Anthropology is comparative, separating man from the other animals, addressing the questions: To what extent and under what conditions does he develop his potential? Are all human races capable of rising to the same intellectual and moral level? Anthropology has been the discipline which can best provide answers to the great problem of the origin and nature of man and the question of his place in nature ibid.
Firmin grounded his scientific study of humanity and his anti-biological argument for the equality of humans in Comtean positivism. He asserted that mankind is part of the natural world and must be studied as such, a perspective that nearly all social scientists in the 19th century shared Adams He stressed that the comparative method must be applied to a worldwide ethnographic data-base ibid. It was this empirical methodology and the placing of anthropology as a new social science in the natural sciences that was useful for Firmin.
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Although Durkheim wrote a great deal about ethnography, and his landmark publications, such as The Rules of the Sociological Method, The Division of Labor in Society, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, contributed to anthropological theory and formed the basis for social anthropology and British structural-functionalism, positivism was more influential for sociology than for anthropology. Following Comte and the positivist school, Firmin Throughout his book, Firmin practices positivist science, examining tables of comparative craniometric data, noting their irregularities and the means by which Broca and Morton, and other racialist scientists manipulated the numbers: The confusing and often conflicting craniological charts are entertaining to Firmin, who would normally dismiss them were they not taken so seriously by the anthropologists.
And forecasting a different composition of the scientific community in the 20th century he comments:. For him, not only do craniological measures fail the test of positivist science, but all other racialized anthropometric devices and classifications — such as those dealing with hair and skin pigmentation — are also treated as arbitrary and subjective e. Indeed, Firmin devotes almost half of his work to a critical analysis of racialist anthropometry and racist classifications, lending support to the doctrine of the inequality of human races.
Both French and American mainstream traditions diverged from Marx, Morgan, and Spencerian dialectics and evolutionism.
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For Comte, positivism was supposed to steer a course between the materialism of Hegel, Marx and the idea of revolution, and the idealism of the counter-revolution more associated with the French Harris And his example was inspirational to Jean Price-Mars, the founder of ethnology and folklore studies in Haiti. According to Magdaline Shannon This was around while Firmin was still actively opposing the Alexis government from his exile in St Thomas. Both were scholar-politicians in the Haitian way of not dividing the world of ideas from the world of politics.
They were separated by one generation.
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Firmin was born in and was 61 when he died in , while Price-Mars was born in and died at the age of 91 in Being scholars both were committed to proving that races were equal, Firmin challenging racist French physical anthropology, which he encountered during his years in Paris, and was symbolized in Paul Broca, and Price-Mars responding to Gustave Le Bon, who formulated a collective and racist social psychology emphasizing the inferiority of the black man. Price-Mars read Le Bon while he was a medical student in Paris.
He later met and challenged him. Le Bon replied asking him why, if he believed so strongly in the equality of races, he did not write about his country Shannon While travelling as a physician around the countryside, Price-Mars got interested in studying the Haitian peasantry and could thus observe Vodou, which impressed him for its religious syncretism between African animism and French Catholicism and, moreover, whose ethnological study he validated, a subject that Firmin did not address.
At least four chapters out of twenty in The Equality of the Human Races speak directly to the primary role played by the Black Race in world history and civilization 5. Beyond his ideas clearly enunciated in , Firmin attended the First Pan-African Congress in London in , which was also attended by W. Had he not been preoccupied with Haitian politics and a bid to become President as head of a Firminist movement, ending in his exile in St Thomas ordered by President Nord Alexis, Firmin might have continued to be involved on an international level with the nascent Pan-Africanist movement.
Woodson, and our own Dr DuBois. Although people did not at the time think of it that way and despite the appreciation of Jean Price-Mars who predicated his own work on that of Firmin, he remained relatively obscure except in Haiti. This view parallels that of Firmin whose positivist assertion that the races are biologically equal was matched by a moral imperative that in mind and spirit as well humanity is unitary, drawing upon a common heritage. The races are equal; they are all capable of rising to the most noble virtues, of reaching the highest intellectual development; they are equally capable of falling into a state of total degeneration.
Throughout all of the struggles that have afflicted, and still afflict, the existence of the entire species one mysterious fact signals itself to our attention. It is the fact that an invisible chain links all of the members of humanity in a common circle. With Firmin as his intellectual antecedent, Price-Mars acknowledges his pioneer work and contribution to anthropology, and bows deeply to Firmin as scholar, diplomat, patriot and politician.
Referring to Firmin as a prodigy, he marvels at the remarkable achievement of writing a book of such a scope in only eighteen months, during his first stay in Paris, between and , noting that this is the sort of work that would take others years of research and reflection to accomplish.
And, as for this heritage, eight-tenths of it is a gift from Africa. Moreover, on this small planet which is but an infinitesimal point in space, men have intermingled for millennia to the point that there is no longer a single authentic savant, not even in the United States of America, who seriously supports the theory of pure races. And if I accept the scientific position of Sir Harry Johnston there is not a single Negro, as black as he may be, in the center of Africa who does not have some Caucasoid blood in his veins, and perhaps not a single white in the United Kingdom of England, France, Spain, and elsewhere among the most haughty, who has not some drops of Negro or yellow blood in their veins.
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So, it is true according to the verse of the poet: The Berlin Congress dividing the continent amongst the major European powers had occurred the year before, in Myth, inferiorized peoples, and tales of monstrosity characterized European views of Africa. Lacking accurate knowledge of the present and adhering to the dictates of science, Firmin declared He devoted much attention to the ancient Nile Valley, recognizing the achievement of Nubia Ethiopia as well as the better known Egypt, understanding well ahead of his time the rivalry between the two separate, yet fraternal, civilizations.
DuBois and Maurice Delafosse. Moreover, he told the story in Creole through the words and feelings of the Haitian masses. Both Price-Mars and Firmin emphasized the importance of Creole as transitional to French in Haitian education, and both saw in the American Tuskegee approach of Negro self-determination through education and economic enterprise an example for Haitian development. As Jacques Antoine noted So Spoke the Uncle I understand full well the repugnance with which I am confronted in daring to speak of Africa and African things.
The subject seems vulgar to you and entirely devoid of interest, am I not right?
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Price-Mars was less skeptical than Firmin was in his day that contemporary African culture was as great a source of pride in Africa as its glorious past. Only the American school has shown any honesty and consistency in its support of the doctrine, for its tenants have never hidden the interest that they have had in its promotion. While accepting the idea of the plurality of species and their comparative inequality, the European scientists will protest against slavery in magnificent tirades.
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