For example, Samuel Morton, one of the principle architects of these theories, ascribed the basis of Black and non-white racial inferiority to differences in cranial capacity, which purportedly revealed that whites had larger heads. Notwithstanding the gross breaches of scientific method and manipulation of data evident in Morton's theory, see GOSSETT, supra note 20, at 73-74, his 1839 book, Crania Americana, was widely accepted as the scientific explanation of Blacks' inability to mature beyond childhood, see
GOSSETT, supra note 20, at 59-59 (citing the remarks of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., extolling Morton as a "leader" whose "severe and cautious...researches" would provide "permanent data for all future students of Ethology"); TAKAKI, supra note 16, at 113 (citing the remarks of an Indiana senator in 1850 who spoke of the diminished brain capacity of Blacks). These and other widely disseminated theories of Black inferiority provided the rationale for the political and popular discourse of the time that argued that Black equality and participation in the polity were impossible because Blacks lacked the capacity to develop rational decisionmaking. See REGINALD HORSMAN, RACE AND MANIFEST DESTINY 116-57 (describing the permeation of "scientific" bases for racial inferiority into every aspect of American thought).
-Whiteness As Property by Cheryl I. Harris
Harvard Law Review Volume 106, June 1993, Number 8, pg.1739
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