Here’s one on James Chettam’s attitude to Dorothea in Middlemarch: ‘Sir James had no idea that he should ever like to put down the predominance of this handsome girl, in whose cleverness he delighted. Why not? A man’s mind — what there is of it — has always the advantage of being masculine — as the smallest birch-tree is of a higher kind than the most soaring palm — and even his ignorance is of a sounder quality.’ With gentle irony Eliot satirizes the received wisdom about men’s minds, and the reader scarcely notices she’s done it.

She was intensely religious, but aged 21 she stopped believing in God.

t’s easy to forget, as we celebrate the 200th anniversary of her birth, how radical George Eliot actually was.

American journalist John Gunther visited Lambaréné in the 1950s and reported Schweitzer's patronizing attitude towards Africans. He also noted the lack of Africans trained to be skilled workers.

[edit] Schweitzer was nonetheless still sometimes accused of being paternalistic in his attitude towards Africans.

Schweitzer considered his work as a medical missionary in Africa to be his response to Jesus' call to become "fishers of men" but also as a small recompense for the historic guilt of European colonizers:[61] Who can describe the injustice and cruelties that in the course of centuries they [the coloured peoples] have suffered at the hands of Europeans?... If a record could be compiled of all that has happened between the white and the coloured races, it would make a book containing numbers of pages which the reader would have to turn over unread because their contents would be too horrible.

In line with early Christian notions, these “racial types” were arranged in a hierarchy: a great chain of being, from lower forms to higher forms that are closer to God. Europeans occupied the highest rungs, and other races were below, just above apes and monkeys.

Swedish taxonomist Carl Linnaeus divided humanity up into racial categories according to his notion of shared essences among populations, a concept researchers now recognize has no scientific basis. (Credit: Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain)

Over the next decades, Euro-American natural scientists debated the details of race, asking questions such as how often the races were created (once, as stated in the Bible, or many separate times), the number of races and their defining, essential characteristics. But they did not question whether races were natural things. They reified race, making the idea of race real by unquestioning, constant use.

As a professor of biological anthropology, I teach and advise college undergraduates. While my students are aware of inequalities in the life experiences of different socially delineated racial groups, most of them also think that biological “races” are real things. Indeed, more than half of Americans still believe that their racial identity is “determined by information contained in their DNA.”

A friend of mine with Central American, Southern European and West African ancestry is lactose intolerant. Drinking milk products upsets her stomach, and so she avoids them. About a decade ago, because of her low dairy intake, she feared that she might not be getting enough calcium, so she asked her doctor for a bone density test. He responded that she didn’t need one because “blacks do not get osteoporosis.”

Race is a highly flexible way in which societies lump people into groups based on appearance that is assumed to be indicative of deeper biological or cultural connections. As a cultural category, the definitions and descriptions of races vary.

George Francis Train was a wealthy philanthropist and controversial political figure of the 19th century who publicly questioned the integrity and the intelligence of black people and supported women’s suffrage as a means to “contain the political power of blacks (DuBois, 1978).

Sojourner Truth asserted that “There is a great stir about colored men getting their rights, but not a word about the colored woman; and if colored men get their rights, and not colored women get theirs, there will be a bad time about it.” The organization's fault lines began to show.

Stanton in particular argued that African Americans were ignorant of the laws and customs of the U.S. political system, and that it was "a serious question whether we had better stand aside and see 'Sambo' walk into the kingdom [of civil rights] first

In 1869, Anthony said, "The old anti-slavery school say women must stand back and wait until the negroes shall be recognized. But we say, if you will not give the whole loaf of suffrage to the entire people, give it to the most intelligent first."

Throughout the tumultuous second half of the nineteenth century, these friends, nearly the same age, butted heads more than once.

News of the death of Frederick Douglass reached Metzerott’s Music Hall in Washington, D.C., in the early evening of February 20, 1895. There, at a session of the National Council of Women’s triennial meeting, sat Susan B. Anthony. A reporter observed that “she was very much affected” by the news. After remarking on her usual “wonderful control over feeling,” the reporter continued, “last night she could not conceal her emotion.”[1] Just hours before his death, Anthony and Douglass had been in the same room. He had dropped into a morning business meeting of the National Council and stayed all day. In the days that followed until his funeral, Susan B. Anthony took steps to honor the memory of her friend in ways that reflected their shared values and dreams, things both personal and public.

Each sides felt betrayed by the other. Anthony and Stanton were disappointed that Douglass supported the Fifteenth Amendment after being a longtime proponent of women’s suffrage. They were frustrated that they were being told to wait even longer for the rights that they had spent decades fighting for. Douglass was hurt by the insults they levied against African Americans and their lack of support for African American causes.

Indeed, they sometimes argued that white women were more qualified to vote than Black men and allied themselves with opponents of Black suffrage.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton (left) and Susan B. Anthony (right) National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Object # S/NPG.77.48http://collections.si.edu/search/detail/edanmdm:npg_S_NPG.77.48 Some of those involved in the suffrage movement also divided over whether to support the Fifteenth Amendment, which would protect the rights of Black men but did not include women. Douglass strongly supported suffrage for women, but believed that the African American community had a more urgent need for enfranchisement.

. But while they shared many beliefs and goals, there were points of tension too. The Fourteenth Amendment passed in 1868 recognizing that people born into slavery were entitled to the same citizenship status and protections that free people were. However, because the amendment did not grant the universal right to vote, abolitionists and some suffragists withdrew from the universal suffrage campaign to focus on the enfranchisement (obtaining the right to vote) of Black men.

One case from the struggle for voting rights involved a split between the abolitionist Frederick Douglass and the women’s rights pioneers Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. For years, the three activists were close friends and worked side-by-side to pursue universal suffrage (the right to vote for all adult citizens) and the abolition of slavery.

Anthony and Stanton founded the American Equal Rights Association (AERA) and in 1868 became editors of its newspaper, The Revolution. The masthead of the newspaper proudly displayed their motto, “Men, their rights, and nothing more; women, their rights, and nothing less.” Also that year, the Fourteenth Amendment passed, recognizing that those born into slavery were entitled to the same citizenship status and protections as free people. The amendment did not, however, grant universal access to the vote. A rift appeared among those, like Stanton and Anthony and Frederick Douglass, who had been allies in the fight for universal suffrage. Anthony and Stanton were hurt that Douglass supported the Fifteenth Amendment, which granted the vote to Black men only. They felt he had abandoned woman suffrage. Douglass, in turn, was hurt by the insulting arguments of Anthony and Stanton against African Americans. They all thought that it would be impossible to get the vote for both women and African Americans at the same time, and disagreed with the others’ priorities. The rift turned ugly at a public meeting of the AERA held in New York City in 1869.

By 1856 Anthony had become an agent for the American Anti-Slavery Society, arranging meetings, making speeches, putting up posters, and distributing leaflets. She encountered hostile mobs, armed threats, and things thrown at her. She was hung in effigy, and in Syracuse, New York her image was dragged through the streets.

Meeting Elizabeth Cady Stanton was probably the beginning of her interest in women’s rights, but it is Lucy Stone’s speech at the 1852 Syracuse Convention that is credited for convincing Anthony to join the women’s rights movement.

In 1848 Susan B. Anthony was working as a teacher in Canajoharie, New York and became involved with the teacher’s union when she discovered that male teachers had a monthly salary of $10.00, while the female teachers earned $2.50 a month.

Early Women’s Rights Activists Wanted Much More than SuffrageVoting wasn't their only goal, or even their main one. They battled racism, economic oppression and sexual violence—along with the law that made married women little more than property of their husbands.

“I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do, because I notice it always coincides with their own desires.”

She ended up being fined $100—a fine she never paid.

Later the pair edited three volumes of History of Woman Suffrage together alongside activist Matilda Joslyn Gage.

The National Woman Suffrage Association

When Susan B. Anthony was denied a chance to speak at a temperance convention because of her gender, she was inspired to shift her focus to the fight for women’s rights.

The Anthonys were also part of the temperance movement, which attempted to cease the production and sale of alcohol in the United States.

The nineteenth amendment was known as the “Susan B. Anthony Amendment” to honor her work on behalf of women’s rights, and on July 2, 1979, she became the first woman to be featured on a circulating coin from the U.S. mint.

Susan B. Anthony (1820-1906) was a pioneer in the women’s suffrage movement in the United States and president (1892-1900) of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, which she founded with Elizabeth Cady Stanton.

Anthony spent her life working for women’s rights. In 1888, she helped to merge the two largest suffrage associations into one, the National American Women’s Suffrage Association. She led the group until 1900. She traveled around the country giving speeches, gathering thousands of signatures on petitions, and lobbying Congress every year for women. Anthony died in 1906, 14 years before women were given the right to vote with the passage of the 19th Amendment in 1920.

“Men, their rights, and nothing more; women, their rights, and nothing less.”

When Congress passed the 14th and 15th amendments which give voting rights to African American men, Anthony and Stanton were angry and opposed the legislation because it did not include the right to vote for women.

In 1848, a group of women held a convention at Seneca Falls, New York. It was the first Women’s Rights Convention in the United States and began the Suffrage movement.

She became an abolition activist, even though most people thought it was improper for women to give speeches in public. Anthony made many passionate speeches against slavery.

After many years of teaching, Anthony returned to her family who had moved to New York State. There she met William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass, who were friends of her father. Listening to them moved Susan to want to do more to help end slavery.

People who consider themselves of “mixed race” and experience some form of psychic stress be-cause they feel they have no identity in American society, perhaps more than most, need to have un-derstanding of this history. . . .

One of the more tragic aspects of the racial world-view has been the seeming dilemma of people whose parents are identifi ably of different “races.

56 SECTION I: Constructing Categories of Differencelonger possible. American society had made “race” (and the physical features connected to it) equiva-lent to, and the dominant source of, human identity, superseding all other aspects of identity. The problems that this has entailed, especially for the low-status “races,” have been enormous, im-mensely complex, and almost intractable. Constant and unrelenting portrayals of their inferiority condi-tioned them to a self-imagery of being culturally backward, primitive, intellectually stunted, prone to violence, morally corrupt, undeserving of the benefi ts of civilization, insensitive to the fi ner arts, and (in the case of Africans) aesthetically ugly and animal-like. Because of the cultural imperative of race ideology, all Americans were compelled to the view that a ra-cial status, symbolized by biophysical attributes, was the premier determinant of their identity. “Race” identity took priority over religion, ethnic origin, education and training, socioeconomic class, occupa-tion, language, values, beliefs, morals, lifestyles, geo-graphical location, and all other human attributes that hitherto provided all groups and individuals with a sense of who they were. The dilemma for the low-status races was, and still is, how to construct a posi-tive identity for themselves in the light of the “racial” identity imposed on them by the dominant society. In recent decades, one response to this dilemma on the part of some African Americans has been Afrocentrism (which is not the same as an older version of “Negritude” that black intellectuals had developed earlier in this century). And for some Indians a new form of “Nativism” has emerged, har-kening back to a Native American lifestyle. Afro-centrism seeks to reidentify with the peoples and cultures of Africa and to elevate Africans to a posi-tion of esteem by emphasizing valuable aspects of African cultures. Some Afrocentrists also make assertions about the positive qualities of African people and seek to recognize and objectify African-isms in the behavior of African-descended peoples who have been scattered all over the New World. Many assume or operate on the premise that all peoples who descended from Africans during the diaspora maintain certain behaviorisms that mark them off from other peoples. Their arguments seem of most colonies and transformed into property as slaves in a state of permanent bondage. Edmund Morgan (1975) also interpreted the ac-tions of the early colonists in the process of estab-lishing “racial” identities as stemming from the propertied colonists’ fear of poor whites and pos-sibly slaves engaging in rebellions together. Colo-nial leaders consciously formulated policies that would separate poor whites from Indians, blacks, and mulattoes and proceeded to provide the white poor, whom they had hitherto treated with contempt and hatred, with some privileges and special advan-tages. 4 In time, class divisions diminished in the minds of poor whites and they saw themselves as having something in common with the propertied class, symbolized by their light skins and common origins in Europe. With laws progressively continuing to reduce the rights of blacks and Indians, it was not long before the various European groups coalesced into a white “racial” category whose high-status identity gave them access to wealth, power, opportunity, and privilege. 5 By the mid-nineteenth century virtually all Americans had been conditioned to this arbitrary ranking of the American peoples, and racial ideol-ogy had diffused around much of the world, includ-ing to the colonized peoples of the Third World and among Europeans themselves.

We in the contemporary Western world have often found it diffi cult to understand this phenom-enon and assume that differences in skin color must have had some important meaning.

No structur-ing of inequality, whether social, moral, intellec-tual, cultural or otherwise, was associated with people because of their skin color, although all “barbarians” varied in some ways from the somatic norm of the Mediterranean world. But barbarians were not irredeemably so, and, as we have seen, nothing in the values of the public life denied the transformability of even the most backward of barbarians.

What seems strange to us today is that the bio-logical variations among human groups were not given signifi cant social meaning.

What was absent from these different forms of human identity is what we today would perceive as classifi cations into “racial” groups, that is, the orga-nization of all peoples into a limited number of un-equal or ranked categories theoretically based on differences in their biophysical traits.

Yet Christians, Jews, and Muslims had lived together in relative amity, and even inter-married, for several hundred years after the Muslim conquests and before the rise of the Christian king-doms to challenge Muslim power.

And various sects that developed within each large religious community complicated matters by fostering internal dissension and even warfare inter alia

One-third of the population of Athens were foreigners as early as the Classical period, fi ve hundred years before the Christian era (Boardman et al. 1986:222). And the city of Alexandria was (and still is) a heterogeneous, sophisticated, and complex community under the Greeks, Romans, Christians, and Arabs.

Peoples of different cultures coexisted for the most part without strife, with alien segments often functioning in distinct roles in the larger cities.

52 SECTION I: Constructing Categories of Difference When Alexander conquered peoples and lands all the way to the Indus Valley in India, interacting with “civilized” populations, nomadic pastoralists, settled villagers, and a variety of hunting and fi shing peo-ples, he exhorted his warriors to intermarry with the peoples they conquered in order to learn their lan-guages and cultures

Until the rise of market capitalism, wage labor, the Protestant Ethic, private property, and posses-sive individualism, kinship connections also oper-ated as major indices that gave all peoples a sense of who they were

That is that “ethnic” identity was not perceived as in-eluctably set in stone. Individuals and groups of individuals often moved to new areas or changed their identities by acquiring membership in a dif-ferent group. People of the ancient world seemed to have understood that cultural characteristics were external and acquired forms of behavior, and that “barbarians” could learn to speak the lan-guage of the Romans or the Greeks and become participants in those cultures, and even citizens of these states.

As Joseph Stalin raced to turn an agricultural backwater into an industrialized nation, his government downsized the week from seven to five days. Saturday and Sunday were abolished.