Scientific Racism Research Articles

Blood Relations: Transfusion and the Making of Human Genetics by Jenny Bangham (review).

Reviewed by: Blood Relations: Transfusion and the Making of Human Genetics by Jenny Bangham Stephen Pemberton Jenny Bangham. Blood Relations: Transfusion and the Making of Human Genetics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2020. 328 pp. $40.00 (978-0-226-74003-4) Blood Relations is an extraordinarily perceptive study of the material and ideological relationships that constituted human genetics as a scientific discipline in the mid-twentieth century. The book is remarkable in numerous ways. Chief among them is Jenny Bangham’s nuanced use of historical evidence from Britain to explain how serological studies of blood groups facilitated the advancement of human genetics before, during, and after World War II. A great deal was at stake then, as it is now, in making human genetics an authoritative, trustworthy science. That said, the stakes were significantly different in the mid-twentieth century than they are today. Human genetics in the 1920s was a scientific field in its infancy. Geneticists viewed A, B, and O blood groups with keen interest in the interwar period because these newly discernable hereditary traits seemed wholly unaffected by environment. When large data sets for human blood groups became available with mass blood donation in Britain, geneticists could analyze them with their proven statistical methods and thereby map human genetic diversity at the population level. Historians of science and medicine will thus find in Blood Relations an exemplary study of human genetics that is tightly focused on explaining how the discipline’s epistemic authority was constituted out of a potent intermingling of British “blood, bodies, and bureaucracy” in the mid-twentieth century (pp. 4–5). As Bangham emphasizes, Britain was at the center of the world’s largest empire following World War I. While remaining highly influential, that empire was also in decline. By the time Nazi Germany made clear it posed an existential threat to this island nation, Britain was aggressively searching for “redemptive narratives of community and internationalism” (p. 5). Ironically, then, a foreign nation invested in racial hygiene and German superiority sent Britons en masse to donate blood for the survival of their own body politic. Blood Relations thereby explores how blood “transfers and exchanges” occasioned by a clash of ethnic nationalisms brought “the contours of nation, class, friendship, institution(s), and ethnicity” to bear on the making of human genetics (p. 14). Blood Relations also interprets transfusion medicine’s rise in the late 1930s and 1940s as the scientific and humanitarian opportunity it was in the minds of Britain’s leading geneticists. Bangham’s effective approach is, first, to describe intricately how the serologist’s “wet” laboratory practices were aligned with the “dry” practical paperwork of British state bureaucracy. The latter made transfusion networks robust enough to meet the health demands of a population at risk of annihilation during World War II. Bangham then explains how the large scale of genetic data produced by this wartime infrastructure evolved in the 1950s into a practical means for reforming the eugenic elements within British race science. Such reform was necessary after World War II for developing a humanitarian scientific and state apparatus capable of creating international networks devoted to understanding human genetic diversity at the population level. [End Page 464] If population data on blood groups became the preferred and effective means in Britain for elevating human genetics into a trustworthy science in the mid-twentieth century, then the book’s chief contribution lies in Bangham’s detailed presentation of this acculturated preference. In the 1950s, the trustworthiness of human genetics was rendered consonant with Allied visions of a post-WWII order that openly valorized democratic and humanitarian values. Yet, as Bangham successfully explains, the infrastructure of blood and bureaucracy that gave human genetics its earliest validity also reinforced “the racial ordering of people” (p. 209). Anthropology’s critical role in challenging the race-based science of human genetic diversity is also given its proper due. The book concludes with a thoughtful discussion of what this founding regime of human genetics entailed after DNA supplanted blood as the preferred standard of genetic know-how and governance. Bangham says, “genetics has overwhelmingly maintained its image as an unbiased methodology for detecting human diversity in medical and...

"That's the Way Eugenists Play": Performing Utopian Fantasies of Race Science at the Eugenics Record Office

"That's the Way Eugenists Play": Performing Utopian Fantasies of Race Science at the Eugenics Record Office

The Return of Race Science and Why It Matters for Family Science.

Race science attributes differences in human populations to biology and genetics that reflect a hierarchy of human races with whiteness at its pinnacle. This article examining the history of race science and current family scholarship and practice contends that race science matters for family science. We discuss 1) white supremacy, the development of race science, and the eugenics movement in the U.S.; 2) racism, racialized experiences, and oppression of Black families in the U.S.; 3) the construction of whiteness in family science and re-envisioning theories to make racism's impact visible; 4) racial reckonings for professional organizations; and 5) why race science matters for family science and a call to action. Clarity about the meaning of race can ensure that family science addresses white supremacy and racism embedded in scholarship, training, and practice, and promotes work that supports the well-being of families that are most vulnerable and marginalized.

Engaging the racist science of human intelligence: Towards a more just science education future

Engaging the racist science of human intelligence: Towards a more just science education future

Racism measurement and influences, variations on scientific racism, and a vision

The knowledge base regarding the impact of racism and discrimination on African American health and well-being has grown significantly since the first models of racism and health, but many questions remain. In this commentary, I discuss three challenges requiring attention in future research. The first is measurement. The second is consideration of individual and contextual influences that shape vulnerability to racism. The third challenge is racism in science itself (e.g., racial disparities in funding, absence, and erasure of African American voices in scientific discourse on health disparities). I discuss the benefits of addressing these challenges and offer a vision of what research on racism and African American health and well-being might look like as we move toward the eradication of racism and promotion of health equity.

Racial differences in transfusion practices: Time to address structural racism

See article on page 1519–1526, in this issue

On the persistence of race: Unique skulls and average tissue depths in the practice of forensic craniofacial depiction.

The (re-)surfacing of race in forensic practices has received plenty of attention from STS scholars, especially in connection with modern forensic genetic technologies. In this article, I describe the making of facial depictions based on the skulls of unknown deceased individuals. Based on ethnographic research in the field of craniofacial identification and forensic art, I present a material-semiotic analysis of how race comes to matter in the face-making process. The analysis sheds light on how race as a translation device enables oscillation between the individual skull and population data, and allows for slippage between categories that otherwise do not neatly map on to one another. The subsuming logic of race is ingrained - in that it sits at the bases of standard choices and tools - in methods and technologies. However, the skull does not easily let itself be reduced to a racial type. Moreover, the careful efforts of practitioners to articulate the individual characteristics of each skull provide clues for how similarities and differences can be done without the effect of producing race. Such methods value the skull itself as an object of interest, rather than treat it as a vehicle for practicing race science. I argue that efforts to undo the persistence of race in forensic anthropology should focus critical attention on the socio-material configuration of methods and technologies, including data practices and reference standards.

Why Social Constructionists Should Embrace Minimalist Race

ABSTRACTMy thesis is that social constructionists should embrace minimalist race. By this I mean they should accept the minimalist concept of race and the existence of minimalist races. They are likely to reject this suggestion because they are antirealists about biological race. But their antirealism about biological race is based on their identification of the biological concept of race with the racialist concept of race. The minimalist concept of race is free of the invidious features that make the racialist concept objectionable. It represents race as ancestry marked by patterns of visible physical differences. The reasons social constructionists have to reject the racialist concept of race do not extend to the minimalist concept of race. Social constructionists should accept that minimalist races exist, because it is overwhelmingly plausible that such races exist. Furthermore, they need minimalist races to account for the biological correlate of social race and to secure the biological materials the project of social construction requires.

Becoming Us

This group article explores personal and political experiences of six UK based artists who came together in 2016 to create a performance project ‘About Us’ and have continued to support each other throughout the pandemic. The article is a collage of writings and images which convey the personal stories of each author and reflect on differences and alliances concerning gender, racial identity, age, sexuality and social class. Lansley introduces the context in which this diverse group came together. She identifies the research themes explored in ‘About Us’, which threw up fundamental questions concerning what it is to be both human and animal, and why we oppress and demonize other animal species. Green discusses these ideas from her perspective as a black woman, for whom the position that we are all animals is complex, raising issues concerning slavery and scientific racism. Huss discusses taking on the lease of an old miners’ institute in a quest to bring back cultural life to an impoverished area of Northumberland. She tracks historical and cultural links between the closure of the pits in the 80s and the present, identifying forms of protest which brought miners' unions and artists together in solidarity. Taylor draws on writings by the philosopher Jacques Rancière to explore finding solidarity across difference within both his teaching and performance work. He discusses how the group supported him to develop a language that expressed intimate thoughts and feelings about being a gay man. Early uses poetry and parable to question our relationship to the planet and all the species we share it with. He interrogates the Judeo-Christian notion of hierarchical ‘civilization’ and explores the intelligence of trees. Mackinnon reflects on her position as a black woman and mother in a world that strives for unity, but continues to divide. She discusses how the group draws on strengths as movement and dance makers to share differences in ways that enable growth and understanding.

Approaches to decolonising forensic curricula

Forensic science in UK Higher Education involves a constellation of subdisciplines, each with a biography shaped by a colonial past. Deeper examinations of the structures of curriculum design allow educators to address where colonial assumptions may reside and the impact of these legacies on the present. One process to assist this endeavour is Decolonising the Curriculum (DtC), which seeks to question and dismantle colonial structures of knowledge and support contextualisation to broaden, rather than narrow, the curricula. DtC toolkits, like those developed at the University of Winchester in the south of England, may provide practical support to programme teams to reflect on how colonial attitudes shape new and existing curricula. DtC may be seen as supporting existing quality processes that are part of the reflection cycle and tested through institutional and other accreditation quality procedures. Toolkits support programme teams to identify existing good practices and areas requiring further reflection and development. We offer perspectives on areas that would benefit from critical evaluation when teaching subjects with foundations in race science, colonial attitudes, and social injustice. The paper focuses on three main approaches to support decolonial discourse: sustained historical inquiry, questioning ethnic classifications and identity, and the presentation of international forensic work. Rather than seeing DtC as a threat to educational quality, it may be more constructively seen as an integral part of quality processes in curriculum design to support more diverse, inclusive, and authentic learning in forensic Higher Education.

R. Chris Davis. Hungarian Religion, Romanian Blood: A Minority’s Struggle for National Belonging, 1920–1945.

R. Chris Davis. <i>Hungarian Religion, Romanian Blood: A Minority’s Struggle for National Belonging, 1920–1945</i>.

Abolish Species: Notes toward an “Unfenced Is,” Part I

Despite its provenance in racial paradigms of colonial research, the notion of species has proved to be remarkably resilient and adaptable to post-racial frameworks of thought. Species has survived both the death of the subject and the cancellation of man. In their ascendance over nineteenth-century evolutionary theories of life, white environmentalisms have re-legitimated this keystone of biological racism by deploying species as if it were an ideologically agnostic articulation of a meaningful grouping. This article unsettles the common portrayal of species as a culturally unmarked and racially neutral concept, whose function is to denominate what remains of the planet. Working against the orthodox definition of species as the “basic unit of biodiversity,” I apprehend species as a form of onto-epistemic incarceration that has been imposed, globally, as the dominant mode of biological understanding and, subsequently, as the prevailing structure of representation used to account for environmental loss and abundance. In excess of its taxonomic function, species serves as an instrument that, practically and ideationally, converts flesh into potential wealth. This investigation begins by checking the conventional presumption that captivity is incidental to species and examines how, on the contrary, species is productive of capture, whose economic and epistemic dimensions are mutually enriching. This critical reappraisal then moves toward an argument for the abolition of species, made on the basis of four overlapping grounds. First, the institution of species enforces mono-lingualism and consolidates white entitlement to bestow a universal name on everything living. Second, species normalizes extractive incarceration as a means of accumulating value. Third, species secures Euro-American hegemony over the way difference is “objectively” defined—restrictively, in terms of heteronormative logics of reproduction that, in turn, lend coherence to projects of racialization. Fourth, the notion of species enforces a normative paradigm for processing environmental loss that blocks perception of the colonial violence that it reproduces.

Racial anthropology in Turkey and transnational entanglements in the making of scientific knowledge: Seniha Tunakan’s academic trajectory, 1930s–1970s

This article situates the trajectory of the academic life of Seniha Tunakan (1908–2000) within the development of anthropology as a scientific discipline in Turkey and its transnational connections to Europe during the interwar period and up until the second half of the 20th century. Relying on the archives of the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, the archive of the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, the Politisches Archiv des Auswärtigen Amtes in Germany, and the Prime Ministry's Republican Archives in Turkey, it focuses on the doctoral studies of Seniha Tunakan in Germany and her life as a female PhD researcher in the capital of the Third Reich, as well as her entire research career after her return to Turkey. Through Tunakan's career, the article also provides an analysis of the perpetuation of German race science in the Turkish context, shedding light upon the success of the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut für Anthropologie, menschliche Erblehre und Eugenik (Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics) and its transnational impact.

Race and agriculture during the assimilation era: Evidence from the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians

The role of race within tribal communities is a contentious topic, and some of this acrimony emerged from 19th-century Indian policies rooted in scientific racism. There has been relatively little written on the role of intermarriage within indigenous comm

The Mismeasure of Bloom: Sandow, Folklore, Scientific Racism, Eugenics

This essay addresses ways in which Bloom is mismeasured by himself and by others. The ideal set by Eugen Sandow, "the perfect man," establishes a physical standard Leopold Bloom can only fail to meet; the Citizen and other barflies in "Cyclops," as well as Bloom's projections of Buck Mulligan and others in "Circe," claim variously that he is demented, deformed, and diseased. Such cruel diagnoses reflect anti-Semitic and anti-Gaelic prejudices deriving from folklore, scientific racism, and eugenics. Because the physical and psychological failings attributed to Bloom—some of them positively lunatic in nature—are so comically exaggerated, we are brought to appreciate Bloom's value. Declared repeatedly to be abnormal and even subnormal, he expands our sense of what normal is.

Notes on Contributors

Notes on Contributors

Using a multimodal approach to elucidate racial disparities in breast cancer biology by integrating tumor imaging and -omics data.

e12541 Background: Race-related differences in breast cancer incidence and clinical outcome have been well documented, with many studies focusing on socioeconomic determinants contributing to African American (AA) breast cancer patients having higher mortality rates. Far less is understood about the underlying biological differences in tumors between AA and Caucasian patients. In recent years, there have been more and more individual accounts identifying specific somatic mutations or observed breast tumor behaviors associated with racial disparities in breast cancer. Understanding how these specific observations coincide to give rise to alternative tumor biology in AA women, remains a challenge. Given the multifactorial nature of cancer, we have developed a platform that integrates the combinatorial phenotypic, molecular, and biological hallmarks of cancer. Our technology combines imaging and multi-omics data, providing a systematic approach for understanding race-specific biological differences and how they contribute to patient survival. Methods: Imaging and transcriptomic data from 1108 patients were integrated within the SimBioSys TumoScope biophysical modeling software to understand racial differences in tumor biology, coordinated tumor behavior, and corresponding patient outcome. Results: AA patients have tumors that display higher growth rates, characteristically have higher adipose tissue around the tumor, higher spatial variation in drug/ nutrient delivery, and increased tumor stiffness. We also identified biological features, including tumor/gland density and intertumoral heterogeneity that are prognostic for overall survival even when accounting for race and cancer subtype. Conclusions: Our results outline characteristic biological features that along with race and FDA breast cancer subtype may promote the disproportionately poor survival rates observed in AA breast cancer patients. This is the first study demonstrating a systematic approach being used to elucidate race-specific biological difference that may coordinate to impact patient survival. Our findings emphasize the importance of accounting for racial disparities and patient-specific biology to develop tailored intervention strategies and personalize race-specific clinical management of breast cancer.

The Laboratory of Scientific Racism: India and the Origins of Anthropology

Anthropology, especially biological anthropology, owes its origins to the scientific study of human racial differences. That dark history is well-acknowledged and, when it is taught, usually begins with the racism of early figures, such as Johann Friedrich Blumenbach or, more recently, Earnest Hooton, and exonerates itself through a turn toward antiracist scholars such as Frank Livingstone and Franz Boas. Rarely, if ever, is this origin story critically appraised. This article aims to complicate the origin story of biological anthropology by examining how colonial subjects were involved in the development, testing, and refinement of racial theory, and thus of biological anthropology itself. Taking India as an example, I trace how Indians and the caste system were first the subjects and eventually the interlocutors of racial scientific theory and testing. This reorientation, I argue, is important for developing a more expansive and accurate version of the discipline's history and also for shining a light on its relevance to contemporary global racial conflict.

Clarifying Definitions of „Race“, Racism, and Ethnocentrism

Human beings need social group identities. These may be based on age, sex, gender and gender identity, ethnicity, religious beliefs, language, nationality and etc. In fact, in-group identities, collaborations and reference systems have positive effects on health / mental health. But, the problematic issue is the process of Othering and Dehumanization of the group designated to be the Other. Othering, rising from imagined or the expectation of generalized differences and used to distinguish groups of people as separate from the norm reinforces and maintains discrimination. Social power relations determine the stratification of ‘them’ and ‘us’. Whether a group is to be designated as the Other and labelled with prejudice will depend on the zeitgeist of the current dominant social power. Dehumanization created many tragedies via genocide, slavery, racism, sexism, and other intolerant forms of violence. Theories, generally termed as scientific racism of late 19th. &amp; early 20th. centuries, times of colonialism, assumed that some races are inferior to others, and that differential treatment of races is consequently justified. Such approaches led to movements of unification / purification practices which cannot be legitimate and caused vast individual and institutional racial discrimination, human rights violations and violence. As a social determinant of health, racial discrimination and ethnocentrism, a powerful force that weakens human relations, continue to afflict the health and mental health conditions of people. Albeit racial discrimination, peoples of the world also have a history of effective praxis of inclusive ways of solving conflicts of interests between in-groups and out-groups.DisclosureNo significant relationships.

Who Counts? Urgent Lessons from Ida B. Wells’s Radical Statistics

This essay focuses on Ida B. Wells’s rarely analyzed application of statistical thinking in her anti-lynching pamphlets. I show how assumptions about the self-evident nature of data diminish the significance of Wells’s hidden calculations. My essay contextualizes her methods in the larger history of social quantification and scientific racism to underscore the urgency and novelty of her use of statistics. Wells not only reframes existing lynching records to show Black Americans as victims of racial terrorism but develops a critical framework for analyzing and humanizing the data. By more closely examining her use of empirical and quantitative methods to study the sociocultural underpinnings of lynching, we can recognize more fully her significant contributions to sociological research on Black life and to intersectional social activism and resistance. Her work contains urgent lessons for our contemporary moment: a blueprint for a more just approach to racial data collection and analysis, or what we would today call “data justice.”