Response

Abstract

Ripan Malhi and Agustin Fuentes point out that, ‘No matter how well-intended the practitioners, social and political ignorance can lead to “cultural harm” in scientific research, resulting in mistrust, stigmatization, or weakened political authority for communities whose members participate in these studies’ (Anton, Malhi and Fuentes 2018, 159). The chance for mitigating these harmful effects in social sciences comes from not allowing biases to be hidden by a false sense of what science should be. The mission of biodeterministic imagination is thick and purposeful. It is dangerous because it codifies the inequities of race and class within a ‘capitalist democracy’ such as the one we have in the United States. As an archaeologist, it is through the interpretation of black biological and physical anthropologists that I have been helped to shape and inform the methods I use to interpret material remains from peoples of the past. For generations, black archaeologists and anthropologists have also felt the impact of being seen through the eyes of others and have felt the sting of a world that casts the shadow of anti-blackness upon us without any cause for concern. If these biases are allowed to be hidden under the cloak of science, then the field is fertile for agendas that are detrimental to social justice and perhaps to the social sciences writ large. The biodeteministic imagination can be discredited over and over again. Some of the works that I have studied towards that end include biological anthropologists such as Michael Blakey, Fatimah Jackson, Teresa Leslie, Rachel Watkins and Joseph Jones. My earliest influence was the work of W. Montague Cobb. He helped me to see how the very tools used to prove my racial and social inferiority could be used as tools in disassembling the ‘race’ work of turn-of-thecentury eugenics. Cobb actively and purposefully used the same methods and data as his white counterparts. Cobb disproved race as the defining factor in high-performance or advanced athletic skills. And now, in 2020, Michael Blakey has once again brought to our attention the direct connection to the consistent use of biological determinism which translates into a means to justify the status quo of social and political inequalities. It has finally come to the point where we must abandon the practice forever.