Scientific Racism
What is Scientific Racism?
Scientific Racism, also known as race biology, is a pseudoscientific belief that uses scientific evidence to justify racism, racial superiority, and racial inferiority. These practices and beliefs have since been discredited (Kurtz 2008: 39).
More on Scientific Racism:
Scientific Racism was born during the 17th and 18th centuries. This new type of “race science” was just considered science. It was considered that races exist biologically and that there were different species or breeds between human beings. Many influential people and moments contributed to the development of this study (Kung, Demby, and Meraji 2019).
There are a wide variety of examples that contributed to the structure of scientific racism. For example, Johann Blumenbach (https://embryo.asu.edu/pages/johann-friedrich-blumenbach-1752-1840), a German scientist, coined the term Caucasian in 1795 to describe the, “… variety of mankind that originated on the southern slopes of Mount Caucasus” along Europe’s eastern border”. He then claimed it was the original and most beautiful race (Rutledge).
Another example is Samuel Norton. (https://www.penn.museum/sites/expedition/the-samuel-george-morton-cranial-collection/), an American anthropologist, that postulated in the 1800s that intelligence and brain size is directly related. He measured a diverse set of skills from different countries and concluded that Caucasians have larger skulls than other races and that makes them superior (Gasper).
The consequence of the work of scientists like Blumenbach and Morton gave racism legitimacy. It was soon picked up by educators, pastors, and the media. Reggie Horseman, a historian who studied media and publications summarized that, “One did not have to read obscure books to know that the Caucasians were innately superior and that they were responsible for civilization in the world, or to know that inferior races were destined to be overwhelmed or even to disappear” (Horsman, 2006).
Moving into the 19th and 20th centuries, eugenics (the controlled breeding to include certain genetic groups and excluding others, that are then judged as inferior) played out when Nazi Germany sought to target Jewish people in the Holocaust. This regime was led by powerful language and social prestige that led people to believe that there was a racial difference between Germans and Jewish people. They were under the impression that they were “defenders of race”. This point of view helped to support Germany’s views of racial homogeneity. After World War II, people from around the world saw how dangerous this line of thinking is and banded together and decided that race would no longer have a place in biology since it is scientifically inaccurate (Gelfand, 1995). The implications of a superior race have proven to be extremely dangerous, especially since scientific racism implied that there was a racial hierarchy.
An example of modern scientific racism that is less obvious is that of race-adjusted kidney function algorithms. The estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) is a value of kidney function that is used to determine a person's aptitude and readiness for kidney disease treatment and transplant via levels of the serum creatinine. The creators of the algorithm to determine eGFR found that Black people had, on average, higher levels of creatinine than white people. Therefore, the algorithm automatically adjusts for race and gives Black people a higher eGFR score, which means they have higher kidney function. In recent years, however, scientists and doctors have pointed out that this algorithm has led to countless Black patients suffering from kidney failure, waiting on transplant lists, and dying because they were denied treatment due to their supposedly high creatinine levels. To this day, these adjusted algorithms are still widely used, and it is endangering the health of millions of Black people (Vyas 2020).
This field of science has since been disproven and discredited. However, the halt of race science did not happen overnight. Racist people exist everywhere, and therefore, racist scientists do as well. There were pockets of scientists that did believe that Caucasian races were superior and that segregation and slavery were justified. While this form of scientific racism no longer exists today, in our social climate, scholars and other researchers have seen a return of blatant racism and white supremacist movements. So, while this practice of science no longer exists, the implications of it do (Yale 2016).
Picture Gallery
Image that implies that African Americans are a species between Greeks and Chimpanzees/ Caucasians are superior
Scientists measuring skull and nose sizes to compare and contrast similarities and differences between races
An Australian newspaper article that highlighted how Aboriginals were butchered in the name of science
Learn More…
… About the History of Aborigine Slaughter for the Name of Scientific Racism!
https://creation.com/missing-the-link-between-darwin-and-racism
…. About how Racist Ideology Came to Circulate Between the United States and Europe!
https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/skulls-in-print-scientific-racism-in-the-transatlantic-world
…About an Award-Winning Film that Exposes Human Zoos!
…About Social Darwinism, Scientific Racism, and the Metaphysics of Race
https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/2967206.pdf?refreqid=excelsior%3A530cc01b96a086048cd562f478086ccc
…About an NPR Podcast on how Scientific Racism Plays into the 21st Century!
https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2019/07/10/416496218/is-race-science-making-a-comeback
Works Cited Works Cited
Dennis, Rutledge M. 1995 “Social Darwinism, Scienetific Racism, and the Metaphysics of Race” Journal of Negro Education v64 n3 p243-52 -. Retrieved October 9, 2019 (http://acreutzel.weebly.com/uploads/3/0/7/9/30793595/social_darwinism_scientific_racism.pdf).
Gasper, Phil. 2019. “The Return of Scientific Racism.” International Socialist Review v110. Retrieved October 9, 2019
Gelfand, Toby. 1995. “Defenders of the Race: Jewish Doctors and Race Science in Fin-De-Siècle Europe.” JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association 274(5):1.
Horsman, Reginald. 2006. Race and Manifest Destiny: the Origins of American Racial Anglo-Saxonism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press.
Kung, Jess, Gene Demby, and Shereen Marisol Meraji. 2019. “Is 'Race Science' Making A Comeback?” NPR. Retrieved October 10, 2019 (https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2019/07/10/416496218/is-race-science-making-a-comeback).
Kurtz, P., & Koepsell, D. R. (2007). Science and ethics: Can science help us make wise moral judgments?. Amherst, N.Y: Prometheus Books
Vyas, Darshali A., M.D., Leo G. Eisenstein, M.D., and David S. Jones, M.D., Ph.D. 2020. "Hidden in Plain Sight — Reconsidering the Use of Race Correction in Clinical Algorithms." The New England Journal of Medicine 383:874-882. doi: 10.1056/NEJMms2004740. Retrieved December 10, 2020 (https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMms2004740).
Yale, Elizabeth. 2016. “The Deep-Rooted Racism of Science.” Quartz. Retrieved October 9, 2019 (https://qz.com/637284/the-deep-rooted-racism-of-science/).