Antonio Maceo, left, and Frederick Douglass, right. Credit: Sometimes it is the strange similarities and symmetries of unrelated historical moments that most clearly display the patterns of human experience. Archives separated by oceans can be in dialogue with each other. A case in point: in the National Library of Scotland and the national archives in Cuba, you can find unsettling documents detailing the skull measurements of two renowned Black leaders of the 19th century. These peculiar archival records demonstrate the long relationship between scientific inquiry and racism. Together, they caution against the perennial problem of societal prejudices seeping into scientific “progress.” Frederick Douglass, the American abolitionist orator and publisher, and Antonio Maceo, the celebrated military hero of the Cuban independence movement, are rarely if ever mentioned together. Yet these men experienced strikingly similar scrutiny about their mixed racial ancestry. Racist commentators asked whether these Black leaders’ achievements were attributable to their partial “European” or “white” blood. The primary objective of 19th-century “racial science” and ethnology was to stratify the human species into superior and inferior racial categories; such ideas could then be used to justify racial oppression. But in the attacks levied against these two figures, another factor is […]

Click here to view original web page at www.scientificamerican.com