17 marzo 1851 anni - “Scientific evidence" Blacks Inferior to Whites

Descrizione:

On March 17, 1851, scientist Samuel A. Cartwright reported his findings of a new disease to the Medical Association of Louisiana. He named this disease, Drapetomania, by combining the Greek word for a runaway, Drapetes, and mania, the word for madness. The disease made black people yearn for freedom and fair treatment. Cartwright hypothesized that enslaved black people developed this disease under certain conditions. These conditions included being treated as equals to their white masters. He went on to claim to the Association that Negros exhibited physical maladies such as smaller brains and blood vessels. These claims along with others such as laziness and savagery brought Cartwright to the conclusion that blacks had to submit to their masters without question. Cartwright also justified his beliefs by claiming that effective treatments such as severe whipping, and amputation of the toes would treat the ailment. Cartwright said once that "the Negro is a slave by nature and can never be happy in any other condition."

During Cartwright’s time the north mocked and lampooned Drapetomania. These ideologies were quite popular in the south and taken as factual evidence in the 19th century. However, his belief in black inferiority is still common today. Dylann Roof wrote in his 2015 manifesto that “Negroes have lower IQs, lower impulse control, and higher testosterone levels in generals. These three things alone are a recipe for violent behavior.” In June of that same year, Roof went into a black church in Charleston, South Carolina, and gunned down nine worshipers to death. This way of thought that thrived in the 18th and the 19th centuries, like a virus, has mutated and conserved for 400 years to the present day. Beginning from doctrines of physical and intellectual inferiority that compared blacks to animals, it would evolve to be embedded within black cultural and social inferiority. This notion of blacks being animalistic would prove to be detrimental to society.

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