Scientific Racism Research Articles

Conceptualizations of ‘race’: surveys of Polish academics on the race concept

AbstractRecent studies suggest that race is no longer viewed as a biological category by most anthropologists in the United States, but less empirical work has been carried out in other countries. In this study, we engaged the Polish academic community in anthropology (biological and cultural) and biology by conducting surveys to assess how its members approach and conceptualize race in these disciplines. We surveyed participants (a total of 270 respondents) on their views on the existence of races (i.e. whether humans may be subdivided into biological races), whether race is a concept that is needed in science, what the term ‘race’ should symbolize, and whether the respondents were familiar with the term ‘social race’. The results demonstrate that although the view on the reality of races is still generally shared by the majority of the studied academic community, an awareness of the non‐existence of races in our species has emerged among a group of biological anthropologists. Both biologists and cultural anthropologists in Poland associated race mostly with a category of biological classification, while for biological anthropologists, race primarily symbolized a relic of the past. The article emphasizes the importance of becoming acquainted with the debate over race in academic discourse as well as the role of education in shaping attitudes towards race.

The New (White) Normal: Human Anatomy and the Naturalisation of White Bodies in British University Teaching, 1860–1910

Summary The discipline of human anatomy has often been overlooked in histories of race science in favour of comparative anatomy, anthropology, ethnography and statistics. However, understanding the historical relationship between human anatomy and race science is particularly important because of the discipline’s central role, unlike its sister disciplines, in medical education. This article begins to redress this oversight, demonstrating that human anatomy played a key role in the development of nineteenth-century race science in Britain. This article considers three main elements of ideas about racial anatomical difference: the language of racial hierarchy, anatomists’ location of racial difference within the body and the perpetuation of these ideas over time. In so doing, I argue that research into racial difference was demonstrably anatomical during the late nineteenth century, playing a key role in British anatomists’ discipline-building processes, and that these ideas were present within the classroom, influencing generations of medical students.

Reintroducing Derrick Bell into contemporary discourse: A review of ‘Racism and Resistance: Essays on Derrick Bell’s Racial Realism’

Edited by Timothy J. Golden, “Racism and Resistance: Essays on Derrick Bell’s Racial Realism” presents a diverse set of perspectives from scholars in philosophy, law, theology, and rhetoric that critically engage with and expand upon Derrick Bell’s theories and scholarly works. This review approaches this work from outside the disciplines of its contributors and evaluates the volume for its accessibility, interdisciplinarity, and application of Bell’s theory of racial realism in contemporary discourses on racism and anti-racism. “Racism and Resistance” is divided into four parts, each containing two chapters. This review focuses on Part 1 – Racial Realism, Religion, and the Negro Problem and Part 4 – Racial Realism and Theology, as they are excellent examples of both the disciplinary range of this book and the authors’ command of Bell’s body of work.

Racial discourses and colonial education policy: The discursive construction of education development at a historically white South African university

Motivated by critiques from black students during the protests (2015-2016), I trace continuities between the racialised discourses and knowledge regimes that justified colonial education policies and that of Education Development at a historically white South African university. First, I show how the University of Cape Town’s Humanities Education Development Programme racialised and misrecognised black students, despite attempted reforms. Secondly, I trace the discursive formation of the ED project - from the assimilationist discourse of missionary education; the adapted model of trusteeship; the production of race science during apartheid; to a return to assimilationist discourse via the Cape Liberal tradition during apartheid’s demise. However, after a generation of inferior Banu Education, the attempt to assimilate black students into historically white universities’ curricula was not feasible. Instead, an adapted, remedial model was proposed that became entrenched post-apartheid by a state and HE system that failed to transform its inherited Eurocentric curriculum.

Lincecum’s law: white supremacy, castration, and Gideon Lincecum’s crusade in Texas during the long civil war era

ABSTRACT In 1854, prior to the American Civil War, Gideon Lincecum (1793–1874), an enslaver and physician from Texas, proposed a law advocating for the castration of criminals to prevent additional crimes committed by men, especially Black men, and to inhibit hereditary immorality. Shockingly, Lincecum also viewed his law as a “solution” to the “immorality” of abolitionists who supported freedom for enslaved African Americans. Lincecum inspired physicians and scientists promoting eugenics in the twentieth century who racially targeted Black men as candidates for castration. Lincecum’s castration law magnifies the ugliness of scientific racism and violent perceptions of justice as deriving from the same ideological white supremacy that persisted from before the Civil War into the twentieth century.

The Man of Letters: Professor Barrett Wendell and the Style of White Supremacy

Abstract: The role of racism in the history of literary studies is broadly recognized; this article, however, turns from established emphases on exclusionary canons and race science to focus instead on style. Taking up the case of Harvard professor Barrett Wendell, whose influence in the fields of composition pedagogy and US literary history has been far-reaching, it examines his mannered ways of reading and teaching as a "man of letters," which lean into tacit expression, invocations of "common sense," and often-jocular forms of insincerity. Explaining how Wendell makes reading a site for affirming shared assumptions and mutual belonging, the article argues that he celebrates literary study as a means of experiencing a common humanity that is inclusive, diverse, and entirely white. Highlighting Wendell's opposition to the liberal racism dominant at his institution, it shows how he expresses his own contrarian illiberal racism by playing the troll.

Counter-Extremism and ‘Critical Thinking’ as a Measure of the Human

Educational approaches to counter-extremism are proliferating globally, claiming to foster ‘critical thinking’ amongst those deemed vulnerable to extremism. These projects ‘make sense’ through two mutually-reinforcing discourses: a psychological discourse that adjudicates the moral value of different ways of thinking through scientific measures; and an ethical discourse of liberal education that idealizes critical thinking as essential to human development – becoming more human and humane. Counter-extremism mobilizes both to over-represent a ‘dominant genre of being’, to take Sylvia Wynter’s phrase, as if it were the only way of being human. Such projects show how expert and everyday understandings of ‘critical thinking’ have been shaped by psychology’s history as a race science and liberal understandings of education that have legitimated hierarchies of being human. I argue that these conditions of possibility that shape critical thinking must be grappled with in any critical pursuit against hierarchies of being human.

Living in the slipstream of defeat: neoliberalism and the far-right

AbstractThis essay suggests stretching Saull's structuralist account of the relationship between neoliberal globalisation and the far-right to accommodate subaltern agency and resistance. Taking this step makes transparent that the rising fortunes of the far-right is indivisible from the historic defeat that neoliberal globalisation inflicted on the global Left in the 1970s and 1980s. The victorious neoliberal elites went onto produce a refashioned differentialist racism to replace the now discredited scientific racism but also married this to the ideology of multicultural capitalism to accommodate the new postcolonial centres of accumulation. However, in the absence of a socialist alternative to neoliberal globalisation and the continuing technical and political decomposition of class as a social force, the resulting political void since the 2007 crisis has been increasingly filled by the forces of the far-right. Tragically, the choice facing us today seems to be the slow but relentless asphyxiation of the remaining progressive elements of capitalist modernity or their overnight destruction through a fascist ‘big bang’ ideologically dressed as the restoration of ‘rights for whites.’

An antiracism framework for educating nursing professionals

BackgroundA conceptual, methodological, and theoretical framework is needed in Nursing Education to center racism, in the curriculum, as a root cause of health inequity. MethodsCritical race theory is the underpinning for a historical analysis of racism and a critique of scientific racism, whiteness, and white supremacy ideologies that perpetuate harmful and lethal outcomes for racialized individuals and communities. ResultsThis framework conceptualizes learning, unlearning, relearning, and reflective practice as the fundamental process needed to transformative nursing education and advance health equity. DiscussionMethodological application is given for 1) unlearning harmful white supremacy ideology 2) learning that racism as it is embedded in every sector of American life and racial inequities are inherent in the health care system 3) relearning the importance of counternarratives and building structural competency and 4) engaging in reflective practice to challenge deficit paradigms assigned to racialized people and their communities.

Intersensorial Race Science and Exploration in the Age of Jackson

This essay examines the United States Exploring Expedition of 1838–1842 through the methodological lenses of sensory history and phenomenology. This expedition included naval personnel as well as a scientific corps and represents the overlapping interests of the United States Armed Forces and academic organizations like the Smithsonian Institution in the Age of Jackson. Applying a phenomenological approach to the Ex. Ex. clarifies the role of the senses in making race in the period spanning Indian removal and Manifest Destiny. Using a corpus of published accounts, diaries, letters, artworks, and artifacts, I contend that the Ex. Ex. used olfactory disgust, sonic boundaries, and attitudes surrounding touch and gustation to categorize Pacific Islanders as racialized others through the sensorium. Such racial scientific work laid the foundations for later racial scientific ideas in psychophysics and anthropology in the twentieth century.

Racial literacy and performative pedagogies in the German theater practicum

AbstractThis article explores the potential and pitfalls of performative pedagogies for teaching literature that thematizes issues of race and racism and argues that racial literacy requires a rethinking of drama‐pedagogical practice. An initial segment situates pedagogical discussions of race in North American German curricula within research on racial literacy and then considers the ethical limitations of the usual approaches from drama pedagogy (role‐play and identification exercises) when addressing literature about or from minoritized communities. The second half of the article outlines a case study of a performance‐oriented teaching unit in a German theater practicum course for German at the B2 level, which combined work on performing and staging poetry with a discussion of the Enlightenment's entanglement with white supremacy and scientific racism. Centering on Black German poet Philipp Khabo Köpsell's poem “The Brainage,” the unit raised the question of performative ethics, namely, how and whether the class, consisting of 11 white students and a white instructor, could ethically perform the poem in a live performance at the end of the semester. The article analyzes examples from student learning and the final live performance and makes the argument for performing the process of students’ encounter with literary form using theatrical means.

Antiracist Psychology to Advance Equitable Public Policy

The discipline of psychology, with its roots in scientific racism, has been complicit with the enactment of racist policies that have significantly harmed the psychological well-being of many minoritized people in colonial societies. The American Psychological Association (APA) has acknowledged and apologized for this racist history and has committed to an antiracist path for the future to right the wrongs. As a part of Dangerous Opportunities special issue, we examine the antecedents to racism in psychology, the racist behaviors of psychology and the APA during its existence, and the harmful consequences contributed by racist policies supported or endorsed by psychologists. Additionally, we provide a listing of required changes we view as necessary for the discipline of psychology and the APA (as its primary professional organization) to enact to prepare the discipline and the Association for antiracist activities and to capably and responsibly support and advance antiracist policies outside of psychology in the public interests. Transformation of the discipline and its associations, institutions, and programs is necessary for psychology to remain locally and globally relevant in a culturally diverse and interdependent. Antiracist activities are essential for this transformation to occur. Key words: antiracism, colonialism, decolonization, psychology, policy.

Race science without racists: how bigoted paradigms persist in allergy research.

In the wake of the murder of George Floyd and the massacre in Buffalo, the editorial boards of the prominent scientific publication companies formally apologized for their journals' historical role in advancing race science and promised to improve their standards. However, flowery commentaries cannot undo the consistent pattern of endorsing biologic differences between ethnic groups, even when discussing diseases or traits that are not considered politically charged. In this report, an exemplar is made of a recent publication claiming to identify phenotypes of atopic dermatitis that are distinct between European Americans, Asians, and African Americans. The insufficiency of the evidence and logic underlying these claims are discussed. Although devoid of malice, numerous publications continue to demonstrate how claims of biological differences between races is mainstreamed in modern scientific publications. Overall, the goal of this work is to challenge the scientific community, particularly the publication companies, to evaluate how assumptions of innate biologic disadvantage have clouded assessments of racial disparities in disease beyond the topics that are more stereotypical of race science.

Black bodies in phenomenological bioethics: cultural othering, ‘Corporeal Uncanny’ and ethical quandaries of black nurses in Take My Hand and Small Great Things

The aims of the present article are twofold. First, it attempts to theorise the thematic and ontological intersection between phenomenological and black bioethics and proposes ‘Ontic-Black Bioethics’, a neologism to...

Intersex human rights abuses are rooted in European colonization, scientific and medical racism, and the oppression of African people. Review of: Envisioning African intersex: Challenging colonial and racist legacies in South African medicine. By Amanda LockSwarr, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. 2023. pp. 248. $25.95/$99.95 (paperback/hardback). ISBN 978‐1‐4780‐1961‐9

Intersex human rights abuses are rooted in European colonization, scientific and medical racism, and the oppression of African people. Review of: Envisioning African intersex: Challenging colonial and racist legacies in South African medicine. By Amanda LockSwarr, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. 2023. pp. 248. $25.95/$99.95 (paperback/hardback). ISBN 978‐1‐4780‐1961‐9

The American Psychological Association and antisemitism: Toward equity, diversity, and inclusion.

[Correction Notice: An Erratum for this article was reported online in American Psychologist on Jul 15 2024 (see record 2025-04658-001). In the article, three sentences and a reference were redacted related to proceedings against a university concerning its psychology program because appropriate context was not provided in the article. All versions of this article have been corrected.] This article calls for the American Psychological Association (APA) to proactively include the elimination of antisemitism or prejudice against Jewish people in its current mission to disassemble all forms of racism from its organization as well as society. In this article, Jews (estimated as 2.4% of the population) are defined as a people with a common identity, ethnicity, and religion as they experience prejudice; their intersection in Jewish identity; the history and characteristics of antisemitism and its current manifestation in public life, academic institutions, and psychology. Despite Jews having made major contributions to the development of psychology as a profession, historically through the first half of the 20th century, Jews were systematically discriminated against within the discipline of psychology through quotas for acceptance into graduate training, discriminatory employment practices in university psychology departments, and most egregiously through the espousing of "scientific racism" including eugenics by prominent leaders in the APA. We describe how historically leaders in the APA engaged in overt and covert antisemitism while the APA continues to do little or nothing to combat it. We then offer suggestions for the mitigation and elimination of this form of bias, discrimination, and hate as it once again escalates in society. We recommend that the APA engages in research about antisemitism, its predictors, consequences, and power; evaluates the efficacy of intervention programs; encourages contact with various multicultural minoritized groups; and disseminates knowledge to educate about the psychological effects of antisemitism. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Invincible racism? The misuse of genetically informed arguments against Roma in Central and Eastern Europe

In this article, we challenge the idea that the development and the dissemination of scientific knowledge about Roma can be understood as “Eastern” or “Western.” Instead, we argue that the classical division between “science” and “pseudoscience” has the potential to fuel scientific racism and political and social exclusion across the globe. We narrate, for the first time, the role of sociobiology in the development of Roma “race science,” highlighting the ways in which its networks are developed and maintained. These specific mechanisms underlying the production of knowledge and its social and ideological effects may have further applications, such as the spread of mis- and dis-information. Our intent is to examine the attempts to deconstruct sociobiology and its application to Roma, by focusing on the effect of selective awareness among critics of sociobiology, which inevitably leads to the use of epistemic filters and heightens the risk of producing epistemic injustice. This article was published open access under a CC BY licence: https://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0 .

China and ancient cuisine: consumption of wild animals, western stereotypes and zoonoses

The purpose of this research is to highlight the characteristics of China's ancient cuisine, discuss the stigmas proffered by the Western media through image readings and, in the end, highlight the Western cultural horizon, with the demarcation of animal rights and concern about the emergence of zoonosis. The justification and problematic revolves around discussing the stigmas created about Chinese eating habits, the fakenews about their cuisine and the consumption of domestic and exotic animals. The methodology employed was descriptive and explanatory, as well as qualitative and bibliographical. The results obtained, through the analysis of a postcard and a virtual game about Chinese cuisine, show that there is a naturalization of stereotypes of the Chinese, something that is strongly linked to the scientific racism of the 19th century. We concluded that, although there are few outlets for these animals in China, where the number of consumers is small, it should be kept in mind that continuous contact with these species can lead to the emergence and spread of zoonoses.

Segregated in Life and Death: Arnold R. Rich and the Racial Science of Tuberculosis

summary: Arnold Rich (1893–1968) was an acclaimed pathologist and the first Jewish department chair at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. In his landmark text, The Pathogenesis of Tuberculosis , Rich continued to advance the concept of racial susceptibility to tuberculosis a decade after mainstream medicine recognized that environmental factors fueled the disease. While Rich fits into the historical narrative that embedded categories of race facilitated scientific racism, two characteristics unique to Rich help to explain why he persisted. First were the scientific origins of his theories. While racial theorists sought to prove racial difference through science, Rich used racial difference to prove his outlying theories of tuberculosis immunology. Second was his identity as a prewar Jewish person when America’s focus on a racial binary pressured Jewish Americans to assimilate into white culture. Rich’s life and research exemplify how examining scientific racism through an individual complicates and expands our understanding of how race is constructed in the United States.

:Masters of Health: Racial Science and Slavery in US Medical Schools

:<i>Masters of Health: Racial Science and Slavery in US Medical Schools</i>