrum of whiteness. Adding the presence of female identification only increases the “otherness” of the participant in question. When these groups started using their whiteness to their advantage, they were allowed into white society to defend the “us/them” boundary that exists between white America and American people of color. It is commonplace to hear members of these groups, especially those who identify as Irish-American, still lament about how rough their ancestors “had it,” and how they were able to “rise above” the discrimination they faced past customs on Ellis Island. The practices of discrimination, while sometimes just as poignant, are more subtle now and much more ingrained in the fabric of the inherently racist United States. That withstanding, the “other” within the United States then became racialized demographic groups such as Black, Asian, and Latinx persons whose difference is made much more apparent by physical markers than anything else. This is the “other” that suffers the most discrimination in the United States today; and in most cases it is

more pointed than anything that European immigrants ever suffered, especially under the current [Trump] administration. In July 2019 four democratic congresswomen were the subject of an angry tweet from President Donald J. Trump that suggested they, all American citizens, go back to where they came from. This hostility is matched by the president’s supporters, and has only gotten worse since the start of his administration. The other facets of the identities belonging to the “other,” like identifying as a woman, belonging to the middle class, or even following the National Football League or being a self-proclaimed United States Women’s Soccer team fan, do not matter to those members of the American norm who exist in power. It is important for those who identify as Irish-American, especially women, today to recognize the plight of those demographic groups and stand in solidarity with them. The “others” of the past and present have all been told to “go back to where they came from,” by members of the norm. There is tremendous political strength in recognizing the covert construction of these political identities. If the “other” has changed over time, it stands to reason that it can change again. It is a matter of increasing cognition, and then deciding that there does not have to be an other at all.

Appendix

Figure 1: Contact Speech Hello, my name is Aileen Burke and I am conducting independent research at the College of Saint Rose on the construction of irish female identity and sports team identification. I am looking for participants who identify with the demographics I am interested in studying. I would love to be able to talk to you about it personally. We would talk about your life and family for about a half of an hour, and all of our information/discussions would remain absolutely private. You can reach me at this number or at burkea735@strose.edu if interested or if you have further questions.

Figure 2: Informing Identity

Works Cited

Ignatiev, Noel. How the Irish Became White. Routledge, 2009.

Jacobson, Matthew Frye. Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race. 2005.

Omi, Michael, and Howard Winant. Racial Formation in the United States. New York: Routledge, 2015. Print.

Tilly, Charles and Sydney Tarrow. The Politics of Collective Violence. Cambridge Univ. Press, 2008.

Tilly, Charles. Identities, Boundaries, and Social Ties. Routledge, 2005.

US Census Bureau. “Census.gov.” Census.gov, www.census.gov/.

Weiss, Robert Stuart. Learning from Strangers the Art and Method of Qualitative Interview Studies. Free Press, 1995.

The Development of Racial Science in Apartheid and Post-Apartheid South Africa

Mark Edem

Political Science Capstone – Dr. Angela Ledford

Research Question

Since the first Dutchmen landed on the shores of the Cape of Good Hope, race has been at the center of the colonialism, expansionism, and privatization movements in South Africa. While the concept of race was still in its novel stages, it quickly developed into an ideology powerful enough to envelope the whole country and, at the time, the whole world. Apartheid has often been described as perfect racism; it was able to segregate and segment not only the different racial groups, but the different tribal groups present in the country (by reinforcing tribal differences that had existed prior to European colonialism). My aim is to analyze the “perfectness” of this racism. I want to first look at how the Afrikaner race had emerged as a branch of whiteness. I then want to look at how the Afrikaner race (and therefore its othered counterpart, the black race) was recognized scientifically and medically. I will then go into how different laws were instituted as a result of the accepted biological disparities between the races. And then of course, following apartheid, I will look at what has made it so difficult for these archaic racial paradigms to disappear from the national consciousness, and how black men and women (this of course is where gender enters) continue to be harmed by such paradigms. Ultimately, I will be arguing that democratization did not bring any additional objectivity to science. It is still being practiced in a way that works to legitimize the dehumanization we see amongst black and colored people. Furthermore, I will argue that these racial paradigms constructed and justified by science were upheld by the succeeding government, after the departure of the Nationalists.

Introduction

Since its inception, the concept of race has reordered and restructured the world. The concept began taking shape upon early European

contact with the brown- and black-skinned people of Africa and Asia. Following exploration, the era of European conquest and expansion dawned with the hopes of expanding its markets as well as rival fellow European nations for wealth and hegemony. Africa was ripe ground for this project because of its land, its resources, and ultimately its people. One can correctly conclude that the architects of race, then and even now, required a narrative around race in order to rationalize the exploitation that would come from it. It was around this time that racism had morphed into a consuming and barbaric ideology, legitimizing oppression and, consequently, wealth extraction. Once this erroneous narrative around race had been established, it indelibly burned itself into the social consciousness and peoples’ psychology. This then set stage for many of the infamous periods of oppression, whose haunting legacies remain with us today: slavery, segregation, colonialism, Apartheid. The question of whether race retains the same import it once did is an open one. Some people claim that it does in fact retain this import, but the form it has taken is more veiled, as open, explicit expressions of racism in modern society is unacceptable. Race does in fact play an incredibly critical role in certain, if not all, societies. And for some societies, to forfeit or eliminate race, would be the equivalent of dissolving that society completely. Two countries in particular have their entire societies constructed around race: The United States and South Africa. The racial history of South Africa is quite interesting. Traders and merchants, once they had discovered their route to India, landed on a cape (which they later named the Cape of Good Hope, currently Cape Town). After reporting this “newly discovered” piece of land back to the Dutch, the cape was regularly used as a sort of rest stop during voyages to India and other parts of Asia. The Dutch started settling along this cape and began farming the land as a means of living (this earned them the name Boers, which translates to “farmer” in Afrikaans). Seeing themselves as the rightful heirs of the new land and developing a new language (Afrikaans, a dialect of Dutch), a nascent Afrikaner identity was taking form. The initial interactions between the Boers and the indigenous inhabitants of South Africa were peaceful. However, because of corporate interests, British colonialism, and Afrikaner nationalism, conflict arose between the African tribes and the Boers (Boers and Afrikaner can be understood to be interchangeable). The Boers continued expanding, annexing the native lands with their own. The Boers rationalized the murder, and settler colonialism with scientific empiricism and used this to preach a doctrine of Afrikaner supremacy

and black inferiority. Soon the Boers had colonized the entire country, and once they had declared independence from the British crown, they enshrined this doctrine of Afrikaner supremacy. However, with the election of the nationalist government to power in 1948, this doctrine was fully entrenched. The nationalist government not only reinforced overtones of racism but also controlled the sexual habits and behavior between races. This not only entrenched a racial hierarchy but consequently a gender hierarchy. These were the de jure policies of the country until 1994 when South Africa was fully democratized and enfranchised all population groups. However, I argue that the ethos of racial and gender hierarchies justified through science have remained intact in the social and political arenas. I take it further and argue that (because of economic and political agendas) the incoming ANC government had upheld these racial and gender hierarchies, long after the Nationalist government had left power. The burden of this research paper will be to track the emergence of the Afrikaner identity, understanding how the Afrikaner identity (as well as Afrikaner supremacy) was calcified through science and medicine, and, of course, how these narratives continue to shape contemporary society as well as black-white relationships.

Literature Review

In order to develop a more profound understanding of the conditions of the Afrikaner race, we must first inquire about the nature of race. Jansen and Walters attempt to undertake answering this. In their book “Fault Lines: A Primer on Race, Science, and Society”, the two authors claim that in our contemporary societies, we understand race as a biological concept, and that even though this biological concept does exist, all people must be treated and honored with respect. They completely reject this view and suggest that we stop seeing race as a valid biological category. Dorothy Roberts assumes a similar position on this matter. In her acclaimed work, “Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-Create Race in the 21st Century”, she begins by explicitly stating that all research around the topic has not found a biological component to verify the racial demarcations we have made. If, with our highly technical and sensitive 21st century instrumentation, we cannot identify a biological component for race, then how was race determined and drawn up in centuries before. This leads Roberts to conclude that race was created around political truths and not biological ones; therefore, it is actually a political category. The framing of the Afrikaner identity was incredibly important and can be recognized as the genesis of racialism in South

Africa. South African historian, Saul Dubow, attempts to explore the nature of this identity and trace its development in “Afrikaner Nationalism, Apartheid and the Conceptualization of 'Race'”. The Dutch had left Holland as farmers and merchants and had settled along the Cape Colony, under British rule. The nomenclature reveals the perception Afrikaners had of themselves. “Afrikaner” translates directly to “African”. The sentiments that Boers held was that they too were native to Africa, and, therefore, were the rightful heirs to and owners of the land. While the identity was initially carved out in response to British aggression, it soon became parochially nationalistic. The British and the Boers signed a treaty granting independence to South Africa in 1910. Having a monopoly on political power, the Boers entrenched white supremacy and maintained this political (as well as social and of course economic) power over their black counterparts. Scientific research was a key cornerstone in the rationalization of white rule in South Africa. However, what the South African government and scientists presented as an empirical, factual truth of science, was laced in controversy and falsehoods. Thomas Kuhn, a trained mathematician and physicist, in his “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions”, attempts to explain such failures in the way that science is practiced. Kuhn suggests that science is generally practiced through paradigms. A scientific paradigm (much like its literary meaning) is a set of accepted principles and beliefs within which scientists work and try to answer questions in the field. When attempting to answer these questions, scientists may discover that the paradigm within which they are working does not possess all the necessary information to support their research. Ultimately, it will require that the paradigm be repudiated and a new one replaces it. Kuhn goes further suggesting that the myopia caused by the paradigms causes the scientist to model their question-and-answer approach according to what they believe should be asked, and they find answers that they expect to find. Understanding this, we see that lending political and rhetorical weight to white supremacy was not enough to fully legitimize white rule. Given that white people were a numerical minority in South Africa (this is a key difference between racial relations in the US and South Africa), they needed a stronger rationale for their cause. Paul Rich in “Race, Science, and the Legitimization of White Supremacy in South Africa, 1902-1940” delineates this in his work and suggested that this stronger rationale was, of course, science. Rich points out that after the Anglo-Boer war between 1899-1902, (which worked to ultimately earn the Boers freedom and control over South Africa), this was when we began noticing the emergence of racial hierarchy being supported through science. This led to the establishment of the South African

Association for the Advancement of Science, founded at the end of the Anglo-Boer war in 1902. Much of their scientific research was ordered around the already existing cultural and social stereotypes about black people. It does not only show that the science of the day was to preserve and even further entrench the status quo of a white supremacy, but that the scientists found these answers because they sought to. They believed they were correct. This new understanding of scientific sub-variations within the human race found its way into medicine and medical practices in South Africa. Harriet Deacon’s article, “Racism and Medical Science in South Africa's Cape Colony in the Mid- to Late Nineteenth Century.”, chronicles the entrance of racism into the South African medical industry by using the Cape Colony’s medical history as a case study. Over almost the entire Nineteenth century, the Cape housed several European settlers. Many of these settlers from Europe were practicing doctors. Because Cape doctors were simply adopting long-standing western practices, their own medical practices too reflected this bias. Deacon writes about the recount of one doctor, that is particularly important because of what it highlights. The doctor had for a patient, a Madagascan slave who had an ulcerated leg. In treating the patient, the doctor writes, “‘The raw flesh appeared as exactly of the same colour with that of a European. As the ulcer began to heal, it threw out fresh fibres in the same manner as ours do”(195). Deacon points out that even though the patient's wound healed in similar fashion as a European, the doctor was reluctant to accept these results and believed that an error was made in their documentations (169). This affirms Kuhn’s hypothesis that scientists are biased. Doctors and the medical industry in general continued to exhibit the same racial medical disparities. Karen Jochelson in her book, “The Colour of Disease: Syphilis and Racism in South Africa, 1880-1950” exposes the racist agenda of medicine in South Africa. Jochelson begins the book by citing the current epidemic in South Africa and much of Southern Africa; acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS). Given the work that Jochelson had done on AIDS and migrant labour in South Africa, she noticed striking similarities between the political and social narratives around AIDS and syphilis. During the close of the nineteenth century and the first few decades of the twentieth, there was an explosion in the number of people who were contracting venereal disease. The demographic of people who had contracted the disease provided fertile ground for the government to offer a racialized explanation for proliferation of this disease. Scientists and doctors were also offering racialized answers along the same line. The government then endeavored to explain the social behavior,

culture, and sexual relationships of blacks, coloreds, and even whites through this prism of syphilis. Black people were seen as carriers of this disease because of their weak genetic makeup (Jochelson 77). Whites, on the other hand, were not susceptible to the disease because of their genetic supremacy and advantage. The government launched a campaign spreading this sort of propaganda and instilling in whites a deeper fear for black people. Black men in particular, the government claimed, were hypersexual, and the lack of a strict nuclear family in African culture is what catalyzed this spread. This same hypersexuality was cited for black women and they were pathologized as “prostitutes (96). Because both syphilis and AIDS are largely sexually transmitted, it helped feed the narrative of the unrestrainable sexual habits that blacks in particular possess. From these preliminary understandings of the emergence of the Afrikaner race, and their legitimization of their biological supremacy through science, we can now look at how first segregation then Apartheid became the de jure national ethos of South Africa. Dubow and Beinart write on the history of South African segregation, and eventually, Apartheid in “Segregation and Apartheid in Twentieth Century South Africa”. For a number of reasons, the Afrikaners wanted to live segregated from their black counterparts. Several theories have been provided to answer why segregation had emerged. Dubow and Beinart stress that there is not a single concise, correct theory. They have only compiled the different logical and plausible explanations for the emergence of segregation. One of these reasons cited for segregation is the preservation of whiteness. The two authors highlight that the rhetorical and scientific explanations of race would erode if there was miscegenation. It becomes harder to justify white supremacy. And racialism is easier to preserve when the races are distinct. This is an interesting problem that colored people and Indians had presented to the South African government. This is exactly why the sexual habits of all races were strictly controlled. Because coloreds and Indians cannot be placed in any specific racial category, new categories had to be created in order to insert them into the racial hierarchy (between whites and blacks). Other reasons cited include (According to Marxist scholars) easy access to cheap African labor, preventing Africans from getting capital and owning property, colonialism and imperialism, the welfare and security of the Afrikaners in the event of a black uprising, and of course to feed the narrative that the different racial groups had different environmental and social needs (because of their biological makeups). Dubow and Beinart share a relevant example with public health. Because it was purported that black students have slower cognitive

capacities/processes, they needed different schools in order to address their special education needs (151). For these reasons and beliefs, a political and social system of separateness began to take shape. Much like segregation in the US, white people, black people, and colored people each lived in racially allocated housing, went to racially allocated schools, and used racially allocated public facilities. Black people and coloreds were severely underrepresented politically. Dubow espouses a somewhat similar model in his “Scientific Racism in Modern South Africa” in trying to understand how Apartheid was successfully implemented. Dubow studied the scientific disciplines in South Africa at the time and recorded how they were all racially tinged. From anthropology, medicine, and psychology, they all reinforced a fundamental difference in black and white people, one that could not be reconciled. It was this irreconcilable difference that lent credibility to the system of Apartheid. Dubow attributes the success of the Apartheid systems to the two polarizing currents of political and economic thought: capitalism and communism. Private and public ownership, essentially. The Apartheid government was able to exploit white fears of communism. In this way, they mirrored the propaganda campaign intended to sway white thought in the US against communism. Black people were seen as a people susceptible to the consuming ideology of communism and thus, had to remain uneducated and heavily surveilled, for example. Something interesting that Dubow finds is that the Bantu Education system that the Apartheid government had set up to train black people as semi-skilled laborers, actually assisted in nursing their political thought and groomed them into the generation that eventually overthrew the regime. His in-depth analysis allows him to find phenomena and relationships other historians normally wouldn't. With a rudimentary understanding of the general structure of Apartheid, one can take a more in-depth look into some of the policies that were instituted during it. It will also be observed how overtly and covertly, the policies relate themselves back to a racialized science. Susanne Klausen’s “Abortion under Apartheid Nationalism, Sexuality, and Women's Reproductive Rights in South Africa” keenly explores abortion laws during Apartheid. Klausen writes the criminalization of abortion during the period, the reasons for the criminalization, and the personal stories of women involved. The pre-Apartheid government had outlawed abortion and the Apartheid government enforced this law. Having a rabid fear for communism, the Apartheid government would fight against the permissiveness and “religiouslessness” of communists, by preserving the nuclear family and controlling the sexual habits of its population. This meant that sex was only allowed in heterosexual marriages, and heterosexual marriages within races. During the 60’s a

concerning number of black and white women were dying from complications during abortions. The government tried to further crackdown on women, by enforcing stricter laws and ultimately passing The Abortion and Sterilization Act (1975). It disallowed abortions, threatened sterilization, and gave penalties to doctors who performed abortions. It later surfaced that the government was aware of the clandestine abortion sites that black women would go to, but they chose not to crackdown. They chose not to because they did not want to subsidize or have to pay for black women, the fear of a ballooning black population, and the narrative that black women were naturally promiscuous. White women on the other hand, were discouraged from having abortions so that they could bear white babies, increasing the white population and thus preserving white supremacy. Another nefarious policy instituted during Apartheid was the Bantu Education Act (1954). In “Outstanding Individuals do not Arise from Ancestrally Poor Stock": Racial Science and the Education of Black South Africans”, Stephen Appel attempts to elucidate the intense racialization of the Act and its consequence on a generation of South African youth. This was a segregation law that segregated schools throughout the country. Hendrik Verwoerd, a universally recognized architect of Apartheid, helped draft the legislation. The intention of the legislation was to move African students towards unskilled and semiskilled labor, while simultaneously keeping them politically inactive, suppressing collective political thought. Appel says that this move was validated because of some of the claims Verwoerd made. He claimed that African students, because of their different cognitive make-up and capacities, must go through a different education system. This education system would help them come to an understanding with their white counterparts, groom them sufficiently, and ultimately resolve South Africa’s racial problems. This pseudo-yet real scientific practices continue today, whether deliberately or subconsciously. In, “Fault Lines: A Primer on Race, Science, and Society”, authors Jansen and Walters reference a redacted article in a Stellenbosch University paper titled, “Age- and Education-Related Effects on Cognitive Functioning in Colored South African Women”. Because of pressure from the students, the researchers chose to rescind the article from the University’s journal. The paper attempted to explain the effects of age and environment on the cognitive functions of colored women in South Africa. Jansen and Walters point out that the only reason such an article would be published is because the researchers believe that there is perhaps a difference in the manner in which a colored woman's brain operates versus her black or white counterpart. Of course, the researchers go

further and suggest that colored women do in fact have slower cognitive processes because of their environments. The authors warn that we must not see racial science as an ancient relic of South African history, but of course as something that is still being practiced.

Analysis and Discussion

Collating the arguments of the different authors, we can surmise with much confidence that the racial hierarchy of South Africa is justified through racial science. From the same arguments, one can track the evolution of racial science chronologically as well as the inconsistencies woven into the science. As mentioned earlier, the Dutch arrival to the Cape in significant numbers was somewhat concurrent with the British arrival and colonization of the region. Understanding the British/Dutch relationship is fundamental in understanding the emergence of the Afrikaner race. British expansionism and colonialism in the 15th and 16th centuries would ultimately consume much of Africa, South Africa included. The Dutch were unhappy with the arrival and seizure of control by the Brits (Dubow 215). While the Boers were allowed some self-rule, they were forced to cede majority of the power they held to England. The Brits ruled over both the Boers and the indigenous populations austerely and asserted themselves as the dominant force. As the Dutch were required to pay taxes and other levies to the British, they grew increasingly disgruntled with the British presence. Their disaffection had led to them orchestrating a series of overthrow attempts to depose the British. It is important to note that in the Afrikaners’ attempt to separate themselves from the British politically, they also had to separate themselves racially. It is at this point in history where we begin to see the sequestering of a novel Afrikaner identity, and more importantly, a Dutch race from the larger white race. The Dutch began to feel separate from whiteness as had been established, and the need for a distinct identity emerged (Dubow 217).

The rhetoric around the essentialization of the Afrikaner race is quite similar to that of eugenicists in the United States during its immigration waves. Okrent’s “The Guarded Gate” does a fine job of recreating the ethos of this period. The book perfectly characterizes the distaste of elite, upper-class America to immigrants and immigration in general. The relaxed immigration policies in the United States was a key contributing factor to the inception and rapid popularity of eugenic science. Eugenicists fought to proscribe those with less-desirable genetic conditions and predispositions (“such as feeblemindedness”) from procreating (Okrent 39, 142, 233). In addition to this, eugenicists pushed for the proscription of less-desirable immigrants into the

country (Okrent 51, 77). In suggesting that there is a less-desirable immigrant from Europe (a majority white continent), eugenicists had to draw strict demarcations around races within whiteness. Those of English and German descent, they had deemed fit, and those of Russian or Italian descent were seen as unfit of American citizenship. The Afrikaner race-thinkers operated in the same fashion as American eugenicists; they worked to segment themselves from the rest of whiteness using science. The peculiarity of this new race must be highlighted immediately. This is suggesting that within the racial boundaries of whiteness, there are further racial classifications. The only legitimate secession from whiteness that the Dutch could claim was as an ideology, not as a separate race. At the time (and even during this age of scientific innovation), it would have been impossible to scientifically validate this claim, showing further that this identity was more political than biological. However, the classification of the Dutch (now Afrikaners’) as their own race was critical in laying the architecture upon which a systemic racial hierarchy would be built. This also places emphasis on another important area of concern, which is the purpose of race. If there was no way to biologically or scientifically prove that human beings could be grouped into racial categories, why still perform the exercise? The Afrikaner endeavor to create their own race gives us some insight into a compelling answer to this question. The course of South African history tells us that race has been constructed to create wealth, and racial science is a way to fortify and consolidate race (which then allows for the continued creation and accretion of wealth). So, while the concept of race had made no objectifiable sense, it continued to develop with the goal of wealth always at its center. As racial science develops, scientific integrity is willingly forfeited in favor of the overarching mission of race. The work of scientist Thomas Kuhn is particularly important here as he speaks of paradigms and how they can distort the lens through which a scientist conducts their studies. It becomes particularly important to preface this, and explicitly state, that there is no biological or scientific basis for the racial classifications of human beings. These groupings are purely political and founded on interests. To illustrate the exclusively political nature of race, Dorothy Roberts elucidates an important point. Roberts highlights that people grouped into the same racial categories actually have more genetic differences than people outside those groups. There are more genetic disparities, for example, between Zimbabweans and Ethiopians. And Zimbabweans and Ethiopians together have more genetic similarities to a white person from France for example. If genetics was in fact a strong identifier of race, it would be more

appropriate to collect Ethiopians or Zimbabweans and French people under the same racial category. However, what we instead see is that Zimbabweans and Ethiopians are grouped under the umbrella racial category of “black”. This reveals two things. The first is that the concept of different human races is erroneous and should not exist under the conditions that it does, or even at all. The second, is that the integrity of science has once again been betrayed. The scientists who created the categories either have a political agenda or have allowed all the previous work on racial science (and perhaps their own biases) to affect the reporting of their results which they believe are objective. This reveals the truth and relevance of Kuhn’s observations. It completely refutes the notion that scientific disciplines are omniscient, unbiased, and more objective than human thought. Like many other disciplines, it is fraught with bias and executes the agenda of its gatekeepers. Paul Rich brings forth a pertinent example that reveals the insouciance of scientists in preserving the integrity of the scientific method. Rich writes about the establishment of the South African Association for the Advancement of Science. The Association’s principal task was to take complex scientific literature and distill it into easily understandable and digestible information for the public (664). This came at a particularly opportune time as the fields of sociology and anthropology began to garner scientific and cultural importance. South Africa seized on the newly acquired legitimacy of these fields to support their endeavors to validating racial supremacy (665). Interestingly enough, the association had founded much of its scientific research on eugenic science from the United States. It can be correctly assumed that the science practiced by the association was extremely biased and skewed. Rich writes, “there was a clear desire to incorporate modern and ‘scientific’ modes of discourse within segregationist lexicon” (667). The association actually grew to become the most important scientific body in all of Southern Africa, and other countries in the region were modelling their own national scientific associations/agencies after this one. This means that racial science spread virally throughout Southern Africa, and non-white peoples were being regarded, en masse, as biologically inferior. It is in this way that South African scientists and eugenicists subconsciously manipulated their data and research to yield the results that they desired. Kuhn, in this work, did not focus on race, it can certainly be applied to the practices of racial science. An entry by a former member of the association, E.G Malherbe captures the bias and racism that his fellow scientists exhibited when conducting research. Malherbe wrote “‘It is an amazing spectacle that men of science will come together annually

in solemn conclave and condone results of measurement so inaccurate the likes of which they would have never accepted in their own scientific work’” (Rich 667). The scientists did not actively recognize their distortion of their results because they were so eager to find what they already believed to be true. Once this racial science had become deeply entrenched in the social consciousness, then segregation and Apartheid could take shape unhampered. Racial (and gender) science had underpinned almost every area of the social and political framework. The zenith of the Apartheid was during the 50’s and 60’s. Over this twenty-odd year period, Apartheid performed perfectly its desired functions. The wealthy political elite were making money from the extraction of natural resources and the appropriation of black labor. The white minority population enjoyed an unparalleled standard of living. The country’s population had been perfectly segmented into four major racial classifications: white, native, colored, and Asian. People were forcefully relocated, dispossessed of their lands, and lived in new areas according to these racial classifications. Racial mixing and interaction was rare. If a person was seen in a place not assigned to their race, they needed to provide paperwork showing their eligibility for being there, or they were arrested. Miscegenation, interracial sex, and interracial marriage was deemed unconstitutional and was strongly policed. Similarly, homosexuality and abortions were illegal. Any act of resistance or dissent against the state and its policies was met with arrest, violence, and murder. What must be acknowledged is that these laws and policies work in a complementary manner. All the different pieces of Apartheid interlocked in a way to keep the structure erect. While all the different laws may seem to have no relationship, if they are carefully studied, it can be seen that, in conjunction, they serve a fundamental purpose; the preservation of a capitalist empire. And this empire would be preserved, through violence, oppression, and of course, science. The goal of this capitalist empire, as with any other capitalist empire, was to generate wealth for a small group of people. As South Africa is a resource-abundant country, the white political elite had once violently coerced black people (as well as Indians and some whites) to work and mine these resources. When slavery was abolished and frowned-upon globally, the white elite began paying laborers to continue working in the mines. However, the wages of the workers were very meager. The white elite would extract the surplus of the profits made when they would put the resources on the market. This was the primary avenue through which white people earned economic hegemony in South Africa. However, to prevent collectivization by

laborers against the ruling class, a rigid form of segregation was instituted (Dubow 35). People who did not belong to the same racial category could no longer live and work together. White people were paid significantly more for much easier work. Better standards of living for whites gave them incentive to police the black-white border, and to maintain segregation/Apartheid. Racial segregation also precluded any meaningful interaction between races that would allow them to challenge false narratives and propaganda peddled by the ruling class. The government, however, would always cite scientific reasons for this mass separation, such as the different educational and occupational needs of the different races. Even if one were to think about abortion, the same strategy would be observed. The reason the government criminalized abortions, is because they feared the explosion in black population statistics and wished to coerce white women into having more babies. White supremacy, they deemed, would be difficult to preserve without a numerically significant white populace. Of course, not wanting these babies to be colored, miscegenation was outlawed. Another reason miscegenation was outlawed, was to ensure that strict racial demarcations existed, and to avoid racial ambiguity; white supremacy could not survive if it was difficult to determine who was and was not white. However, the government would constantly air false/unverifiable claims such as the fetus having life, or they would exaggerate the danger of abortion medical processes. Homosexuality was outlawed because it was seen as a threat to the heterosexual nuclear family; the most basic unit in any capitalist society. However, the common narrative of it being a biological anomaly, was oft repeated by the government. It can be seen how the seemingly disjointed laws of Apartheid have a nebulous connection that sought to preserve wealth primarily and subsequently white supremacy.

Limitations

While the literature on that exists on racial science in South Africa is both detailed and comprehensive, there are still some areas that lack proper academic focus and attention. To be more specific, the area where there is a deficit of academic appraisal is in Post-Apartheid South Africa. While of course there is literature about the state of racial relations and racial science in Post-Apartheid South Africa, it is sparing in its acknowledgment of how institutional it remains. The paper published in the Stellenbosch medical journal, Aging, Neuropsychology, and Cognition is a great example of this point. In 2019, a number of psychologists and social scientists published an article titled “Age- and Education-Related Effects on Cognitive Functioning in Colored South African Women.” The article argues that

colored women are at risk of having reduced or lowered cognitive function (330). It goes further to state that the source of this is their lifestyle and cultural behaviors, as well as their low education levels (330). The article was retracted soon after it was published because of the criticism it received from Stellenbosch students and the general public. The findings of the paper were so incendiary that the incident made the news and several academics made stern comments about the paper and its divisive agenda. However, even in their scathing diatribes of the racist intentions of the paper’s writers, no mention was made of the structure of scientific racism still being present in South African society. The farthest anyone got to establishing a nexus between the racist scientific practices of Apartheid and the paper was Jansen and Walters in their book “Fault Lines: A Primer on Race, Science, and Society.” However, even though this connection was established it was not emphasized nor explored with more depth. This episode in Stellenbosch is treated as one of many isolated incidents of racist science being practiced that in ways mirrors racial science during Apartheid. However, this is more than the practices mirroring each other; it is the persistence of the structures of Apartheid, particularly the scientific structures of Apartheid. Even more than these structures persisting, it is the current power holders and ruling class choosing to preserve these structures. When the ANC had seized power from the Nationalists, it had also inherited all the structures of political, and thus, social control. Instead of completely purging and revolutionizing these institutions, the ANC government had just remodeled them to suit the new power structure. This includes, of course, the scientific structures that the Apartheid government (and preceding governments) had built and expanded. The purpose of racial science was to validate the claim that there was in fact sub-groupings within the human race, and these sub-groupings had characteristics so diverse, that it required them to live and work separately. Racial science rationalized exploitation, poverty, dehumanization, and interpreted all these malevolent phenomena as the manifestation of the traits of the races. Of course, since the ANC had taken power in 1994, segregation, wealth inequality, and worker exploitation occurs just as often, if not more, than during Apartheid. This must mean then that the current government continues to use racial science, along with other devices, to continue to rationalize the ongoing exploitation, poverty, dehumanization etc. The literature about racial science must be bold enough to express this directly and unapologetically. It must highlight the government and its institutions roles in perpetuating this kind of thinking. Stellenbosch is a private institution, but of course it borrows its research from other research conducted during Apartheid and during

the post-Apartheid period; science that is implicitly encouraged by the current political construct. The ethos of the society encourages thinking in racist terms, and in order to defeat this, it must be explicitly stated.

Conclusion

Racial science has dominated the manner in which the South African state has been run and set up since its inception. It continues to rationalize the same social and political condition we see and is modified where necessary depending on the era. There was promise that the tensions of the 70’s and 80’s would bring about a change to the South African political construct. During that period, the masses of black people were arming themselves in anticipation of a civil war. Countries such as Cuba, Libya, and even the Palestine were aiding South Africans in procuring arms. If a violent revolution had taken place in South Africa, it would see all of its institutions purged and this could have possibly been the end of racial science in the country. If the institutions of the country were free of racial bias, it would also eventually wither away from the social consciousness. However, a violent revolution did not occur, and therefore the structures, even though unstable, remained. Sensing that the country was on the precipice of war, De Klerk and the Nationalists, in 1990, released Mandela from prison in order to engage in peace talks to avoid open conflict. De Klerk was willing to make a number of compromises, as he removed many of the legislation of Apartheid, which included desegregating public spaces and unbanning political parties. He also lifted the state of emergency the country was in since 1986. Although enfranchising the non-white population was tough on De Klerk and his party, they eventually conceded and in 1993, agreed that they would hold their first non-racial national election a year later in 1994. Mandela then inquired about the question of redistribution. It was here that De Klerk and his party refused to concede and an impasse was reached in the talks. De Klerk maintained that whites should reserve their economic rights, and Mandela, not wanting to drive out investment from the country, agreed to this compromise. This presented another golden opportunity for the removal of deliberate racial bias in national science practices. If the economic compromise was agreed to, there would be no reason for deliberate racism in science, as the economic and political incentives would be removed. Racial science exists as a way to justify the racial demarcations we draw. From the constant evolution of these categories, we know that race is not real, and yet those who engage in racial science speak highly of its necessity and accuracy. As long as there is a political construct that is designed to secure wealth or power, there will

exist within it some form of racial science. Racial science is a prerequisite and a necessary ingredient for any country that intends to exploit its people. It seems then, that the only way any objectivity can be brough into science, and biological science, in particular is to separate it from the overarching political forces that control it. Of course, politics and science are married in an almost inseparable way. Politics will not release its grip on science and allow it to be practiced without agenda other than its own furtherance. This almost places humanity at an impasse. Political systems are incredibly difficult to remove, and a population who is not literate in a discipline as complex as science cannot be expected to judge its objectivity or freedom from racism or other constructs. Ultimately, we have to study the effects that policies backed by science have socially. If the policy has a disproportionate effect on a certain group of people, we can then scrutinize the science behind the policy, to see whether it was practiced with integrity. This of course is the more conservative solution. The solution that is more radical, and promises to be more effective, is to remove political constructs. While this is inordinately difficult, the removal of political constructs promises more than more objective science. It promises freedom from other modes of oppression.

Works Cited

Rich, Paul. “Race, Science, and the Legitimization of White Supremacy in South Africa, 1902-1940.” The International Journal of African Historical Studies, vol. 23, no. 4, 1990, pp. 665–686.

Nieuwoudt, Sharné, and Elmarie Terblanche. “RETRACTED ARTICLE: Aging, Neuropsychology, and Cognition, vol. 27, no. 3, 28 Mar. 2019, pp. 321–337.

Dubow, Saul. “Afrikaner Nationalism, Apartheid and the Conceptualization of 'Race'.” The Journal of African History, vol. 33, no. 2, 1992, pp. 209–237.

Marks, Shula, and Stanley Trapido. Politics of Race, Class and Nationalism in Twentieth Century South Africa. Routledge, 2017.

Wolpe, Harold. Race, Class & the Apartheid State. Africa World Press, 1990.

Deacon, Harriet. “Racism and Medical Science in South Africa's Cape Colony in the Mid- to Late Nineteenth Century.” Osiris, vol. 15, 2000, pp. 190–206., doi:10.1086/649326.

Dubow, Saul. Scientific Racism in Modern South Africa. Cambridge Univ. Press, 1995.

Klausen, Susanne M. Abortion under Apartheid Nationalism, Sexuality, and Women's Reproductive Rights in South Africa. Oxford University Press, 2019.

Jansen, Jonathan and Walters, Cyrill. Fault Lines: A Primer on Race, Science, and Society. African Sun Media, 2020.

Beinart, William, and Dubow Saul. Segregation and Apartheid in Twentieth Century South Africa. Taylor and Francis, 2013.

Kuhn, Thomas S. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. The University of Chicago Press, 2015.

Jochelson, K. Colour of Disease: Syphilis and Racism in South Africa 1880-1950. Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.

Roberts, Dorothy. Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-Create Race in the Twenty-First Century. Tantor Audio, 2011.

Dubow, Saul. A Commonwealth of Knowledge: Science, Sensibility, and White South Africa, 1820-2000. Oxford Univ. Press, 2010.

Okrent, Daniel. The Guarded Gate: Bigotry, Eugenics, and the Law That Kept Two Generations of Jews, Italians, and Other European Immigrants out of America. Scribner, 2020.

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