Janet Monge says Morton had a special fascination with Egypt and hoped to prove certain things about it. One of his claims was that ancient Egypt was able to build a great civilization despite being in Africa because its rulers were white. So based on the way they looked, he characterized them as Middle Eastern, Negro, Europe like all of these kinds of things. And then went on to say that the great peoples basically of Egypt were Middle Eastern or European in terms of form.
Scientists weren’t the first to divide humanity along racial – and and racist – lines. But for hundreds of years, racial scientists claimed to provide proof for those racist hierarchies – and some still do.
Resources for this episode:
Fatal Invention, by Dorothy Roberts
The History of White People, by Nell Irvin Painter