How Immigrants Became 'Bad'

if islam is so fantastic why do muslims always flee to christian countries thanks to illegal immigration huge swathes of the region are covered with garbage and waste that degrade the soil and kill wildlife when tucker carlson told viewers of fox news that immigration would dilute the political power of americans i am going to create a new special deportation task force focused on identifying and quickly removing the most dangerous criminal illegal immigrants in america who have evaded justice when trump told americans that immigrants were sending their worst they had a well of unscientific history to draw upon it's a history that attempts to pin people down categorize and classify them hold them in place bar and banish them despite what science is increasingly showing us migration despite being seen as abnormal is actually the norm immobility is rare [Music] liberalism the assumptions of which many of us live under prioritizes individual freedom of thought of expression of movement but simultaneously we think of migration which is free movement as abnormal we even mythologize a sedentary past of villages farmers peasants tied to the land living and dying in the place where they're from yet in the 17th century about 65 percent left their home parish at some point in their lives we have what philosopher alex sager calls a sedentary bias the migrant is presented as a problem an alien an outsider yet we move around our own countries commuting deciding to live elsewhere holidaying visiting relatives making work trips without thinking it's in any way strange we are as a species mobile nomadic built to move in 2020 alone you could count 280 million migrants and each year around a billion tourists all on the move or having moved from where they were born and the numbers year on year are increasing but so are the objects the ideas the phenomenon borders passports guards barbed wire nationalist rhetoric that attempt to stop this to pin us down in place can we find a genealogy of these attitudes a history of our present problem well to do so we might start even though we could go back further with the 18th century biologist carl linnaeus [Music] we in america are immigrants or the children of immigrants we are one people but a people welded from many nations and races linnaeus was born in sweden in 1707 during a period when europeans had been exploring the globe and returning with stories of strange places peoples and creatures some like arnoldus montanus wrote and illustrated books about these bizarre alien lands without ever leaving the comfort of their homes zoos museums galleries and menageries exhibited these incredible new foreign curiosities linnaeus always fascinated by the natural world wanted to contribute towards the scientific understanding of the planet's great biodiversity he came up with the simple system of categorization a taxonomy he'd give each species two names in latin the first a general category and the second a more specific one he divided species into categories like classes genus and species depending on a number of characteristics including importantly where they were found he published his revolutionary book sistema natura in 1735 but when it came to humans linnaeus faced a problem how would the different races of humans fit into his taxonomy the bible told us after all that humans were created by god and descended from adam and eve we must all be the same but the prevailing consensus at the time backed up by science by induction by empiricism was that non-european peoples were primitive savage and biologically different voltaire had written that the negro race is a species of men different to ours as the breed of spaniels is from that of greyhounds linnaeus also took this view but he had a rival georges louis le clerc compt to buffon he was also a naturalist in opposition to linnaeus though the buffon believed that instead of adhering to strict categories depending on location nature was dynamic changing in flux he thought humans had migrated and adapted to local conditions as they moved around the planet like almost everyone at the time though de buffan still believed in a kind of natural hierarchy his theory was that the further from the garden of eden humans have moved the more their biology degenerated african biology for example had suffered from the harsh conditions of the desert and the forest europeans on the other hand lived in a condition that was close to those found in the garden of eden de buffalo published his own book histoire naturale in 1749 it was an immediate european-wide success but linnaeus was the better celebrity he played on his fame and his influence grew species couldn't degenerate that much he retorted to the buffon that was blasphemy species including humans were born lived existed precisely where god had intended them to it's impossible linnaeus wrote that anything which has ever been established by the all-wise creator can ever disappear and by the 10th edition of linnaeus's book he declassified 8 000 plants and 4 000 animals including several races of humans that he'd supposedly found homo troglodytes from the antarctic could eat raw flesh homo caldatus of borneo and nicobar had tails homomonstrosis from lapland included giants and dwarfs homo sapiens asiaticus were yellow melancholy greedy homo sapiens americanus were ill-tempered and obstinate and homo sapiens apha from africa were impassive lazy crafty slow foolish and ruled by caprice homo sapiens europeas were white serious strong active very smart inventive swarms such as this have been known to be 50 miles in width and 100 miles long and often they'll fly several hundred miles in a day they strike terror into the hearts of man and beast and natives in a second territory watch with feverish anxiety as the creatures fly overhead praying that they will continue their flight without a lighting to devour their crops and ruin their food supply the idea of these biological distinctions between races began to dominate european science developing across the 19th century into a new field race science linnaeus's interpretation of the natural world triumphed over the boffins louis xv ordered it official rousseau said he knew of no greater man on earth even darwin was ignored when he argued that it was environmental differences that had resulted in the adaption seen in humans race scientists dominant argued that there were clear fundamental biological differences darwin was crazy quickly lost his influence after publishing on the origin of species and became sidelined and descended into despair he had episodes of hysterical crying many called him ignorant how could single species travel so far around the planet how could ancient israelites for example have ever reached the pacific islands on old-fashioned boats these were clearly separate biological races that had evolved independently darwin performed experiments submerging seeds into water to see if they could survive long journeys and getting fish and birds to eat them retrieving them from their droppings and seeing if they still germinated which of course they did but the idea of separate development of human subspecies won the day the natural history museum displayed models of different human species the bronx zoo had a similar display on the races of man they even kept a man from congo otto benga in the monkey house where visitors watched him play he was only released in 1906. it was clear to everyone that god and science had intended a separate distinct biological hierarchy of man oh the separation of humans into a hierarchy of species almost logically and naturally led to a global or at least western concern degeneration the mixing of genes the dilution of hereditary superiority darwin's cousin francis galton led a new movement eugenics policy makers he argued should focus not on education or investment but on breeding good pure citizens through the golton society scientists warned of the impact of mass migration of racial contamination many u.s states banned interracial sex and marriage in the late 19th century biologist charles davenport warned that americans could rapidly become darker in pigmentation smaller in stature more mercurial more attached to music and art and more given to crimes of larceny kidnapping assault murder rape and sex immorality if the race is mixed president coolidge wrote about the biological laws that tell us that certain divergent people will not mix or blend america he declared after signing a bill to restrict immigration must be kept american university courses on eugenics skyrocketed passports and identification documents became more common the us closed its borders to migrants for the first time in history immigrants had to take intelligence tests at ellis island migration into the u.s quickly declined from around 800 000 a year in 1921 to a hundred thousand after 1929. ellis island closed in 1954 even ships of refugees fleeing the nazis were turned around one ship the sun louis reached florida and was sent back to europe 254 of its passengers died in the holocaust nazis of course most obsessed with purity even advocated for the destruction of foreign plants in german's gardens himmler issued landscaping rules that banned any non-native species a popular bbc series and 1958 book the ecology of invasions by animals and plants warned about protecting domestic species against invading alien ones and the foundation of all of this the belief in biological distinction would persist for centuries when after the holocaust the un released a statement that condemned racial distinctions leading scientists mostly protested leading british scientist wc osmond hill wrote i need not mention the well-known musical attributes of the negroids and the mathematical ability of some indian races biologist julian juxley also pointed to the rhythm-loving negro temperament 83 of 106 anthropologists refused to sign the un statement and in 2018 the u.s citizenship and immigration services changed its mission statement from fulfilling america's promise as a nation of immigrants to securing the homeland [Music] the 20th century might be looked back on as the century we rediscovered movement advances in technology led to an almost unbelievable expansion in railways roads airports and even space travel industries sped up machines in art the impressionists like van gogh had already tried to bring back movement into still images film radio and then television developed philosophers like jill's delus brought the idea of change movement dynamism back into a field he thought had been static representational but linnaeus's belief that species were native to specific locations continued throughout the 20th century no one believed that humans let alone many weak animals could have dispersed so far and wide across the globe creatures couldn't migrate from africa to the pacific islands they couldn't swim thousands of miles species had to have evolved separately it took technology only invented in the late 20th century gps and modern dna analysis in particular to discover a fact that shocked many scientists around half of all species aren't sedentary at all they're on the move and it's only in the last couple of decades that the real extent of this discovery is becoming clear animal migrations are incredibly difficult to study even harder to understand is our prehistoric past tracking technology was heavy expensive and unable to be used at long distances solar-powered gps tanks changed this suddenly researchers have been able to track migrations on a scale no one ever suspected 70 000 kilometer migrations of turns zebras walking over 500 kilometers crocodiles swimming 200 miles out to sea dragonflies flying hundreds of kilometers in a day everything from sharks to wolves migrating thousands of miles a new field of study called movement ecology rapidly developed this video from move bank logs the movement of 8 000 animals fitted with gps tags linnaeus's ideas about using geographical locations in a species name had become for the first time unreliable the natural world is much more fluid much more dynamic than we ever realized and only in the 1980s did modern dna analysis finally prove that homo sapiens were one single species with a common ancestor that had spread all over the globe in the year 2000 the human genome project found that the differences between us accounted for about 0.1 percent of our gene sequence as journalist sonja shah points out migration is so common that it's pointless asking why people migrate but rather we should ask why anyone would stay in the same place she writes migration is encoded into our bodies just as it is in wild species it's a force of nature a fact of life built into biology itself yet despite this we increasingly try to prevent migration thinking of humans as naturally sedentary rather than biologically dynamic [Music] in 1945 there were just five border walls in the world by 1991 there were still only 19. in 2016 there were 70. north korea encages its people india fences itself off from pakistan and bangladesh tunisia has built trenches filled with water along its border with libya in hungary prisoners were used to build a fence along its border with croatia israel uses razor wire sensors and infrared cameras britain and france have increased the fencing at the channel tunnel norway has two with its russian border and trump's border war increased the u.s mexico barrier by almost 500 miles however despite this walls as wendy brown has argued are more effective as political theatre and rhetoric than preventing the flow of migration instead they just send migrants through different routes they create an underground smuggler economy which increases crime and ultimately make migrant roots more dangerous and of course they impose an artificial order on what as we've seen is a natural global phenomenon found in every species our nationalist bias are sedentary bias makes these things appear natural the way the world is the way it has to be while often obscuring the complexity of borders as a phenomenon they separate families cut off jobs and always imply the violence needed to defend them for a rich person borders often signify excitement adventure holiday vacation for poor people a border means something entirely different a prison a limit an obstacle to be overcome jonathan moses has argued that we could even draw an analogy between international borders and apartheid moses asks why is the danes advantage over the somalian legitimate and protected by international law while the african ears advantage over the zosie was not for millennia migration was a part of human life all life slow but steady science and technology have had a strange effect on that history inductive empiricism the careful study of the world has tended historically to collect evidence in a snapshot at a specific point in time and then announces that view of the world as a found universal truth it discovers people life things where they are and presumes often that's where they belong and just as scientific racism was pinning everyone down technology was speeding everyone up leading to a contradiction that both builds walls and encourages more movement at the same time and this contradiction is only going to get more pronounced between 2008 and 2014 flood storms earthquakes and other disasters displaced 26 million around the world in 2015 alone 15 million were forced to flee wars in that same year a million of them migrated across the mediterranean sea when we look at these people we tend to take the states the nations that they've been moving between moving through as the natural unit of analysis that those people are misfits or aliens in or out of some kind of container but as ulrich beck has noted as we become more global as the world becomes quicker and more connected the unity of national state and national society becomes unstuck scientific racism human taxonomy the state border walls guards passports global inequality they all hide the fact that not only are we all migrants in our bones but that increasingly we are globalized ones with many more options and desires than ever before it's not only the possibility of more global displacement from disasters wars poverty and climate change but also that we're all through supply chains work travel and family life becoming more mobile dynamic and international every day we should focus on ways not just to facilitate this but to actually encourage it to make it easier and more efficient the un's global compact for safe orderly and regular migration for example encourages international support to do just this we all know that we want to move around the world as we wish for all the things we'd love to do but we rarely reflect on the contradiction and injustice that makes this possible for many of us but impossible for many others around the world as centuries of naive and crude pseudoscience get refuted as we rediscover movement mobility and our migrant impulse should we not be trying not to build up walls but to realize that we are all inevitably at some point on the move [Music] do [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music]

Channel: Then & Now

Views: 45,388

Keywords: migration, carl linnaeus, scientific racism, origins, immigration, refugees

Id: PV_2BzrTBAE

Length: 26min 10sec (1570 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 15 2021