Monogenist racial science still ranked white humans above Africans

Evidence

That rare segregationist who rejected polygenesis, Cuvier believed that all humans descended from Europe’s Garden of Eden. A catastrophic event 5,000 years earlier had sent the survivors fleeing to Asia and Africa; three races had emerged and had started passing on unchangeable hereditary traits. “The white race” was the “most beautiful of all” and was “superior,” according to Cuvier. The African’s physical features “approximate[d] it to the monkey tribe.” — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 367

Categorization

• DEFINE: Establishes that monogenesis (single human origin) was fully compatible with hierarchical racism — a useful precision point: rejecting polygenesis was not a step toward antiracism.
• XREF: Directly bears on the reader’s scheme: Cuvier is a ‘segregationist’ by Kendi’s classification despite rejecting polygenesis; this refines what distinguishes segregationist from assimilationist. — connects to: Early racial science ranked African women between humans and orangutans — Rebecca A. Martusewicz, Jeff Edmundson, and John Lupinacci, EcoJustice Education: Toward Diverse,…, 1153