I’ve been reading Typecasting of the Arts and Sciences of Human Inequality by Ewen and Ewen. Stuart Ewen is a professor of film and media studies at Hunter College. As a young man, in 1964 and early 1965, Ewen was a field secretary for the civil rights organization the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Elizabeth Ewen is a professor of American studies/media and communications at SUNY College at Old Westbury.

By tracing the development and implementations of physiognomy and phrenology, the book suggests how the western world has come to stereotype people based upon their physical appearance. Phrenology, a pseudoscience that evaluates human characters on the bases of a detailed study of facial features while phrenology is a study of the brain that breaks it into 27 unique organs, each with its own function. With phrenology, size mattered because the size of a particular organ in one’s brain indicated a certain type of character strength, or weakness.

Brains were collected and measured, not by men of science, but by privileged European men in pursuit of their own interests. Their work (I can’t call it research) indicating the intellectual superiority of white Europeans was conducted at a time that allowed it to be used to justify human chattel slavery of Indigenous peoples of Africa and America. Their brains were said to be of a shape and size that required them to be controlled; they were typecast to be wild and unsafe. These false sciences led to stereotypes concerning beauty, health, physical ability, and even language.

From work centered in these fields, it was decided that a thin body is more healthy, attractive, and desirable that a fat one. It was determined that wide noses were savage. Things were assumed because of the slope of the forehead and tilt of the chin.

Think of the actors who are always typecast because of their appearance: they look like a gangster; they look intellectually or emotionally challenged; they look like a leader… All that comes from this fake science developed in Europe beginning in the 18^th century, then spreading to the US and beyond. Language was also included in this; those who spoke a certain way, using “proper” words, were seen as proper and respectable. The Thesaurus family collected words and terms to regulate English.

This adds another dimension to the dehumanization of people of African descent, only enhancing what was done through simianization.

I’m wondering if there’s been any research to examine imagery in children’s literature to identify how children’s images were (or are) created using the standards set by physiognomy. I’ve seen the horrendous drawings of Black children from the 19^th century that relate anti-Black stereotypes, but what about other races and ethnic groups? How would Irish, Italian, Spanish, Iranian, Indian, or Turkish children have been portrayed? What would their noses, chins, or cheeks convey? How did people from within these groups draw their children? And more important, do these stereotypes persist? Think of noses drawn on Native Americans, or the slanted angle of Asian and Asian American eyes.

Removing them is what has been deemed ‘decolonization’. Removing them is how we quite passing these oppressive, demeaning messages on to our children. Having artists like Duncan Tonatiuh, Loveis Wise, Robert Liu Trujillo, Ekua Holmes, Yuyi Morales, Daniel Sousa, Man One, George Littlechild, Maya Gonzalez, and Corey Begay creating for our young people is pushing us beyond this confinement.

I’m only about half-way through this book. I’ve found it’s content so intriguing that I had to say something about it before finishing it. Besides, I’m quite overdue for a post! There’s so much buried in the systems that inform us that I can’t help but wonder how we’ll ever reach and maintain a country free of oppression. Knowing how some of it began is a good first step.

Be well and do good.