From reading both statements, I can tell a difference in tone between the two organizations. While both are extremely professionally written, I felt personally AAPA was more to the point and sensitive in their wording on how to carefully place what their perspective on race is to the public. AAPA had their first point to be stated as that we all come from the same species, Homo sapiens. From there, they expanded their views. AAA is also straight to the point; however, they state right away what the challenging viewpoint is for race within the United States. I thought this was interesting because if I were to write a statement that represents my organization on a fairly controversial topic such as race, I would not want to address right away the views that contradict my side on this statement.
In addition, I thought it is interesting to even write a race statement for both organizations, but it does make sense. Studying anthropology, you are often studying different cultures, people, and race. When conclusions are made based on evidence, people need the disclaimer (apparently), to have these researchers be safe when they study they are not biased or being discriminatory. They are simply professionals trying to learn more about humans. With more thoughts, besides showing the public these anthropology organizations are unbiased, the statement also helps hold anthropologists accountable in their research. They must remain unbiased in their studies and refer to what evidence is in front of them to allow them to make conclusions that are appropriate and sensible.
A particular vocabulary from the AAA race statement was when it stated “dark hair may be associated with frizzy or kinky hair…”. I refer to “kinky” and I think this surprises me because that is when I started to notice the tone of the AAA statement to be a bit more blunt than AAPA. Why that surprised me is due to them feeling the necessary need to explain the differences between races and physical appearances within their statement and not entirely introducing why their studies include the subject of race but to disclaim their research is not prejudice in any way. I feel that the AAPA’s race statement is what I would expect a statement to cover, and really connects to the material we learned from lectures so far in class. For instance, AAPA’s mentions we all are one organisms. This connects to the idea of evolution and how we had to adapt to different environments which developed character traits to our species.
From this week’s material, a hypothesis that I found the most interesting was the Vitamin D Hypothesis. This is simple thought, the amount of sun that one human “takes in,” could possibly affect all the diversity we see today based on where humans are located around the world. The difference in altitudes and latitudes can affect how one has to accommodate to live and simply does cause traits such as our physical appearances that define our own race and how people view us.
Your reflections on the two statements is much different than mine and many others, as you focused on dissecting the differences between the statements and how each statement is intended to affect the reader. I agree that the AAA statement is very direct and straightforward, even to the point of confrontational. The AAA statement seems almost angry in tone, which is interesting because you would expect a scientific organization to be more levelheaded and non-emotional when discussing their research. The AAPA, as you mentioned, is much more even-keeled and brings a more scientific tone to its statement that makes it very easy to understand each point they are making. These two organizations wrote their statements in two very different ways, showing that not every organization has the same goals or intentions when presenting research.
I notice too that the AAPA race statement was playing it safe compared to AAA race statement. I personally like the AAA race statement more because I think you shouldn’t beat around the bush when it comes to this topic. I also found the Vitamin D hypothesis very interesting. I can believe that the amount of sun that one human takes in could possibly affect all the diversity we see today based on where humans are located. Darker skin humans skin is more tolerant to the sun rays compared to lighter skin people. Lighter skin people are more prone to skin cancer compared to darker skin people. A lot of darker skin people originate from areas closer to the sun and light skin people originate from places further away from the sun. From looking at those facts, The Vitamin D hypothesis could possibly be true.
I enjoyed reading your post a lot and thought you brought up some seriously interesting points. The part that stood out to me was when you talked about anthropologists being held accountable for their wok. This reminded me of when I watched a documentary from the 1980’s about a Native American man who lived in the early 1900’s, specifically 1910 I believe. He was the last remaining member of his tribe and the only person in the world who spoke their language. An anthropologist at the time took this man as if he was an object and then forced him to live in a museum next to the stolen remains of his ancestors, and put him on display, making him to perform acts and shows that at the time were considered educational but were in fact inhumane and heavily based in stereotypical fallacies (i.e. they made him dress in animal skins from different tribes and use long bows from the South American rainforest). In the 1980 documentary, there were people alive who knew this man and thought nothing of his treatment. Today, over a hundred years later, anthropologists actively work toward making sure something like that doesn’t happen again. I think it’s appropriate for people in any field to look back and try to not repeat mistakes others have made and I also feel like posing such strong statements about race helps to diffuse the chance of any anthropologist trying to find leeway in their treatment of the humans that they study. Thanks for sharing such an interesting read.