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> Arthur de Gobineau, a French aristocrat and one-time secretary to Tocqueville, is considered one of the fathers of scientific racism. When Tocqueville became
by kpw94 3y ago
> Arthur de Gobineau, a French aristocrat and one-time secretary to Tocqueville, is considered one of the fathers of scientific racism. When Tocqueville became aware of Gobineau’s theories of inherent racial inequality, he responded fiercely, calling them “false” and “pernicious”
Maybe I read a different book, but in tome 1 there's some pretty racist chapters about the differences between white & black in America, and how they'll never get along or something.
It's possible he disagreed with "scientific racism" but he appeared pretty confident in some other racist views in that chapter in the first tome... (note his visit was before abolition of slavery)
- beebmam 3y agoI don't think it is inherently racist to claim that two culture-groups will never get along. Could you articulate the author's claim further? If it is a racist claim, I suspect it goes a bit further than this.
- hammock 3y agoCan you quote some?
- thuuuomas 3y agoIt’s on Gutenberg https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/815/pg815-images.html#link2HCH0006 https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/815/pg815-images.html#l...
- prepend 3y agoDid you just quote the entire book (600 pages or so) as an example? That’s pretty funny and you may as well just as GP to google it. I’m currently halfway through the book and don’t remember any particularly egregious (any more than I expect all 19th century European aristocrats were regularly racist) and am interested in what passages are most of interest to understand the argument.
- thuuuomas 3y agoDid you chime in to tell us you’ve yet to finish it? That’s pretty funny too
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- kpw94 3y agoSee https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35733441 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35733441, with extra context surrounding it.
- MichaelZuo 3y agoThat honestly sounds more enlightened by 1830s standards then almost anyone today by 2020s standards.
- JieJie 3y agoIt seems pretty possible to vehemently disagree on the "scientific racism" part without disagreeing on the second part, that we will never get along. History has yet to prove that we can on a national level, in fact, it seems pretty insistent on reminding us that there will always be forces that seek to keep us divided. Where we have proved that as a multicultural democracy, American has been successful, I firmly believe, is one of the ways where America truly is exceptional.
- tptacek 3y agoThe "accord" argument is the basis for almost all of de jure segregation in the 20th century, and has been decisively refuted by the experience of residential desegregation beginning in the 1980s. At the beginning of the 20th century, it was lawful for municipalities to literally zone their cities to restrict Black residents, and most of those zoning ordinances took the form of disallowing residents of a regional minority race to move into any area with a dominant majority; accord was the specific reason given for those ordinances. Whatever else you'd like to say about the argument, it absolutely fucked over the United States in profound and enduring ways.
- allturtles 3y agoYou are probably referring to the various chapters on "Future Condition Of Three Races In The United States." These chapters are basically an extended critique of the evils of chattel slavery and of the American policy against the natives. He does indeed say that "As soon as it is admitted that the whites and the emancipated blacks are placed upon the same territory in the situation of two alien communities, it will readily be understood that there are but two alternatives for the future; the negroes and the whites must either wholly part or wholly mingle." Why? Because blacks have been so oppressed and there are so many of them in the south, that it would be impossible for them to live together with their former oppressors after being liberated, both would fear and hate the other. And what does he mean by wholly mingle? He is advocating mixed race marriages, something that wasn't legal everywhere in the U.S. until the Supreme Court forced it to be in the 1960s. There are surely lots of passages in the book that 'read' as racist by modern standards, but by 1830s U.S. standards, Tocqueville was very progressive.
- kpw94 3y agoThanks for the added nuance and context!
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]