The Intellectual Roots of Contemporary Black Thought by Kersuze Simeon-Jones

Author:Kersuze Simeon-Jones [Simeon-Jones, Kersuze]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780367485573
Google: 74KMzQEACAAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2021-01-15T16:00:46+00:00

Delany’s Contribution to the Reclamation of the African Past

In Principia of Ethnology Martin Delany traces and presents hieroglyphic records, a detailed review of the anatomy of the human skin, biblical and historical references on the common origin of human beings, and the equality of the races. His report on the anatomy of the human skin focuses particular attention on the dermis, epidermis, and the hypodermis. In his chapter “Special Explanation on Color,” Delany offers a physiological examination of the circulatory system and its role on the appearance of skin color: that is, the functions of “the cuticle or epidermis at the surface; the rete mucosum immediately next and below; the cutis vera, corium, dermis, or true skin lying at the base of all.”7 In “Special Explanation on Color,” Delany continues the study on the circulatory and cellular composition of human beings to examine the multifaceted diversity in color among the species.8 Delany underlines the elemental but disregarded reasoning:

[I]t is in accordance with the economy of the Creator to give a general and unerring reproductive system, to each race, whereby it should be known by its own peculiar characteristics; as also it was part of His economy to give each individual of the same race, a particular reproductive system of temperament, whereby the same parents as father and mother, produce children of different temperaments and different color of eyes and hair as before mentioned, as may be seen in almost every family of the white race.9

Delany had commendable aptitude in science and worked with established abolitionist doctors, as an apprentice, to learn as much as possible about general medicine, particularly physiology within the human biological system. In 1850 he applied to and was accepted to Harvard Medical School. After a group of racist White students petitioned his removal from the school, Delany was in fact expelled from Harvard Medical School. The political significance of his color within long-standing politics of education and social advancement was the factor for his expulsion, coupled with the Whites’ petty jealousy. His own abominable experiences from a racist structure, in addition to the horrors his ancestors suffered and that his contemporaries continued to endure, bolstered Delany’s commitment to contribute to the elevation of the race. He worked to expose the intentions of racism and the relentless measures to bar African descendants from the quality of education and training that would lift the race and establish the social and economic equality of the races. Having scientifically demonstrated the unquestionable unity of the human species, as well as the reasons for the variation of color, from the “purest white” to the “purest black,” Delany establishes a simple comparison between the vegetable kingdom, the animal kingdom, and the human races, to appeal to the good sense of the most racist but schooled individual. For, as Firmin posits in De L’Égalité, “à des hommes instruits et intelligents il suffit d’indiquer un ordre d’idées, pour que la vérité qui en découle brille à leurs yeux avec une éloquente évidence”10 (“to educated

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