There were taxonomy systems before him that didn't label blacks as inferior. There were taxonomy systems after him that didn't label blacks as inferior. Some of them quite explicitly argued against such a notion of superiority. What do you mean by influenced? Such an idea doesn't seem to be present in the thinking of physical anthropologists who agree that race is a useful classification system, so it doesn't seem to be intrinsic to the classification system.
This feels like either poisoning the well, or an ethical argument and I don't see how one can make an ethical argument to show that racism is baseless.
The first modern classification of races was François Bernier's
New division of Earth by the different species or races which inhabit it (1684). Evidently (I haven't read it) it did not introduce perceived superior-inferior traits into the categories... but Bernier's was not the system that influenced Western thinking on the subject.
In the 18th century the scientific classification of phenotypic variation was frequently coupled with racist ideas about innate predispositions of different groups, always attributing the most desirable features to the White, European race and arranging the other races along a continuum of progressively undesirable attributes. (Slotkin, J. S. (1965). "The Eighteenth Century". Readings in early Anthropology. Methuen Publishing. pp. 175–243.)
In 1735 Carl Linnaeus -- who was deemed highly reputable due to his invention of binomial nomenclature/zoological taxonomy (as in genus
Homo, species
sapiens) -- divided our species into continental varieties of europaeus, asiaticus, americanus, and afer, each associated with a different humour: sanguine, melancholic, choleric, and phlegmatic, respectively. (Slotkin, J. S. (1965). "The Eighteenth Century". Readings in early Anthropology. Methuen Publishing. pp. 175–243.)
Linnaeus described
Homo sapiens europaeus as active, acute, and adventurous, whereas
Homo sapiens afer was said to be crafty, lazy, and careless. (Graves, Joseph L (2001). The Emperor's New Clothes: Biological Theories of Race at the Millennium. Rutgers University Press.)
A word about Linnaeus and why he was so influential on his contemporaries and those who followed after. At the time of his death, he was one of the most acclaimed scientists in Europe. The philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau sent him the message: "Tell him I know no greater man on earth." Goethe wrote: "With the exception of Shakespeare and Spinoza, I know no one among the no longer living who has influenced me more strongly." Swedish author August Strindberg wrote: "Linnaeus was in reality a poet who happened to become a naturalist". Among other compliments, Linnaeus has been called
Princeps botanicorum (Prince of Botanists), "The Pliny of the North," and "The Second Adam". He is also considered as one of the founders of modern ecology.
influence, v. to have an effect on the character, development, or behavior of someone or something. In this case, the whole of Western thought was influenced by Linnaeus' ascription of superior-inferior traits to his proposed races.
In 1775 Johann Friedrich Blumenbach proposed five major divisions: the Caucasoid race, the Mongoloid race, the Ethiopian race (later termed Negroid), the American Indian race, and the Malayan race, but he did not propose any hierarchy among the races. Blumenbach also noted the graded transition in appearances from one group to adjacent groups and suggested that "one variety of mankind does so sensibly pass into the other, that you cannot mark out the limits between them". Blumenbach seems to have hit the nail on the head with respect to what we now know as genetic clusters. Unfortunately, his measured and careful system of classification was not the one that took hold of the popular or scientific imagination of the 18th, 19th or 20th centuries.
During the 17th - 19th centuries, folk beliefs about group differences merged with scientific explanations of those differences. A. Smedley called this an "ideology of race". (Smedley, A. (1999). Race in North America: origin and evolution of a worldview (2nd ed.). Boulder: Westview Press. ISBN 0813334489.) According to this ideology, races are primordial, natural, enduring and distinct. Subsequent influential classifications by Georges Buffon, Petrus Camper and Christoph Meiners all classified "Negros" as inferior to Europeans. (Graves, 2001).
In the United States, the racial theories of Thomas Jefferson were influential. He saw Africans as inferior to Whites -- especially in regards to their intellect, and imbued with unnatural sexual appetites, but described Native Americans as equals to whites. (Graves again).
I hope by now you can see that, ever since Linnaeus, the entire system of race has been rife with error, and prone to abuse from those in power who wish to use it to subjugate groups they declare to be inferior. Surely I don't need to enumerate the many historical pitfalls of that murderously unjust system.
Upthread you asked me to offer an alternate system of classification, and while I have done so ("
In short, scientifically based gene clusters do not match social ideas of race. If I were pressed to devise a more accurate system of identifying populations, I would begin by chucking out the outmoded, long-abused system of race with all its superior-inferior connotations and begin anew with genetic clusters and subpopulations."), you have ignored this, and continue to press me about how Linnaeus could have been so influential, what I mean by "influenced", etc., as though I am your personal researcher.
Speaking of influence, words influence our thought processes, how we perceive people and objects and events. The word "race" is rife with historical horrors, dripping with the blood of millions, swollen with the injustice of slavery, oppression, war, apartheid. Tear down that conception and rebuild it with the more accurate and valid conception of genetic clusters and geographic ancestry (which do not correspond to mistaken, superior-inferior social or folk ideas about race), and let's move forward as a community of human beings rather than a handful of groups divided by our perceived physical differences.
