PvF 1-20

In Alabama, it was illegal for African Americans to be on train cars with white people. The purpose of Jim Crow laws were to keep races separated, and in the 1800’s obligatory segregation laws were passed in the South that were based on past laws in the North.

Homer Plessy was arrested in 1892 for riding on a whites-only rail car, when being only an eighth African American. Plessy selected to be arrested to attempt to challenge the law.

Creoles were French speaking individuals of a mixed race.

Albion Winegar Targee was a white lawyer and novelist that was attempting to fight for equality in hope to improve conditions for freedmen. Targee also wanted to improve education for the whites and blacks. He was offered $1,412.70 to help from The New Orleans citizens’ committee but Targee did it for free.

The 15th Amendment was passed in 1870, stating that nobody should have their right to vote rejected or adjusted based on race or previous slave position. “Literacy tests” and poll taxes were used to help prevent African Americans from being able to vote.

The 13th Amendment was passed in 1865, stating that nobody in the United States shall be placed into slavery unless it was for punishment for a crime that the individual had been convicted of. Political rights were secured by the law, but social rights were not, and whomever individuals decided to interact with was considered a social right unless protected by the law.

The 1866 Civil Rights Act added additional protection for African Americans.

The 14th Amendment was passed in 1868, which clarifies what it means to be a citizen of the United States. This amendment states that a United States citizen is an individual who was born in or naturalized under the jurisdiction of the U.S. No state would pass any laws that would remove or change the citizenship, but no state can strip any person of life, liberty or property without the protection of the law.

TMM 51-62

The author states that a stable society demands that all three classes of man be honored, which are rulers, auxiliaries and craftsmen. The justification for ranking of men has been altered throughout the years.

The author also states that this book is about the scientific version of Plato’s tale. It speaks on the social and economic differences between race, gender, and classes. The basic argument has not changed, that social and economic rules correctly reflect the natural structure of people.

This book aims to portray the scientific weaknesses and political contexts of determinist arguments. The author says that it is not his message that biological determinists were bad scientists or that they are always wrong, but that science should be understood as a social phenomenon, not the work of robots set to collect pure information.

The history of many scientific subjects is practically free from constraints of fact for two reasons. First, some topics are invested with a lot of social importance but little reliable information. Second, multiple questions are formulated by scientists in a restricted way that any reasonable answer can only validate a social preference.

Biological determination touches almost every aspect of the interaction between biology and society. Intelligence becomes an entity, and standard procedures of science effectively dictate that a location and physical substrate be sought for it. There are two fallacies the author focuses on during the argument, reification and ranking.

Different arguments for ranking have characterized the last two centuries. Craniometry was the leading numerical science of biological determinism during the nineteenth century. What craniometry was for the nineteenth century, intelligence testing has become for the twentieth, when it assumes that intelligence is a single, innate, heritable, and measurable thing.