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Bloodlines And Race Essay

Bloodlines and Race How does Firmin attempt to reconstruct races as existing along a level playing field rather than being arrayed hierarchically?

Joseph Antenor Firmin was nineteenth century's politician and anthropologist from Haiti. He was of the view of equality of races and was strongly opposed of categorizing humanity and the supremacy of a particular race. Although he was a Black himself, he did not promoted black Supremacy rather produced a book in 1885, named De l'Egalite des Races Humaines (On the Equality of Human Races) which was written against the Aryan's supremacy view of French writer Gobineau and his hierarchical ranking of races from white to yellow to Negro. He described in his book that the humans are artificially ranked by some scholars and by giving the examples of Greeks, Romans and Egyptians, he tried to confess the reader that there is no concept of races, rather humans consider themselves superior on the basis of knowledge and civilization. There is no supremacy of color or skin or any such concept that some races are blessed and some are cursed, rather all races are equal in attributes and the Creator have created them the same. Man is superior upon other creations due to intellect and wisdom, not upon each other. If anyone claims the inequality...

Firmin termed all those scholars who support the inequality of races as unconscious, blind and self-interested selfish people (Firmin 2000).
Describe the Nation of Islam. How did they contend with race and racism in the United States?

The nation of Islam NOI is unanimously different from the original religion Islam; hence it should not be mixed with the Islam itself. NOI was founded in the year 1930 in Detroit by W.D. Fard, who was then considered to be the God by the followers and the following leadership. It was formed to safeguard the rights of African-Americans and to provide a social, racial and economical boost to them. Other prominent leaders of the movement are Elijah Mohammad, Malcolm X and Louis Farrakhan etc. They all are of the view that black race is superior to all and that the whites should be sacrificed as they are evil spirits. Hence they introduced the concept of black supremacy by saying that over 6000 years ago, there was an ancient Black scientist Yakub, who grafted the white Race out of Blacks using a special method of birth control law and therefore, the original humans are only Blacks. According to Mr. Elijah…

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WORKS CITED

Firmin, Joseph-Ante-nor. 2000. The equality of the human races: (positivist anthropology). New York: Garland Pub.

Gardell, Mattias. 1996. In the name of Elijah Muhammad: Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.

Locke, Alain, and Jeffrey C. Stewart. 1992. Race contacts and interracial relations: lectures on the theory and practice of race. Washington, D.C.: Howard University Press.

SEP: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. March 23, 2012. Alain LeRoy Locke http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/alain-locke/#Rac
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