Holger Pedersen and "Race"

[bwald]

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
I appreciate that mentioning "(INSTITUTIONAL) racism" can have a
discomforting effect on scholars who pursue their interests without
recognising the historical cultural motives that have offered them those
interests, and that in subtle ways shape their assumptions about what they
are doing, or how to go about it.  The historiography of linguistics
justifies itself by seeking to uncover such things which may affect our
views and assumptions in linguisics without us being aware of it.  I hasten
to add that I have not seen studies in the historiography of linguistics
that have examined the issue of 19th and early 20th century historical
linguistics in connection with institutional racism (indeed the most
influential linguists throughout the 20th century, and ONLY the 20th
century -- so far, have been outspoken critics of racism when they have
noticed it), but I have my own sensibilities and interests that help me
interpret such things, and I think the point I made about Nostratic and
Pedersen is interesting and relevant.  I also hasten to add that discomfort
leads to confusion and misunderstanding, so I need to make a further
careful and serious response to AMR's last message, since I think he did
not fully understand what I was saying, possibly because of the way I said
it.
He writes:

>I have just had a chance to look over Pedersen's book
>The Discovery of Language, and contrary to the (in
>my view libelous) claims by B. Wald posted on this
>list, it is immediately apparent (pp. 101, 321)

BW: amazingly enough, decades ago I underlined the very passages in my copy of
Pedersen's book that AMR has in mind.  They refer to the utter distinction
between
language and "race", and making inferences about race from reconstructed
language
family.  Pedersen is among the linguists I referred to parenthetically
above who
criticise racism WHEN THEY RECOGNISE IT.  Institutionalised racism is
deeper than
that.

Back to AMR:

>that the late great Indo-Europeanist explicilty
>and strongly criticizes work (e.g., Mu"ller's)
>which used racial criteria to classify
>languages, that he himself refers to purely
>linguistic criteria as the basis for "Hamitic"
>and for connecting this to Semitic (p. 122
>and passim). I also not see that he is anywhere
>dwelling on the Egyptians not being "negroes",
>and the only possible interpretation of the
>passage about Nubians' and Hausas' racial
>affiliations is that he is in fact trying to
>say that even though the former were not
>supposedly (this is of course nonsense) "negroes"
>and the latter are, this tells us nothing
>about whether their languages belong, because
>we do not (this is Pedersen speaking) know
>enough of the Nubian language, and the status
>of Hausa had not yet been sufficiently studied
>to be certain that it is "Hamitic" (which is true).

OK.  Here's the passage on p122 in Pedersen:

"Nubian is interesting because of its ancient literary monuments.  ...
There are also Nubian inscriptions dating from imperial Rome, in an
alphabet based on Egyptian characters.  But we still do not understand much
of them.  *The Nubians are not negroes; but to the negro *race** belong the
Haussa, whose language is also disputed..."

Many readers can pass over the implications of this passage as innocuous
because they are not aware of the historical-intellectual context of the
point that "Nubians are not negroes", and how Pedersen in making this
statement is (no doubt) unquestioningly accepting (or being duped by) the
institutionalised racism of his time, in fact promoting it with a statement
which NOW but NOT THEN seems gratuitous.  It seems I must add that it has
nothing to do with Pedersen's personal feelings or whether or not he was a
racist (who cares?), but with a set of assumptions that had developed by
his time which reflect an ideologically motivated  and intellectually
institutionalised racism, and were not challenged by the intellectual
mainstream until much later.

I must bring some knowledge of the (beyond simply linguistics) historical
development of anthropology and other relevant fields which help me
interpret this passage of Pedersen's -- why he said it, and what the
implications were, even though he himself might have only been dimly aware
of them (as a product of his time, but not having any further interest
other than demonstrating that he was up to the general intellectual
currents of his time), and nevertheless promoted a point of view and frame
of mind that made certain avenues of research *less likely*, e.g., that
(Hamito-)Semitic (i.e., Afro-Asiatic) and "negro" languages are more
closely related GENETICALLY than the former and Indo-European.  It might be
enough to say that he stated "the Nubians are not negroes" (without citing
authorities to support that view) simply because that was the received
intellectual wisdom of that time (and somehow he felt it advantageous for
his students to be aware of that), but I will return below to WHY that was
the intellectual wisdom of that time.  I have already started in this
paragraph to explain how that could effect his view on the *likely* wider
genetic affiliation of Semitic, so I will cite another passage to amplify
that before returning to his racial comment (not necessarily racist -- I
seem to have to keep saying -- but emanating from racist motivated
theories).

p.139, winding up a survey of South and Central African languages in which
the term "negro" does not appear -- and I will take on my own the
responsibility for saying that it does not appear because it went without
saying, and he was IN THIS CASE not interested in making any (more) racial
comments:

 "...The remaining languages, after we have rendered unto the Hamites what
is the Hamites', may be mutually related and may be more remotely related
to the Bantu group; but these relationships cannot be more than
hypothetical until we have further information."

The inference to be drawn here is that the "Hamitic" languages, in all
probability being most closely related to Semitic cannot be more closely
related to these other African languages.  Either the latter are remotely
related to each other or not; THAT's the direction for further research.

Let's now make our way back to Nubian.  Same page, prior to the quote I
just gave.

"...On page 122 above I have pointed out that the boundaries between the
Sudan languages proper and the Hamitic family cannot be drawn with
certainty, and I have mentioned Nubian, along the Nile, and Haussa [BW:
Hausa -- Pedersen follows older German spelling] between the Niger and Lake
Tchad, as two of the languages in dispute."

"Sudan", in fact, is a geographical reference, while "Hamitic" is an
assumed linguistic reference, and he does not refer to the "Sudan"
languages on p.122 (even the index gives only p.139 as a reference for
"Sudan languages", for what that's worth), but I'm being petty here.  The
point is that Pedersen recognises, following the debates of his time, that
Nubian may turn out not to be "Hamitic" -- and indeed it is currently
classified as Nilo-Saharan, a large, diverse and potentially controversial
family.  This is all fine and well, even admirable, as far as Pedersen's
informedness in linguistic concerns.  Nevertheless, the genetic affiliation
of Nubian does not affect the conventional wisdom of the institutionalised
racism of the time, because whatever Nubian turns out to be, the Nubians
are not "negro".

So back to that issue.  Why aren't the Nubians "negro"?  The short answer
is because they had an ancient LITERATE culture, as Pedersen mentioned back
on p.123, and according to the conventional wisdom of that time which
formerly was an ingredient in justifying slavery and later colonialism (as
"the whiteman's burden") the "negroes" did not.  The longer answer is that
it would have been inconvenient for institutional racism to accept as
"negro" an ancient culture that was so highly developed to even be literate
before Western intrusion, and it was easy enough for 19th c physical
anthropologists to take advantage of local physical variation (throughout
the world) to find physical criteria to classify people racially in
whatever way WAS convenient to the societies which supported their work,
and/or found it USEFUL.

(I can't resist the wry comment here that the "anti-intellectual" Goering
who said "when I hear the word 'culture' I reach for my -- pistol", was so
impatient with squabbles over criteria for who belongs to what race that he
also said "A Jew is who I say is!")

Read Stephen J. Gould's book "the Mismeasure of Man" for further insight
into 19th c physical anthropology, and indeed even the honesty with which
anthropologists of that time did their work, often even unaware of the
unquestioned assumptions that guided their measurements (apart from such
notorious falsifications as Burt's work on IQ).  Then you can see why I
appreciate the historiography of linguistics' self-justification as an
attempt to understand the historical motives which have led to the
linguistic theories of today -- a field that interests me even more than
the one I have been compelled to discuss here.  For that matter, Chomsky's
comments in the late 1960s on the then prevalent interest in comparative IQ
testing of blacks and whites in the US is also instructive.  He asked: if
science is being directed to seriously investigate social stereotypes with
transparent sociopolitical motives (in this case that blacks are (even)
stupider than whites) then why not also whether Jews are more avaricious
than other people or that Italians have a greater talent for criminal
organisations, etc etc?

OK, let's leave Chomsky.  Back to the Nubians and Egyptians.  I must admit
that in a previous message I conflated two ideas when I made it sound like
Pedersen was also EXPLICITLY dissociating the Egyptians from the "negroes".
In defense against the charge of libel (in AMR's opinion) I submit that
much more than the Nubians the ancient Egyptians and their civilisation
have long been admired by intellectual Europe (among others) and their
contributions to Western civilisation via the Greeks and various other
peoples have been continuously acknowledged throughout "history".
Consequently, their "racial" classification was much discussed and debated,
even before Darwinism and evolution with its possibilities for
institutionalised racism were being explored.  An informative book to read
here is "The Leopard's Spots" particular for the concern among American
scientists both in the South and North, both pre-bellum and ante-bellum.
Apart from overt expressions of personal racism which fed into their
interests and research questions, the author of this book (I don't want to
interrupt myself to look up the author, it's late 60s) concluded much like
Gould that many of them were intellectually honest  and consciencious in
accounting for their research that led to socially acceptable conclusions
for their time.  Anyway, it was a foregone conclusion that the ancient
Egyptian were "not negro" (the unresolved problem was were they "white"?)
As for Pedersen, what I conflated was much like what I took it on my own
responsbility to interpret for his lack of racial comment on the "Bantus"
and other South and Central Africans.  It went without saying (for him)
that the Egyptians were not "negro" -- one need only look at current
artist's illustrations of the ancient Egyptians in recent National
Geographics (as opposed to much of the ancient Egyptian portrayal of their
rulers and nobles) to see that they do not "look negro".  Thus, the history
of current popular images of the ancient Egyptians still shows its heritage
institutional racism.  And I guess I have to make the point again here,
that that is not to say that the current illustrators of such articles in
the National Geographic are "racists".

Finally, with regard to the association between the Nubians and the
Egyptians.  In 20th century popular culture the Nubians are (only) the
SLAVES of the ancient Egyptians (sometimes they were, sometimes in late
dynasies they were their Pharoahs -- that's NOT part of popular culture).
An example is the "Nubian" slave played by a black ("Negro"?) actor to
Boris Karloff's "white" resurrected Ancient Egyptian in the 1933 movie "The
Mummy".  Pedersen, of course, has no patience with this kind of blatant
racist ignorance (based on SELECTIVE reporting); hence, contrary to popular
(Western) belief,  the Nubians were not only literate (i.e., "highly
civilised"), but they're not even "negro".  (Now if anybody's "black", the
Nubians sure are, but only "ignorant" people classify people on such
superficial criteria.)

I hope I have made my point, and, at the least, it is that much more can be
brought to bear in interpreting the writings of a scholar or the
orientation and assumptions of various theories than meets the less
informed eye, or enters the less informed mind.  There is much more in
linguistics, historical linguistics, or any other field that fundamentally
studies people (or even other animals, or even ANYTHING) than what any
practitioner in any field thinks there is, and that is of some interest to
me, and I hope to at least some other readers.  I like to know something
about the larger motivations for my interests are, how I fit into the
currents of human thought, and how that might affect some of the
assumptions I make or some of the directions of research I enjoy but
ordinarioly take for granted.  None of us can know "everything", or let the
lack of knowledge interfere with what we think is worth pursuing, of course
etc etc, but I am always interested in something that could come from
anywhere -- who knows where -- that can help me resolve or dissolve some
problem that has gripped my attention.  I think most scholars are the same;
they just differ in what gives them insight -- and what discomforts them.

In view of that, I respond to AMR's following comment:

>I really would ask that people be more cautious
>about posting attacks on the integrity of great
>(and esp. dead) scholars, esp. in areas as touchy
>even now as "race", without doing their homework.

I stand by what I said about Pedersen, and I stand ready to further discuss
any issue that readers find touchy.  I invite AMR, or anyone else, to give
other interpretations to Pedersen's point in saying that "the Nubians are
not negroes" (or to further study the implications).  I interpret it as a
reflection of institutionalised racism that shows the limits of that GREAT
scholar's understanding of the nature of institutionalised racism and its
effect on the intellectual climate in which he honestly, competently, and
even inspiringly did his work.  Back to historical linguistics and its
current controversies, and especially to Alice Faber's COUNTER-proposal, I
have tried to show in a somewhat profound way how preconceived assumptions,
whose motivations we may not even be aware of, can affect the research
questions which lead us to try to group language families in one way rather
than another (following up on traditional questions inspired by outmoded
theories, influenced by outmoded societies and their outmoded myths.)

P.S. For those who care, what I said about institutionalised racism can be
said of any preconceived taken for granted notion, and, in fact, in the
final analysis, the more general observation is a truism in science -- and
the history of science.  Even after Newton concluded that there was a FORCE
of gravity, he remained troubled by the Cartesian criticism that he was
invoking "occult forces" into a universe that was supposed to operate on
strictly "mechanical" principles, and he spent some time in his later years
trying to make gravity more mechanical in papers that are politely ignored
by his adorers.