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by Alexandra Vallis

It is easy to look back on an event and judge people's motives and consequential actions, deciding or at least speculating about whether or not they acted reasonably. But, few people can step back and examine their impulse while making a decision. On January 13, 1898, French writer Emile Zola attempted this when he interrupted the cry "Death to the Jews!" sounding from mobs of Frenchmen, and wrote the famous expository article, "J'Accuse" (Burns 104). The letter addressed to the President of the French Republic, foretold that a scandal the government left unsettled, The Alfred Dreyfus Affair, would haunt France as one of the most shameful events in its history. His motivation, he wrote, had "but one goal: that light be shed, in the name of mankind which has suffered so much as has the right to happiness" (Burns 102). The outright accusations Zola publicized assured him a cell in jail, but only for a short time for his candor also exposed the fiasco to the previously naïve public. Despite his immediate influence on the events of the republic, it was not until 1998, that a French president formally acknowledged Zola's courage and insight. On the centenary of "J'Accuse," President Jacques Chirac wrote his own letter thanking the man who "rose up against the lie, the baseness, and the cowardice. Shocked at the injustice against Captain Dreyfus, whose only crime was to be Jewish, [he] launched his famous cry. . .that. . . struck like lightning and, in a few hours, changed the destiny of the Affair. Truth was on the march" (Burns 191).

Even the words of the trusted French author Emile Zola obliged a century of reflection before inspiring the adulation of President Jacques Chirac. Had Zola remained indifferent, another Frenchman may have taken up Dreyfus' cause. But if not, could France have remained shrouded by an injurious lie? What historical price do we pay when fear and prejudice mingle?

My heart sank when I received an Instant Message three nights before Halloween from a high school friend who now attends Columbia University:

Two Arab men were apprehended yesterday at a Costco in New Jersey after a suspicious employee phoned the police on the men who were attempting to buy $5,000 worth of candy. One of the men escaped, but the one detained was found to be in the country illegally.

Josh and I agreed that if it were true, the incident would make it on the news, actually, that a reporter would most likely have made it to the New Jersey Costco before the Police. The final lines of the email urged those who received it to pass it along as a warning. I scoffed at some moron's attempt to spread his fabricated story to as many screen names as possible, but not before I read it out-loud in my room. In truth, it took me more than a few minutes to respond to Josh and ask him who sent him the letter because my initial reaction was a fear that prevented my fingers from any further typing.

It's such a sick and incomprehensible thought that under previous circumstances I would have immediately picked the e-mail out as a weakly disguised chain-letter meant to further victimize little kids who had hoped to hear their last three-hour, "Now, don't eat candy with damaged wrappers" lecture. A thought that if convincing enough, could have persuaded my mother, who used to inspect my candy herself for the first of my memorable trick or treating years, to make her own candy that year for me to eat.

Arab, though, that one adjective defines the entire accusation: the one easily discernable feature of all the highjackers from September 11th. That's the trait of every person arrested in connection with that disgusting act. It's the background causing alarm in airports across the country. One reporter explained: suspicion has risen to the point where people are being stopped in airports because of too much facial hair.

Everything is under suspicion. The letters filled with anthrax continue to circulate, but what could be more dramatic than finding out about the first incident. Once the first case was diagnosed, the possibility was presented and entered peoples' minds. False alarms busy the phone lines of all the authorities. People are living with a looming fear of something, and what is most frightening is they're not sure of what. I've been told since sixth grade history that "since the major powers in the world were democratic and democratic countries are unlikely to wage war on one another, there wouldn't be any more major wars." Whatever we're in the midst of now may be atypical, but it has by no means civilized the way my books insisted the rest of history would be. This is an emotional war.

Bush keeps telling Americans to go on with their daily lives and prove that our country has not been disheartened, but I know my outlook at least has changed. Regardless of the number of American flags they've sold at Wal-Mart, people have been conditioned to look over their shoulders. And, in many cases, that has meant being more alert around people who might be Arab. It seems to fit too well that one of the cultures the majority of Americans used to overlook, when faced with an opportunity to use power, would retaliate against their suppressors.

In Boston, my home city, some of the FBI's suspects said to be living there were involved in terrorist activities while under the guise of being Taxi drivers. It sounds like a crude movie script sprung from society's overplayed stereotypes. But, at the same time, it fits with the idea of the ignored and mistreated group retaliating on those who are desperately trying to keep the upper hand. Whenever society seems on the verge of major change or a shift in power, those accustomed to living with unchallenged domination fear the backlash of the slighted minority.

The trap of directing more hostility towards and putting blame on already neglected groups during times of conflict seems to come naturally to humans. People are incredibly afraid of the possibility that their actions have come back to haunt them. They fear most the ascension to power of those they have carelessly mistreated because of the threat that they will get back exactly what they deserve. In times of major change, when the rhythm of society is interrupted and those in control are afraid of a shift in power, minorities most consistently face the burden of blame. The majority in power grasp at any chance to stop the inevitable, and think that the only way is by further punishing the rising minority. The result is that those who have spent their lives ignoring the plight of others look desperate as they try in vain to hold on to their blissful ignorance.

In the nineteenth century, the scientist Paul Broca, used Craniometry, a meticulous process of measuring the skulls of deceased humans, to conclude that women have smaller brains than men and therefore could not be as intelligent. He was one of the most respected leaders of the trend in Europe of "proving" the inferiority of groups already deemed inferior by culture. Stephen Jay Gould, a Professor of Zoology at Harvard identifies in his essay, "Women's Brains," the scientific faults in Broca's argument, which were mostly based on height and age dismissal. Broca's facts came from autopsies of 292 men's and 140 women's brains from four Paris hospitals. He perfected a method of weighing the brains and conducted each autopsy personally, finding that on average women's brains were 14% smaller than those of men. Gould describes how on average Broca's women were also almost half a foot shorter than his men. He renders Broca's claims illegitimate and gives insight to the period where such unfounded conclusions developed from such scientifically sound calculations.

Darwin instigated the theory of women's biological inferiority through his ideas on evolution. He believed that males, the stronger, quicker, and more intelligent, being those who could survive the hunt and bring back food, had been subjected to more selection pressures than women (Bergman). This coincides perfectly with Broca's support of his own results that women had suffered fewer evolutionary pressures, but Broca was not the only scientist attempting through study to legitimize society's prejudices. Robert Bean, another nineteenth century data monger, researched the "inferiority" of blacks and easily found that society's prejudices were justified because his data showed that the front half of white's brains was larger than the front half of those of African Americans. He left out the measurements he had taken of the full brain sizes in his report. He had found no difference in actual brain size between blacks and whites. To pay some heed to that inconsequential hiccup in his theory, Bean explained that as the bodies studied had been donated to medical schools because no one had claimed them, the white's bodies could only have been of prostitutes and the depraved, while because blacks have no respect for any of their dead, the bodies unclaimed and tested were of the highest black classes (Johnson). In fact even Broca witnessed that brains of some "inferior" races tended to be larger than those of whites. Dr. D.R. Johnson in his essay "Measuring Heads" put it succinctly, saying, "Eskimos, Lapps, Mongolians, and Tartars would all beat [whites], so it becomes quite clear that some inferior groups may have large brains, but "what is important is that small brains must belong exclusively to peoples of low intelligence" (Johnson).

What is most interesting about Gould's argument is not how quickly he was able to discredit Broca, but the way he showed Broca's largest fault was not in his science but in the conclusions he formed after his relentless work of gathering data. Scientists and followers of science didn't just ignore whether he was weighing all those meticulous facts he had procured rightly, they also didn't worry about whether his theory that having a larger brain signified higher intelligence meant anything in itself. The techniques of Broca's experiment spread, whether it was to support or refute his original conclusions. Gould included in his essay the well-known education reformer, Maria Montessori. After looking at Broca's data with force and mass corrections made by the scientist Manouvrier, Montessori decided Broca had actually proved women had more intellectual ability than men, and had only been held back by men's more powerful physical force. The same data yielded several interpretations, all influenced by what the observers wanted to believe. His scientific "breakthroughs" were widely hailed because through innovative detailed experimentation, he put into data what many in society already supposed and wanted to remain "true."

The people who readily believed Broca's argument tended to be very well-educated men. Their dismissal of the faults in the experiment may correspond with the fact that women were beginning to question their position in society. Broca's results were introduced in 1873 about a decade after women in Britain began petitioning for the right to vote (which they did not receive until 1928). Women in America and Britain realized their influence in society when they began social reform groups on issues such as temperance and aiding the poor, and soon they began looking at ways to help themselves. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott organized the Seneca Falls Women's Rights Convention in America in 1848, and by the 60s, women in Britain were asking for their rights in the British Suffrage Movement.

I am reluctant to compare my present fears in the advent of war to those which made nineteenth century men form ancient and biased conclusions from advanced science, but I cannot deny that my fears have also developed from the threat of a shift in power. As arrogant as it sounds, to most Americans the United States is untouchable, and the thought of that changing is horrifying. As much as I'm ashamed of my impulse to fear another disaster, I cannot deny that the situation in America right now has changed. Our government is at present bombing Afghanistan, and it is not totally unfounded that the people we are fighting will retaliate. It is also less than comforting that no one seems really sure of who and what we are fighting only that those we have heard from are Arab and don't accept any blame for what is happening. I was so taken aback the first time I heard one Taliban leader accuse the U.S. of unwarranted terrorism that I laughed, but it becomes more frightening each of the times I have heard it since. While I can give reason to my own suspicion as our country approaches a possibly major war, I cannot help but see a connection between my naïve but growing emotions and the destructive prejudices that have grown out of fear in the past, that no reasoning could ever help me look back on and comprehend.

Women and racial minorities were not the only groups denied equal rights in the nineteenth century. In France in 1894, proof of rising Anti-Semitism culminated in what is known as the Dreyfus Affair. It is named after Alfred Dreyfus, a Captain in the French Army, who also happened to be Jewish. In 1894, during his time as a Captain, French documents were discovered in the wastebasket of a German military attaché, which indicated that an officer in the French army was selling secrets to the German government. Dreyfus was immediately accused because he had access to the type of information that was found, and he was Jewish. He was immediately brought before a secret military court, which declared his handwriting to be similar to that on the documents. He was sentenced, without having been allowed to examine the evidence against him, to life imprisonment for treason in a penal colony off the coast of South America known as Devil's Island. When evidence surfaced that the guilty officer was still holding his rank, a General Walsin Esterhazy, he was brought before another secret court, but quickly determined not guilty. The attempt of the military to cover up the affair was obvious to everyone in France no matter their faction, but it did not expunge the Anti-Semitism that had become rampant throughout France.

The Political Right and the Catholic Church were using the espionage as evidence of the failure of the French republic under the leadership of the left, and declared the scandal was a conspiracy by the Jews and the Freemasons to ruin the Army's reputation and by doing so, destroy France. The desire of the Political Right to take control of the government of France is much more tangible than that of Broca and his colleagues to inhibit briefly the women's movement, but the stimulus and technique used were the same. Both groups preyed on the preconceptions that already existed in their societies. In Broca's case women had always played an inferior role, and so he collected data and organized it scientifically to finalize the idea in his mind he had had no intention of reevaluating. In the case of Alfred Dreyfus, an undercurrent of mistrust in Jews surfaced at the first suggestion of evidence, and Dreyfus was served up as a cut-and-dry example of why people should feel confident of that existing suspicion.

The most dangerous companion of prejudice is modulated truth. It is only too easy to assume that stereotypes develop from some seed of truth, and actually many of them do. Italians tend to be thought of as good cooks; my relatives are. But, an assumption of that sort could rarely prove harmful. Type casting becomes dangerous when that initial spark of truth overcomes and blinds reason. It is comforting to propose that my suspicion is founded in some real danger. I don't want to believe my sudden interest in the Arab (or person who to my minimal knowledge looks Arab) selling pretzels on the corner of Washington Square Park, or the seriousness with which I inspect a letter in my mailbox with the name of one of my room's former inhabitants on it, is totally unfounded. But, I'm not confident that I can control my automatic reactions to what is becoming a highly volatile environment. My mother keeps insisting that I stay out of the subway. She always hears these theories that that's the easiest target for biological warfare; she was bugging me before September 11 not to use it. Some Israeli woman she works out with said her relatives in Israel had told her that the Israeli Intelligence thought something was up and to be careful. I told my roommate, Heather, while I was on the phone with my mother, and she laughed. I thought it was funny too. But, even if the odds of something like that happening are as improbable or as probable as they were then, I don't laugh about it now. My perspective has undeniably changed because of one event.

I can't exactly be angry at myself for what I'm feeling. My heart warrants my thoughts, and I'm becoming more certain that it takes more than reason to make them disappear. I'm worried that if our country remains on "heightened alert," universal defensive attitudes will develop into more aggressive ones. It is difficult to ignore my mild predisposition when I, an eighteen year old college student, can laugh at some of the most respected scientists of the 19th century because I'm viewing them with a 21st century perspective. Darwin found evidence for women's inferiority before Broca experimented with Craniometry. He used his observations on evolution to propose that because all animals have stronger and weaker variations, humans must, and that variation is the female. That conclusion may have gone unchallenged in Darwin's age, but it is an unacceptable assumption today. I am lucky to have been sheltered from any serious gender discrimination by attending private school, but I believe most educated people would strike that interpretation from their research in a period where even many women accepted that they were the weaker gender of the human race. Interpretations must all be regarded in context.

I don't want to think that my emotions are unfounded and just the result of frenzied post-catastrophe perspective. Americans right now live with the fear that the United States may no longer be invincible. If a reporter on the news had told me that Halloween candy in the city may be tainted I would probably warn all of my friends who may have missed the breaking news more readily than I would spread the news of some scientific breakthrough. Scientific discoveries happen every day; events that used to be incomprehensible are more pressing. The threat of terrorism looms over all Americans, and no one can be spared from having turbulent emotions and falling victim to believing unfounded tales and threats and assumptions. I'm afraid, though, that my emotions will get out of hand because I do not at this point have control over my adaptation to this new environment. But, the grotesque prejudice that tried to dehumanize women when they asked Broca's elite for a share in basic rights and, which surfaced against Jews during a volatile political age in France, must have grown from fears as negligible as those that I have conditioned myself to accept. I have never really understood the origins of hate and prejudice. When I imagine someone racist, he usually has a severe mental imbalance: maybe he was abused as a child, or has nurtured some unfounded resentment, or is simply but completely misinformed, but whatever his incapacity, the racist is far from being an enlightened human being. But, people are only resentful when they believe something has been taken away from them, and no one wants to admit that they have been living in ignorance. Americans right now are in a state of shock over what happened on September 11, so contagiously referred to as "911." Myself and many others are lingering in a stage of fear, others became immediately angry, and most acknowledge that something has been taken away from us, demanding: "How could this happen?"

In the essay, "The Discovery of What It Means to Be an American," from the 1950's, James Baldwin wrote about the environment that influences the work of all American writers: How American writers travel to Europe to find sustenance because "Europe has what we don't have yet, a sense of the mysterious and inexorable limits of life, a sense, in a word, of tragedy." September 11 is our first tragedy. The untested emotions myself and other Americans are struggling with are disturbingly similar to those components I naively referred to as burgeoning from a mental imbalance. September 11 was a traumatic experience. I hope, though, that the citizens of our Democratic nation will identify the origin of their emotions and resist being overwhelmed by them, as were the chauvinist intellectuals of the 19th century, and the French of the young republic. I don't believe I'm being too optimistic. Maybe I am too eager to trust what I was told in sixth grade: that Democracy would make life different, better even. But, Americans have been and always will be a different paradoxical sort of breed. Today for instance, an Arab was convicted for being a terrorist involved in the September 11th attacks; he may face the death penalty. On the same news broadcast, New York City school children were said to be sending thousands of toys to Afghanistan because, as the reporter explained, "The children of Kabul are like any other children."

Works Cited
Baldwin, James. "The Discovery of What it Means to Be an American." Encounters: Essays for Exploration and Inquiry. 2nd ed. Ed. Pat C. Hoy II and Robert DiYanni. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2000. 103-108.

Gould, Stephen Jay. "Women's Brains." Encounters: Essays for Exploration and Inquiry. 2nd ed. Ed. Pat C. Hoy II and Robert DiYanni. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2000. 305-311.

Bergman, Jerry. "Darwin's Teaching of Women's Inferiority."Vital Articles on Science/Creation. Mar. 1994. 12 Dec. 2001. http://www. icr.org/pubs/imp/imp-249.htm.

Burns, Michael. France and the Dreyfus Affair: A Documentary History. Boston: Bedford, 1999.

Johnson, Dr. D.R. "Measuring Heads." Human Evolution.Jan. 2001. Dec. 2001. http://www.leeds.ac.uk/chb/lectures/anthl_05.html.

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