Pernicious Scientific Racism

"The Negro, [kept benevolently in a submissive state accepting that God had ordained them to be slaves] is [then] spellbound, and cannot run away."
"Like children [negroes] require government in everything ... or they will run into excesses; [slavery is the perfect solution for the good of the negro.]"
"There are other differences more deep, durable and indelible. The membranes, the muscles, the tendons -- even the negro's brain and nerves -- are tinctured with a shade of pervading darkness."
"It [cause of the enslaved person's] debasement of mind is [the] defective hematosis, or atmosperization of the blood, conjoined with a deficiency of cerebral matter in the cranium [that] has rendered the people of Africa unable to take care of themselves."
Samuel Cartwright, physician, 1851, Medical Association of Louisiana

Smithsonian, National Museum of African-American History and Culture

"[Captured Africans had] lived like beasts, without any custom of reasonable beings ... [and] only knew how to live in bestial sloth."
Gomes Eanes de Zurara   15th century Portuguese slave trading

"What Black inferiority meant has changed in every generation -- but ultimately Americans have been making the same case."
"[Many Americans] think that there's such things as Black blood and Black diseases and that Black people are by nature predisposed to dancing and athletics. These are common ideas."
"This [Thomas Jefferson's Notes on the State of Virginia] was one of the ... best-selling nonfiction books in early America. And Black and other anti-racist activists were arguing against Jefferson's theory of Black intellectual inferiority into the 1830s."
Ibram Kendi, historian, professor, American University, Washington

"There is a great confusion before us. It is time that we should arouse from our lethargy and prepare for the crises."
"Look around you ... at the Negro races. Their physical type is peculiar; their grade of intellect is greatly inferior; they are utterly wanting in moral and physical energy."
"[The institution of slavery] has grown up with us from our infancy, it has become part of our very being; our national prosperity and domestic happiness are inseparable from it."
Josiah Nott, South Carolina physician, anthropologist, future medical director, Confederate army

"In general, their existence appears to participate more of sensation than reflection."
"In imagination they are dull [and] tasteless... This unfortunate difference of colour, and perhaps of faculty, is a powerful obstacle to the emancipation of these people."
"Deep rooted prejudices ... real distinctions which nature has made ... and many other circumstances will probably never end but in the extermination of the one or the other race."
American founding father Thomas Jefferson

It was undeniable. Black slaves suffered from a mysterious mental illness that overtook their reason, what little of it they possessed. They somehow, infuriatingly, seemed unable, unwilling, defiantly opposed to their God-ordained position in life. After all, they wouldn't be in that position if the Almighty had not warranted it by their imperfections as human beings. Call them if you will proto-human. There was simply too much they lacked, too many deficiencies in physical attributes, attitudes, and personal values.

They were born to serve. Heaven forfend they should be permitted to be free, for they would have no idea how to comport themselves; their savage tendencies would rise to the forefront, and their criminality would swamp law enforcement. Best for all concerned that they reconcile themselves to the plain and simple fact that they were designed by a higher power to be enslaved, to represent the machinery and drudgery that would lead superior beings to prosperity.

Of course, there was a human, moral obligation on the part of their owners to treat their slaves reasonably well. The same kind of moral imperative that rests heavily on farmers, for example, to look carefully to the care and well-being of their domesticated animals. For a bovine creature, well treated, fed and cared for, delivers good milk. And so it is with slaves; treat them well and kindly; overlook their deficiencies out of the goodness of your soul, and they will be forever indebted to you as their master.

Oh, that incurable malady that so disturbed so many of the slave owners, so concerning that they urged good Dr. Cartwright to examine the situation and determine the cause? Well, the cause, of course was that they were so poorly endowed, incapable of rational judgement. Else why would they continually engage in conduct unbecoming a slave, forcing their reluctant masters to impose suitable punishment? Those lashes meted out as punishment could spoil the saleability of the slaves should his owner wish to rid himself of a constant runaway.



Well, Dr. Cartwright did as asked of him, concluding that his expert professionalism enabled him to accurately interpret all the signs he had studied and the responses he had extracted from slaves he had questioned post-runaway. The malady, clearly, was born of maladjustment to their lot in life. And so they suffered from Drapetomania. From the Greek; Drapetes: runaway -- mania: madness. So there it is: Underlying the meek and obliging facade of the slave was the malady of madness.

Another type of madness overcame white abolitionists, who hardly knew what they agitated for. For after all, what would become of society, much less the state of agriculture and manufacturing, if slaves were let loose to live among their former masters as free men? Once that occurred, what would be next? What demands would those slaves make to further disrupt society? Too painful by half to contemplate.

As New York lawyer and racial theorist Madison Grant wrote in his The Passing of the Great Race in 1916, "Negroes have demonstrated throughout recorded time that they are a stationary species and that they do not possess the potentiality of progress or initiative from within." A publication much admired by many, but principally by a reader in Germany, for the book was translated into a number of languages. Adolf Hitler was particularly taken with the concept of differentiation in "races".

"The Nazis claimed that Jews used tools which were under their control or subject to their manipulation to advance their biologically driven expansion to world power. Among these tools were, allegedly, the media, parliamentary democracy along with its focus on individual rights, and international organizations dedicated to peaceful reconciliation of national conflicts. If Germany did not act decisively against the Jews both at home and abroad, Hitler claimed, hordes of subhuman, uncivilized Slavs and Asiatics that the Jews could mobilize would sweep away the “Aryan” German race."
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

Photograph of Kitty Weichherz taken before World War II

Kitty Weichherz, pictured here in a photograph taken before World War II began, was born in December 1929. This photo was taken from a diary of Kitty's life written by her father, Bela Weichherz. After Kitty's birth, Bela started to keep a diary of his daughter's life. He made entries recording her childhood in Czechoslovakia until the family was separated and deported during the Holocaust. His last entry reads "I only wish that we can go together." Kitty and all of her immediate family perished in the Holocaust. Bela's two diaries were hidden during the Holocaust and recovered after the war.
Photograph taken in Czechoslovakia, between 1934 and 1937.

• US Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Judith Landshut