"According to the now almost universally accepted theory, all the races of mankind had a common origin"
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There is a quiet power move in Huntington opening with "now almost universally accepted theory": he’s laundering an argument through consensus, not evidence. The phrase does two jobs at once. It positions the speaker on the side of modernity (up-to-date, scientifically literate) while treating dissent as already outdated. "Theory" keeps a nominal humility, but "almost universally accepted" functions like a gavel: case closed.
In context, that matters. Huntington wrote in an era when American educators and social scientists were busy sorting humanity into hierarchies - sometimes bluntly, sometimes with the new varnish of measurement, climate determinism, and eugenic policy. So a statement affirming "a common origin" can sound progressive, even anti-racist, especially against older polygenist ideas that treated races as separate creations. Yet the subtext isn’t automatically egalitarian. "Common origin" can be a preface to ranking: we all started together, the logic goes, but diverged; and then comes the pseudo-scientific story about why some groups supposedly "advanced" and others did not.
Even the grammar reveals the worldview. "All the races of mankind" assumes race as a stable, natural unit - a catalog the author feels entitled to inventory - while "mankind" centers a universal human category that still gets filtered through racial partitions. Huntington’s intent reads as pedagogical authority: to set the baseline of what educated people should believe, then build a broader explanatory framework on top of it. The line works because it borrows the prestige of scientific consensus to preempt moral and political debate.
In context, that matters. Huntington wrote in an era when American educators and social scientists were busy sorting humanity into hierarchies - sometimes bluntly, sometimes with the new varnish of measurement, climate determinism, and eugenic policy. So a statement affirming "a common origin" can sound progressive, even anti-racist, especially against older polygenist ideas that treated races as separate creations. Yet the subtext isn’t automatically egalitarian. "Common origin" can be a preface to ranking: we all started together, the logic goes, but diverged; and then comes the pseudo-scientific story about why some groups supposedly "advanced" and others did not.
Even the grammar reveals the worldview. "All the races of mankind" assumes race as a stable, natural unit - a catalog the author feels entitled to inventory - while "mankind" centers a universal human category that still gets filtered through racial partitions. Huntington’s intent reads as pedagogical authority: to set the baseline of what educated people should believe, then build a broader explanatory framework on top of it. The line works because it borrows the prestige of scientific consensus to preempt moral and political debate.
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| Topic | Science |
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