Anténor Firmin, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death

    

Anténor Firmin

Haitian anthropologist, journalist, and politician

Date of Birth: 18-Oct-1850

Place of Birth: Cap-Haïtien, Nord, Haiti

Date of Death: 19-Sep-1911

Profession: writer, politician, journalist, anthropologist

Nationality: Haiti

Zodiac Sign: Libra


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About Anténor Firmin

  • Joseph Auguste Anténor Firmin (18 October 1850 – 19 September 1911), better known as simply Anténor Firmin, was a Haitian anthropologist, journalist, and politician.
  • Firmin is best known for his book De l'égalité des races humaines (English: On the Equality of Human Races), which was published as a rebuttal to French writer Count Arthur de Gobineau's work Essai sur l'inégalité des races humaines (English: Essay on the Inequality of Human Races).
  • Gobineau's book asserted the superiority of the Aryan race and the inferiority of blacks and other people of color. Firmin's work, first published in 1885, argued the opposite, that "all men are endowed with the same qualities and the same faults, without distinction of color or anatomical form.
  • The races are equal" (pp.
  • 450).
  • He was marginalized at the time for his beliefs that all human races were equal.Firmin pioneered the integration of race and physical anthropology and may be the first black anthropologist.
  • His work was recognized not only in Haiti but also among African scholars as an early work of négritude.
  • He influenced Jean Price-Mars, the founder of Haitian ethnology and on American anthropologist Melville Herskovits.
  • He worked in teaching, politics, and diplomacy.
  • He founded Le Messager du Nord, a political and literary publication. As the third generation of a post-independent Haiti, Firmin grew up in a working class family in Cap-Haitien.
  • He studied law, and in the early 1800s, the political turmoil surrounding the new government of General Salomon forced him into exile in Paris where he served as a diplomat.
  • During this time, he was admitted to the Societe d'Anthropologie de Paris where he began writing L'Egalite des Races Humaines.Following the ideas of August Comte, Firmin was a stark positivist who believed that the empiricism used to study humanity was a counter to the speculative philosophical theories about the inequalities of races.
  • Firmin sought to redefine the science of Anthropology in his work.
  • He critiqued the early French and English traditions of the field such as craniometry and racialist interpretations of human physical data.
  • He was the first to point out how racial typologies failed to account for the successes of those of mixed race as well as one of the first to state an accurate scientific basis for skin pigmentation.

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