Black scientists denounce racism at Penn Museum
The following excerpts are from an April 28 statement regarding the unethical, possession and callous racist use of the remains of the children of MOVE who died in the 1985 state bombing of their home in Philadelphia:
The Association of Black Anthropologists, the Society of Black Archaeologists and the Black in Bioanthropology Collective are painfully aware of the barbaric history of anthropology, especially when it comes to populations of peoples of African descent.
We know that our discipline has been mobilized to rationalize eugenics and white supremacy and to justify slavery and colonialism. . . . Ethnographic museums, like Penn’s Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (which houses the collection of the notorious racist Samuel Morton), have supported the academic rationale for the institutionalization of racism in anthropology textbooks, courses and curricula. (tinyurl.com/2tbb33td) . . . .
Students hold protest in solidarity with MOVE dailyprincetonian.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from dailyprincetonian.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
A pair of Ivy League universities apologized recently for mishandling the bones of a Black teen killed in a 1985 Philadelphia police bombing.
The child’s remains remained at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology for decades and were used as an exhibit for an online forensic anthropology class that Princeton University hosted. Neither of the prestigious schools asked for consent from the child’s surviving loved ones to use her remains for teaching and research purposes.
Both schools came under fire last week after Philadelphia news team Billy Penn broke news that the remains sat in a box at the Penn Museum and were shuffled between the two campuses before resurfacing as a “case study” in a 2019 research video.
AAUP-Penn | Penn must return human remains and repay the Africa family thedp.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from thedp.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
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When most Americans imagine an archaeologist, they picture someone who looks like Indiana Jones. Or, perhaps, Lara Croft, from the Tomb Raider game. White, usually male but occasionally female, digging up the spoils of a vanished culture in colonized lands.
Depictions of archaeologists in popular culture mirror reality. Many scholars have noted the experts institutions recognize as authorities to discuss or represent the past are overwhelmingly white and mostly male. Archaeology has also been a tool colonizing countries use to consolidate and justify their domination. As a new open-access paper in American Antiquity points out, the first doctoral degree in archaeology was not granted to a Black woman until 1980.