Dear mystery student, From your special friend.

You are so great. If everyone was as cool as you, this class would be the best class ever. You are easily way cooler than Blumenbach and Banks put together! I know this may be a little cliche, but I'm reminded of that crappy 80's song, "You're so Vain," -- I bet you think this blog is about you. But for the real you there can be no confusion. Haha. I highly doubt any opinion I convey or new idea I introduce here will surprise you -- you're so great that way. I also believe that you'll be a little sad about a certain degree of lacking photos this time around -- I know you'll forgive me.

The above is an example of the kind of rhetorics data can carry. I know things (data) about my very specific audience here, and therefore I use the kind of rhetoric I know will be received well. My audience likes sarcasm and likes other people to stroke their ego. So when explaining ideas to this person, it's good to make them feel important and sort of educated (not too much). This is kind of a weak example -- I bet you were thinking the same thing -- you're ever so smart! The point (aside from how cool and smart you are and how no one understands you or how cool and smart you are) is that all data carries rhetoric and further all 'centers of calculation' (however you define them) convey national and cultural bias. Blumenbach is perhaps the most obvious example (I bet you were about to say that too) insofar as he never actually left his center of calculation (to a large extent Goettingen, some amount of Jena) and insofar as his theories of race were/are the nascent form of the scientific racism that Nazis would later use to justify killing everyone who was not white/straight/christian. You know what I mean, I don't have to explain a lot of this to you because we worked *very* intimately with one another on the material, so you know how science tries to carry rhetorics of objectivity but ultimately fails because we simply do not believe anything is objective ever.

This is how science gets racist, or sexist, or ableist, and/or etc., by assuming objectivity as a way to negate cultural bias. Blumenbach thought that being civilized and indoors kept you white and therefore beautiful. He also thought that continued exposure to just being outside made carbon in your body rise to the top of your skin and make you dark. He needed some way to explain gradations in skin pigment, and tried to use a bunch of hilariously stupid science talk to prove this based on other scientific work. The problem is that this indoor/outdoor, white/black binary is utter bullshit. Blumenbach associated whiteness with civility and darkness with savage outdoor barbary. Objective science or scientific racism based on national/cultural bias? I had a feeling you'd say scientific racism. XD

Others might suggest that it's anachronistic to say that 200 years ago people couldn't be racist because 'racism as an ism' perhaps did not exist. This sounds to us like people need to realize that racism is not confined to individual acts of meanness but that it is systemic in systems of power -- whether people choose to be aware of it or not. Just because there was no word for racism 200 years ago, does that mean slave owners, Charles White, and to some extent Blumenbach were not racist? That doesn't even make sense to me. I have little patience for talks of whether or not cultures acknowledge their privilege over other cultures and how they can possibly not be considered racist or nationalist or sexist or etc -- especially when they have scientists generate 'objective data' in order to corroborate these systems of privilege. Just because a culture believes what it does is correct does not make it so. (Examples: Nazi Germany, U.S. foreign policy in Cuba, Nicaragua, Iraq, etc forever) Ignoring cultural bias with regards to scientific research leads to what many people may consider, for lack of a better word, terrorist activities or the use of violence or the threat of violence to acheive political, social, or religious ends. (Again, same examples). The U.S. says that we cannot respect other nations' sovereignty unless their governments do as we say and play ball. Somewhere, no doubt, someone has tried to justify all this with some sort of science, political or otherwise.

Kant has big problems here. All I need to say to you is 'Kant sucks and is perhaps responsible for a lot of this racist bullshit,' and you instantly know what I mean -- The categorical Imperative, the Universal Maxim, and Virtue. Remember the Nietzsche quote from Antichrist "...that which does not constitute a condition of our life is dangerous to it. To respect that term 'virtue' .. as Kant would have us do .. is pernicious." Kant really invented this horrible thing that Christians know as 'The Golden Rule' -- treat others as you would be treated. Kant's categorical imperative states that you should "never use people as means to an end but always as an end in themselves." This is basically the same thing, only Kant had it just a few years before the Christians. Big problem here -- don't assume everyone wants to be treated like you do. I can imagine a bigot who doesn't like women's rights. By putting women down and stunting their career at every chance -- the bigot is treating people how he'd like to be treated AND he's using women as ends not means. The bigot wants other people to not give women equal rights and so when he treats women as inferior, he is accomplishing his desired end goal -- that women not be treated equally. The golden rule and Kant all suck ass, because not everyone wants to be treated the same way. I hate mayonaisse -- a more pedestrian example -- but if someone who loved mayonaisse wanted everyone to be treated as they wanted to be treated, then I would end up eating a lot of mayo and.. again I hate mayonaisse. Data carries rhetorics -- always.