Anthropologists call for an end to classifying human remains by gender and lineage
An interesting controversy is brewing in anthropology departments, where professors are calling on researchers to stop identifying ancient human remains by biological gender because they cannot understand how a person was identified at that time. Other scholars are calling on researchers to stop identifying race as a practice because it promotes white supremacy. San Jose state archeology professor Elizabeth Weiss, one of the academics objecting to this attempt to withhold gender identity, is currently suing her school. Weiss says he was barred from access to the human remains collection because of his opposition to the repatriation of human remains. The school protested that Holding a skull from the collection on social media, expressing how happy she was “to be back with some old friends.”
The conservative site College Fix quotes various academics in challenging gender identity and notes the campaign of the Trans Do Task Force to “explore ways in which current standards in forensic human identification are harmful to those who clearly don’t fit the gender binary.”
Jennifer Raff, an associate professor at the University of Kansas, argued in a paper, “Origins: A Genetic History of the Americas,” that “there is no clear division between ‘male’ or ‘female’ individuals, either physically or genetically.” His best-selling book has been featured on various news outlets such as MSNBC.
Weiss has criticized the book as “just plain wrong” critical points of history and objects, which Raff seems “keen to pay homage to every existing progressive conservatism”.
However, Ruff is not alone. graduate students like Emma Palladino have that “the archaeologists who find your bones one day will give you the same gender you were born with, so even if you transgress, you cannot escape your assigned gender.”
Professor Elizabeth Digangi of Binghamton University and Jonathan Bethard of the University of South Florida have also challenged the use of racial classification in a study, objecting to it saying that “[a]Presumption of ancestry contributes to white supremacy. The authors write that “we use critical race theory to include a critique of the continued use of morphoscopic traits to interrogate the approaches used to estimate ancestry, and we claim that ancestry inference The practice contributes to white supremacy.”
Professors referred to the practice as “dangerous” and wrote in a letter to the editor that such practices should be changed in light of recent racial justice concerns.
“In the midst of the devastating COVID-19 pandemic and the killings of many black Americans at the hands of law enforcement officers, we are all reminded of the fragility of life, and the failures of our society to live up to the ideals rooted in our lives. Documents that established the United States of America two centuries ago. Dealing with these failures seems overwhelming at times; However, changes can be made with a clear and candid discussion about the status quo. In writing this paper, we direct our observations to the forensic anthropology community in the United States, to begin a discussion about the long-standing practice of ancestry inference and the apparently long-standing changes Can you
The end result of such proposals would be to reduce or prevent the classification of human remains by anthropologists on the basis of gender or ancestral heritage.
This has long been a matter of heated exchanges in the region.
Indeed, a furious debate broke out after the publication of the book by the former new York Times science writer nicholas wade, A troublesome inheritance: genes, race and human history. The book argues that mankind is a biological reality and that genetic differences may help explain why some people live in tribal societies and some in advanced civilizations.
In one survey, the authors found:
“Based on our studies, anthropologists are more aptly described as ‘squatters’ (i.e., those who maintain races that are not biologically meaningful), ‘shifters’ (i.e., those who maintain race They are not biologically meaningful but a social reality), and ‘stradlers’ (that is, those who recognize the importance and relevance of both biologically informed and socio-cultural concepts of race).
The debate appears to be nowhere close to reaching a consensus, although “squatters” and “shifters” dominate academic journals and faculties.
For some, this debate meets the old joke in teaching: “What do you call an academic who apologizes all the time? An anthropologist.” Okay bad sentence but understated an attempt to prevent the collection or classification of data. Its difficult.
There is no doubt that these studies raise important questions about whether gender or racial bias can distort our understanding of human development and movement. Still, it seems curious to some of us (of course, in my case, from another discipline) that you don’t want this data point among the array of data used to analyze such searches. . For example, it seems that gender refers to physical differences that affect elements of society, migration and other relevant issues.
I’m not sure if that makes me a “squatter”, but more likely an interloper. However, given the reliance on legal and political phenomena by some of these authors, it deserves a wider debate as to whether such concerns should be used to limit scientific inquiry or classification on these issues. Some of us feel that our focus should not be on collection but on giving importance to such data.
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