Colonial race epistemology merged physical traits with moral character assessments

Evidence

Not least important to the credibility of these accounts were shared beliefs about the psychological and physical vulnerabilities of whites in the tropics. These were beliefs that called more on Lamarckian notions of acquired character than on the biological surety of race. Europeans were susceptible to cultural and moral contamination by those degraded whites within their midst and by those they were there to manage and rule. — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 1043 (#qualifies, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Colonial states engineered morality by harnessing affect in their agents. — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 426; Colonial moral epithets encoded specific class and racial transgressions; Pauperism commissions in the colonies redirected their moral calculus from poverty to race. (+19 more)

Related

• Colonial credibility drew on Lamarckian acquired character rather than biological race (similarity 0.92)
• Colonial accounts invoked Lamarckian contamination, not biological race, to explain white decline. (similarity 0.86)
• Colonial racial classification fused physical traits with moral character judgments (similarity 0.85)
• Colonial policy disputes centered on how race should be assessed, not what race is (similarity 0.83)
• Colonial dispositions are trained, contested, and deliberately interpreted (similarity 0.82)
• Colonial racial thinking dehumanized Africans as they assimilated colonial culture (similarity 0.81)
• Colonial moral categories coded racialized peoples’ aspirations as dangerous affective excess (similarity 0.81)
• Colonial commissions treated everyday sensory details as proof of racial character (similarity 0.81)
• Colonial paperwork fused physical and moral definitions of racial identity (similarity 0.80)
• Colonial policy disputes were really disputes over how race could be known (similarity 0.80)
• Untrained colonial observers’ impressions passed as authoritative knowledge about subject people’s moral states. (similarity 0.80)
• Colonial states engineered morality by harnessing affect in their agents. (similarity 0.79)
• Colonial pauperism differed from European because it measured ruler-ruled distance (similarity 0.79)
• Colonial accusations of indolence and insolence were codes for racial unfitness. (similarity 0.79)
• Colonial officials proposed legal recognition of European status based on visible racial traits (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Colonial race was judged by conduct and affiliation rather than appearance #contradicts (0.80)
• Epistemic confusion itself characterized colonial governance across the Indies #expands (0.60)
• Colonial credibility drew on Lamarckian acquired character rather than biological race #qualifies (0.60) — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 1043
• Cultural racism substitutes cultural difference for biological difference as a racial logic #qualifies (0.60)
• Education and refinement could qualify blackness in Antillean social judgment #complicates (0.55) — Frantz Fanon, Constance Farrington, Black skin, white masks, 995
• Colonial racism welded dynastic legitimacy to national community by universalizing inherited superiority #expands (0.50)
• Competing colonial visions differed in how they cropped relevant knowledge #complicates (0.45)