History of scientific racism

"Categorizing and ascribing meaning to difference is a common human trait; we often need to categorize to get by and make sense of the world around us. Sometimes this classification is harmless, and sometimes not." -- Martin Lund, "A Prehistory of Scientific Racism"

Scientific racism is the misuse of scientific methods, data, and theories to justify racial hierarchies, discrimination, and the belief in the inherent superiority or inferiority of certain racial groups. It uses pseudoscientific methods to create false, biologically based distinctions between humans.

It is important to emphasize that scientific racism is not considered genuine science by modern standards. It has been fundamentally debunked by contemporary genetics, which demonstrates that human genetic variation is actually greater within populations than between them, and that "race" is a sociopolitical phenomenon rather than a biological one.

Ideas related to scientific racism persisted because it's a highly functional tool for maintaining power. It was a structural justification for colonialism, slavery, and socioeconomic exclusion.

Key Figures and Ideas in Scientific Racism

1. François Bernier (1620–1688): First to attempt to classify the entirety of humanity into "species" or "races" based on physical traits (particularly women). This is often considered a starting point for modern racial thought and established white Europeans as the "norm" from which others deviated.

2. Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778): Divided humans into five varieties. His classification assigned behavioral and mental traits to physical types and this became a blueprint for racist hierarchies.

3. Charles White (1728–1813): He used the "Great Chain of Being" to attempt to prove that whites and Black people were separate species. He was a supporter of polygenism: the belief that different races have separate origins.

4. Samuel George Morton (1799–1851): American physician who used craniometry (skull measurements) to argue that brain size correlated with intelligence, Claimed Caucasians had the largest brains and Black people the smallest. His data was famously critiqued for its inaccuracies and bias.

5. Arthur de Gobineau (1816–1882): Proposed a rigid three-race model (white, black, yellow) and warned that "race mixing" would lead to the collapse of civilization. His work was pivotal in the development of "Aryan" supremacy theories.

6. Francis Galton (1822–1911): Coined the term "eugenics" in 1883. He sought to "improve" human populations through selective breeding and was a foundational figure in statistics and psychometrics. Cousin of Charles Darwin.

7. Madison Grant (1865–1937): Promoted the concept of the "Nordic race" as the pinnacle of humanity. His work was highly influential in the US and in Nazi Germany.

Links

• A Brief History of Scientific Racism
• Wikipedia: Scientific racism
• A Prehistory of Scientific Racism
• The Origins of Scientific Racism
• Eugenics and Scientific Racism
• The Ideology of Racism: Misusing Science to Justify Racial Discrimination
• The return of race science and why it matters for family science

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