Decolonization of Anthropology

    When I was a child, I grew up in a semi-religious household. My father grew up Pentecostal and my mother grew up kinda Catholic if that makes sense. Our origin story for them was that of God, who created the world in just seven days. That also meant that was the story I told everyone for my first twelve years of life. When I was in  high school, the discussion of evolution was brought to my attention inside and outside of the classroom. We discussed Darwin and his theories of Evolution and Natural Selection. We also discussed how religion played a major part in our civilization. When I was growing up, I always believed that my teachers were intelligent and knew everything they taught us by heart. That everything they taught us was the truth and necessary to know to hopefully become successful in the future. I have since then learned about the racism and sexism that has always been apart of our civilization. That for generations after generations this idea was passed down that superiority is decided based off of your skin color and gender. Since being an adult on my own, I have decided for myself that religion is not the fact that someone created us, but the fact that there is an energy present that allows others to feel somewhat at peace. I do know that religion plays a huge part in how people are viewed within our society. I found myself falling more in love with the idea of evolution and how we all truly began. That is why I wanted to become an anthropologist to maybe change this perspective of those who follow these forms of bias as anthropologists. 

    When it comes to the idea of evolution, we must discuss the racism and sexism that comes along with that. As a women, I have experienced sexism within my lifetime. I have never experienced racism because I am white. Black women in America struggle because of the years of oppression that has followed them since our origin story began. During the times of enlightenment and evolution, it was easier for racism and sexism to be accepted as well as used against others. Since the beginning, most theories have been race and gender bias. Men have always been seen superior to women and white men have always been superior to black males and females. I find it important to discuss how we civilized overtime, but we cannot leave out the biases of color and gender. 

As for sexism, women have always been oversexualized. Not just any women, but Native and African American women. White women might not have had a lot of rights, but at the time they had more than the women of color. The stereotypes that follow these women of color are also why they are easy to sexualize within our society. The same stands for racism as stereotypes pour from the mouths of the ignorant to ruin the reputation of those young and colored. This led to injustices that put down people of color in relation to white people. Eugenics also played apart in how anthropologist saw individuals. That was because Eugenics helped with the idea that white people were the better race. As Anthropologist discovered genocides such as the Holocaust, the mindset of anthropology began to change, but not completely. As you can see today, we still have cases of racism and sexism present within our society. It is up to current and future anthropologist to do better for the future of our discipline. 

AthAthreya, S., & Ackermann, R. R. (2018). Colonialism and Narratives of Human Origins in Asia and Africa.

SterSterling, K. (2015). Black Feminist Theory in Prehistory. Archaeologies, 11(1), 93–120. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11759-015-9265-z