Dutch scientists and the UNESCO Statement on Race

Bram Harkema,Fenneke Sysling

doi:10.18352/studium.10181

Abstract

Central to this paper is a survey held among Dutch scientists in 1951 after the publication of the first UNESCO Statement on Race. The Statement, issued by a committee of experts at UNESCO, was a condemnation of scientific racism and declared that race was a social myth. The statement led to strong international criticism from physical anthropologists and geneticists, because they disagreed with the dismissal of the concept of race and because they felt poorly represented on the committee of experts. This paper traces the reception of the first Declaration on Race among scientists in the Netherlands to demonstrate how the Statement’s impact differed in different contexts. The survey about the Statement organized by Dutch anthropologists shows how Dutch racial scientists used the Statement to distance themselves from Nazi racial science by employing a rhetoric of humility, insistence on the difference between scientific findings and moral choices, suggestions for alternative conceptualizations of race, and a strategic internationalism to connect with the international community of experts. The success of this strategy can be concluded from the fact that one of the organizers of the Dutch survey, physical anthropologist Rudolf Bergman, was invited, very last minute, to participate in the expert meeting of biological scientists that formulated a second UNESCO Statement on Race, issued a year after the first.

Highlights

In 1950, five years after its founding, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) published its first Statement on Race, one of its initial major efforts to combat racism and disseminate scientific facts.[1]
The statement led to strong international criticism from physical anthropologists and geneticists, because they disagreed with the dismissal of the concept of race and because they felt poorly represented on the committee of experts
The survey about the Statement organized by Dutch anthropologists shows how Dutch racial scientists used the Statement to distance themselves from Nazi racial science by employing a rhetoric of humility, insistence on the difference between scientific findings and moral choices, suggestions for alternative conceptualizations of race, and a strategic internationalism to connect with the international community of experts

Summary

Introduction

In 1950, five years after its founding, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) published its first Statement on Race, one of its initial major efforts to combat racism and disseminate scientific facts.[1]. The Netherlands had a long tradition of research on race, and the 1930s had been an especially fruitful decade in that respect, both in its homeland on the North Sea and in its colonies.[25] Much of this research was data collection without reflection on the role of race in science and politics, and there was definitely an awareness of developments in Nazi Germany ( not as much as one might have expected in hindsight).[26] Scientists were keen to point out that there was a difference between the science and its political consequences in Germany.[27] Dutch physical anthropologists, for example, portrayed their discipline as a descriptive science, thereby freeing it from political implications The ambivalence of this approach is shown in the case of anti-Semitism that was generally condemned but with scant attention paid to how Jews featured in the scientists’ own research. Barge argued that race was a strictly anthropological category used

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Conclusion