A prominent anthropologist rejected Iranian whiteness for political rather than evidentiary reasons

Evidence

Field’s conclusion was provocative. In a review published in American Anthropologist, W. W. Howells expressed skepticism based not on the “evidence” cited by Field but on its political-racial implications: “I would question putting up such a race beside the Nordic, Alpine and Mediterranean without immediately considering the implications of this. What general background of racial history is being referred to, and how, if at all, is this background affected?” In effect, Howells criticized Field not on the basis of data or analysis but on the basis of having transgressed boundaries of race by professing a new race of credible whites outside Europe—that is, Iranians. — Neda Maghbouleh, The Limits of Whiteness, 209

Categorization

• XREF: Resonates with the reader’s archive on contested admissibility of evidence and gatekeeping in scientific/academic communities.
• SEED: Essay angle: scientific peer-review as a site of racial boundary policing — the case where a reviewer openly rejects a finding for its political implications, inverting the usual worry about value-free science.
• DEEPTHINKING: A sharp inversion: the ‘objective’ scientist protests precisely because the claim would disturb the racial order — science policing its own ability to name non-Europeans as white.

Related

• The Iranian Plateau race was defined chiefly by a high hooked nose (similarity 0.79)