"Scientific Racism"
Face-ism and racism
"Scientific racism" is the attempted use of scientific methods to prove the existence of preconceived racial categories. These attempts fail because the idea of separate races is a social construct: similarities in appearance mask actual complexity. There are no objective criteria on which humanity can be split into races: humans are too varied, and you could keep dividing them based on various features until you have as many divisions as there are people.
In the past, anthropologists and archaeologists thought they could use anatomical measurements to prove that there were different, fundamentally distinct races and that European people were superior to all others. They were influenced by pseudo-sciences like phrenology. This false racial hierarchy was considered by many to justify White supremacy and colonialism. These morally and scientifically wrong ideas also led to the theft of human remains to give to museum collections, including in this university.
The skull of a young Aboriginal Tasmanian man was held by the University until 2025 when it was repatriated to the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre to be laid to rest in his homeland. He was probably murdered during the attempted genocide of Aboriginal Tasmanians in the early nineteenth century, after which his remains were preserved as a racial specimen.
Repatriation is part of addressing this legacy, but racism is also part of the legacy that we need to deal with.
Crania americana by Samuel George Morton
Philadelphia, 1839
Among anthropologists in the 19th and 20th centuries, measuring the skull was mainly used to draw distinctions between races. The American anthropologist Samuel George Morton collected hundreds of skulls, including many from enslaved people and those stolen from graves. He wrongly assumed that the volume of the skull indicated intelligence and used his findings of differing cranial volumes to justify white supremacy. This book contains illustrations and measurements of the skulls of indigenous Americans and a chart of the phrenological organs.
The person depicted at the top of this page is Ong pa tonga (or 'Big Elk'), an influential Omawhaw chief who was alive when the book was published. His image appears at the front of Crania americana because Morton considered Ong pa tonga to be particularly characteristic of the indigenous people of America.
ngusungusu
Solomon Islands, 19th century
Solomon Islanders affixed ngusungusu to canoes to act as lookouts for physical and spiritual danger. The university’s Anthropological Museum described this one as a ‘prognathous head’ (meaning the lower part of the face protrudes) when they acquired it. This reflects the preoccupation with head shape among collectors at this time. Such facial features were often wrongly interpreted by Europeans as denoting a lesser state of evolutionary development than themselves.
Illustration of ‘Mary’, a member of ‘the Botany Bay tribe’ by W. N. Fernyhough
Sydney, 1836
Thousands of Aboriginal Australians and Torres Strait Islanders were killed by British colonists in violent land seizures, and by disease brought by colonists. In the 1830s there was a mania among the colonists for documenting these people as it was believed they would become extinct. This image is from a series of prints depicting individuals in silhouette, documenting their profiles.
