White Makes Right
I first learned of Jack Hitt's article "Mighty White of You: Racial Preferences Color America's Oldest Skulls and Bones" (in the July 2005 number of Harper's) at Air America Radio's website a couple or three weeks ago, and I've finally gotten around to reading it. Much of what I had to say is already said by Kris Hirst at About.com, but I do disagree with some of her framing, at least; and there are a couple of other things I think worth mentioning. (In the interest of full disclosure, I will acknowledge that I am a recovering archaeologist, and my academic parentage includes people working on putative pre-Clovis sites.)
First off, I was disappointed by the article overall. I thought Hitt had several good points (theoretical and cultural biases of archaeologists, muddy philosophy of science underlying the discipline, textual significance of archaeological reconstructions, origin myths and archaeology, &c.), any one of which would have provided a good critical article for a non-specialist medium, and all of which together would have provided a good thesis, but – in the article as written – none of which are very well fleshed-out. Hitt seemed just to express his main thoughts on each point (illustrated with archaeological and many snarky pop-culture references) before shifting to his next point. It's not that I disagree with what he said, but that he seems to devote a fair amount of space to quipping that might be better used for analysis (to paraphrase Stephen Jay Gould, who knew whereof he spoke), and the result is sort of mushy.
Having said that, I think it's quite an exaggeration even to imply that Hitt might think archaeologists are white supremacists. More to the point, archaeologists (like anyone else) can be lulled into the grand myth of progress. Many vernacular characterizations, at least, of the scientific method employ a metaphor recalling a conical staircase: science gets constantly nearer the central core of reality, not only by learning new things (ascending) but by shedding old ones (narrowing). Through the lens of progress, the present appears as the predictable consequence of the past, and the existing status quo becomes a moral consequence of our very origins: we are to be found in the past because we are here now. Historical contingency may affect the route, but not the destination.
But evolution, however directional, is not directed. The salient question is not whether and how Caucasoid populations might have preceded Mongoloid populations in the settling of the Americas, it's whether we could have even distinguished 'Caucasoid' and 'Mongoloid' populations in the past. The characteristics of the primary 'races' used in human osteological analysis – Caucasoid, Negroid, and Mongoloid – are almost entirely a product of the analysis of individuals who lived in the past 500 years, during most of which 'everyone knew' that those three races were fundamental and distinct. The osteological measures used for 'racial' classification have not become normative because they provide the best ways to identify different populations, but because they provide the best ways to distinguish between 'races' that were already 'known' to exist. So: the osteological bases for 'racial' differentiation are derived from an evolutionarily synchronic sample, and reify the extant 'racial' categories. Added to this, depite what forensic anthropologists may do, it really isn't appropriate to use those measures to classify single skeletons de novo. Source population matters. People have sex as well as 'race', and sexual and 'racial' variation overlaps. If you have independent evidence placing a skeleton into one sexual or 'racial' category, or a group of skeletons with no such evidence, fine; but if all you have is a single skeleton with no such evidence, you're on much shakier ground. And that's for modern individuals, because the classifications are derived from modern populations.
Whatever else James Chatters (the main Kennewick Man archaeologist) may have said, his American Antiquity article about his initial analysis of K-man, the sample of near-Clovis-age human skeletons from the Americas does make a statistically significant cluster, and that cluster does not make a good statistical fit with any existing population in the world today. The nearest fit (if I recall correctly) is with Southeast Asian islanders — that's nearest, and it's not particularly good.
In point of fact, none of this really matters, at least from a legal perspective. The legal definition of "Native American" is not isomorphic with the vernacular one. The National Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA, P.L. 101-601), Sec. 2(9), states that "'Native American' means of, or relating to, a tribe, people, or culture that is indigenous to the United States." Descent from an Asian population is not required anywhere in the law; the idea that it is implicit in the concept of "Native American" is a theoretical one stemming from the Bering Land Bridge hypothesis of Indian origins. Theories are supposed to change with new evidence: if it is theoretically possible that pre-Clovis "Caucasoids" were present in the Americas, then they were, by definition, Native Americans (unless they were only temporary residents like the Norse at L'Anse aux Meadows, [1] which I don't think anyone is arguing, and [2] in which case they'd have no claim over the Native Americans'). To argue otherwise leads to a couple of ridiculous conclusions with racist overtones: (1) "Native" Americans weren't, because even pre-Clovis "Caucasoids" weren't "Native" anything, meaning that (2) the "Native" in "Native American" really does retain a pejorative connotation of savage or barbarous brown people. That the surviving Native American population gets its Native-Americanness entirely from ancestral Asian populations does not deprive it of legal claim to any pre-Columbian anthropological object found on their land.
(In the interest of fuller disclosure, let me say that I would have no difficulty accepting a pre-Clovis, Asian-derived human presence in the Americas as far back as 20,000 years B.P. — more than half again as long ago as the present consensus allows)
Having said all of that, let me say that I am grateful to Hitt's article for pointing out to me the new hypothesis for the distribution of skin coloration and vitamin D3 synthesis.
First off, I was disappointed by the article overall. I thought Hitt had several good points (theoretical and cultural biases of archaeologists, muddy philosophy of science underlying the discipline, textual significance of archaeological reconstructions, origin myths and archaeology, &c.), any one of which would have provided a good critical article for a non-specialist medium, and all of which together would have provided a good thesis, but – in the article as written – none of which are very well fleshed-out. Hitt seemed just to express his main thoughts on each point (illustrated with archaeological and many snarky pop-culture references) before shifting to his next point. It's not that I disagree with what he said, but that he seems to devote a fair amount of space to quipping that might be better used for analysis (to paraphrase Stephen Jay Gould, who knew whereof he spoke), and the result is sort of mushy.
Having said that, I think it's quite an exaggeration even to imply that Hitt might think archaeologists are white supremacists. More to the point, archaeologists (like anyone else) can be lulled into the grand myth of progress. Many vernacular characterizations, at least, of the scientific method employ a metaphor recalling a conical staircase: science gets constantly nearer the central core of reality, not only by learning new things (ascending) but by shedding old ones (narrowing). Through the lens of progress, the present appears as the predictable consequence of the past, and the existing status quo becomes a moral consequence of our very origins: we are to be found in the past because we are here now. Historical contingency may affect the route, but not the destination.
But evolution, however directional, is not directed. The salient question is not whether and how Caucasoid populations might have preceded Mongoloid populations in the settling of the Americas, it's whether we could have even distinguished 'Caucasoid' and 'Mongoloid' populations in the past. The characteristics of the primary 'races' used in human osteological analysis – Caucasoid, Negroid, and Mongoloid – are almost entirely a product of the analysis of individuals who lived in the past 500 years, during most of which 'everyone knew' that those three races were fundamental and distinct. The osteological measures used for 'racial' classification have not become normative because they provide the best ways to identify different populations, but because they provide the best ways to distinguish between 'races' that were already 'known' to exist. So: the osteological bases for 'racial' differentiation are derived from an evolutionarily synchronic sample, and reify the extant 'racial' categories. Added to this, depite what forensic anthropologists may do, it really isn't appropriate to use those measures to classify single skeletons de novo. Source population matters. People have sex as well as 'race', and sexual and 'racial' variation overlaps. If you have independent evidence placing a skeleton into one sexual or 'racial' category, or a group of skeletons with no such evidence, fine; but if all you have is a single skeleton with no such evidence, you're on much shakier ground. And that's for modern individuals, because the classifications are derived from modern populations.
Whatever else James Chatters (the main Kennewick Man archaeologist) may have said, his American Antiquity article about his initial analysis of K-man, the sample of near-Clovis-age human skeletons from the Americas does make a statistically significant cluster, and that cluster does not make a good statistical fit with any existing population in the world today. The nearest fit (if I recall correctly) is with Southeast Asian islanders — that's nearest, and it's not particularly good.
In point of fact, none of this really matters, at least from a legal perspective. The legal definition of "Native American" is not isomorphic with the vernacular one. The National Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA, P.L. 101-601), Sec. 2(9), states that "'Native American' means of, or relating to, a tribe, people, or culture that is indigenous to the United States." Descent from an Asian population is not required anywhere in the law; the idea that it is implicit in the concept of "Native American" is a theoretical one stemming from the Bering Land Bridge hypothesis of Indian origins. Theories are supposed to change with new evidence: if it is theoretically possible that pre-Clovis "Caucasoids" were present in the Americas, then they were, by definition, Native Americans (unless they were only temporary residents like the Norse at L'Anse aux Meadows, [1] which I don't think anyone is arguing, and [2] in which case they'd have no claim over the Native Americans'). To argue otherwise leads to a couple of ridiculous conclusions with racist overtones: (1) "Native" Americans weren't, because even pre-Clovis "Caucasoids" weren't "Native" anything, meaning that (2) the "Native" in "Native American" really does retain a pejorative connotation of savage or barbarous brown people. That the surviving Native American population gets its Native-Americanness entirely from ancestral Asian populations does not deprive it of legal claim to any pre-Columbian anthropological object found on their land.
(In the interest of fuller disclosure, let me say that I would have no difficulty accepting a pre-Clovis, Asian-derived human presence in the Americas as far back as 20,000 years B.P. — more than half again as long ago as the present consensus allows)
Having said all of that, let me say that I am grateful to Hitt's article for pointing out to me the new hypothesis for the distribution of skin coloration and vitamin D3 synthesis.
posted by Dr. Bubbles at 15:45
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