Race: The Power of an Term Paper

The 1904 Worlds Fair in St. Louis presented an exhibition of different races as artifacts or curiosities, to demonstrate where civilization had 'come from' in the past, versus the images of civilized 'future.' The designers of the exhibit saw the supposed progress of science and civilization as a series of examples of how whites had successfully born 'the white man's burden.' The exhibit showed the benefits of slavery in educating the African races as well as the eradication of Native Americans as a necessary part of American history. The exhibit also implicitly justified American colonial and imperial ventures in 20th century as examples of the natural progress of superior races, educating and presumably eventually reforming or eradicating inferior races.

Question

The impact of scientific publications on U.S. legal and social policy was largely regressive rather than progressive in terms of eradicating racial tension. Rather than generating enlightenment, science was often to confirm racial prejudices. Scientists classified races as possessing certain intrinsic natures or characteristics that were intrinsic to their inborn or genetically inherited temperaments. Darwinism was used to justify racism, as some populations were classified as more primitive than others, based upon arbitrary measures of their skulls, or their skin tone -- certain races were said to be less 'evolved' than other races in terms of their practices and physical development. Defeat at the hands of whites was seen as justified because it exemplified a particular race's inferiority, like the Mexican 'race' at the hands of white Americans. Temperaments were assigned to certain races as well, much like some species of animals supposedly have certain innate temperaments. The overall result was to animalize certain races, and to create divides between entire classes of people.