a comprehensive post which goes into quite a bit of depth, exploring the ideas and sentiments of assorted European theorists who imagined what they willed into the invention of race. Credit due
Key Terms:
“allochronism”– literally, “other-timing”. When one group places another outside of its own temporal or historical sequence as in the phrase “they’re primitives.”
anthropometry– the measuring of human features. ex. craniometry, the measurement of the skull.
“biogenetic law”– Haeckel’s term for the principle of recapitulation
blood– one of the most powerful metaphors pertaining to race and heredity. “I have Irish blood.” “My friend has Cherokee blood” etc.
“gemmule”– “Darwin’s term for a hypothetical particle of heredity carried by all cells and capable of moving to sex cells, thus permitting a direct influence of environment upon heredity”
Mendelian inheritance– certain characteristics are transferrable from parent to child. The basis of modern genetics.
monogenist: springing from a single source. “one blood”.
neo-Lamarckism– “a popular late 19th century alternative to Darwinism, postulating that adaptations arise as characters acquired by active organic responses to environment and are passed on to offspring by heredity”…
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