Scientific Racism Research Articles

Historical comments on ethics in psychiatry : Challenges in the 19th century

With the emergence of an early psychiatry around 1800, anumber of questions arose on dealing with agroup of persons whose "alien", irritating and disruptive behavior was considered to be aphenomenon of being sick. In the context of the growing importance of human rights, the term humanitarianism attained ahigh relevance as the reference for early psychiatrists. Based on historical sources it is shown that despite amultitude of psychiatric beliefs on humanitarianism the established psychiatric practice was dominated by patriarchal order regimes up to the first decade of the twentieth century, later superimposed by the challenges of somatophysiological and experimental research as well as perceptions of biological racism. The associated new ethical questions were partially addressed within psychiatry but did not prevent an increase in the assessment of the mentally ill as "inferior".

The history of science through the prism of race

Abstract One methodological approach to grasping a ‘big-picture’ history of modern science involves tracing the complex entanglements between scientific knowledge and the development of racism and racialized economic systems. Indeed, no historical account of any scientific field can be complete without acknowledging the role of race as an intellectual, social or economic factor. We substantiate this argument through a synthetic review of three overlapping threads in the historiography of science. First, historical research on ‘race science’ has analysed the formation of disciplines directly involved in constructing scientific concepts of race, including medicine, anthropology, linguistics, phrenology, psychology, archaeology and genetics. Second, historians have demonstrated that connections between race and science are not limited to the domain of race science. Rather, European imperial expansion, colonialism and capitalism created the foundational infrastructures undergirding the emergence of modern professional science. Finally, new research shows how race remains covertly embedded in theoretical frameworks, statistical formulae and technological devices still used by scientists today. Through these examples, we perceive a big-picture history of science in which its co-constitution with race links localized case studies and imperial narratives across space and time.

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

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

Confronting scientific racism in psychology: Lessons from evolutionary biology and genetics.

Although the American Psychological Association has taken a strong antiracism stance, scientific racism continues to be published in psychology journals and scholarly books. Recent articles claim that the folk categories of race are genetically meaningful divisions and that evolved genetic differences among races and nations are important for explaining immutable differences in cognitive ability, educational attainment, crime, sexual behavior, and wealth; all claims that are opposed by a strong scientific consensus to the contrary. These claims remain a serious source of harm through the naturalization of inequality and through support for the work of racial extremists. Contemporary "racial hereditarian research" claims to rest on modern genetics and evolutionary biology and to draw on their methods, such as genome-wide association studies. These new arguments fail to meet the evidentiary and ethical standards of these disciplines for the study of human variation. If psychology adopted standards from genetics and evolutionary biology, the current racial hereditarian work would be ineligible for publication. Actions that the American Psychological Association can take to deal with scientific racism are described. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Dismantling racism in the field of psychology and beyond: Introduction to the special issue.

In 2021, the American Psychological Association (APA) passed a series of resolutions that initiated a process of atonement for its participation in promoting, perpetuating, and failing to challenge racism and discrimination toward communities of color (APA, 2021a, 2021b). The purpose of this special issue was to examine the ways in which the field of psychology has perpetuated racial hierarchy and harm toward communities of color. More importantly, the included articles offer guidance on the mechanisms and strategies that will aid in the dismantling of racism in the field of psychology and support efforts of reconciliation, repair, and healing. In this introduction, we present a brief history of racism in the field of psychology and highlight theories and methods that should be considered as efforts to combat systemic racial inequities. Articles in this special issue fall into four specific themes that include bias and scientific racism in research, intergroup collaboration, organizational and clinical implications, and changing the culture of psychology. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Research as resistance: Naming and dismantling the master narrative of "good" science.

The call for psychological science to make amends for "causing harm to communities of color and contributing to systemic inequities" (American Psychological Association, 2022a) requires a critical acknowledgment that science itself is not neutral but a sociopolitical and ideological endeavor. From its inception, psychology used science to produce what was framed as incontrovertible "hard" evidence of racial hierarchy, infallible "proof" that white people (i.e., cismale, heteronormative, and economically resourced white people) were superior to Indigenous and Black people. We first trace the historical links between postpositivist epistemology and the ideology of white supremacy in psychological science, showing that although explicitly racist science (e.g., eugenics) has faded, the widely shared and strictly enforced epistemological norms about what is (and is not) "good" science remain entrenched. We then outline three epistemic imperatives to resist this harmful master narrative: (a) embrace humanizing epistemologies, (b) listen and learn from those who have been systematically left out of science, and (c) recognize resistance as normative and necessary. We discuss how these imperatives, rooted in critical, feminist, and antiracist scholarship, disrupt oppression and guide us toward doing science that does good. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

The Mismeasure of Sport: Race and the Science of Athletic Performance

The dominance of some Black athletes in some sports after civil rights led scientists and journalists to search for explanations in athletes’ culture, geography, psychology, and, increasingly, in their genes—all contributing, whether they landed on culture or biology, to a resurgent race science that invented what it purported to investigate. Science writers could not stop asking whether Kenyans won marathons because of their genes or because of their nation’s running tradition, frequently turning to a more fully naturalized gender binary to justify their pursuit of racial difference in sports. The question itself, no matter how it got answered, legitimized the idea that the Black athlete constituted a scientifically valid category, a category that in a society that privileges the natural above the social sciences (and all sciences above the humanities) ultimately entered the public sphere in biological form.

Disablism, racism and the spectre of eugenics in digital welfare

This article explores the historical ties between the digital welfare state and eugenics, highlighting how the use of data infrastructures for classification and governance in the digital era has roots in eugenic data practices and ideas. Through an analysis of three domains of automated decision-making – child welfare, immigration and disability benefits – the article demonstrates how these automated systems perpetuate hierarchical divisions originally shaped by ableist eugenic race science. It underscores the importance of critically engaging with this historical context of data utilisation, emphasising its entanglement with eugenic perspectives on racial, physical and mental superiority, individual and social worth, and the categorisation of data subjects as deserving or undeserving. By engaging with this history, the article provides a deeper understanding of the contemporary digital welfare state, particularly in terms of its discriminatory divisions based on race and disability, which are deeply intertwined.

Discussing the Relationship Between Slavery and Racism; How Slavery Causes Racism?

This study aims to demonstrate the Relationship Between Slavery and Racism in terms of how slavery causes racism in four areas; first, the Greek civilisation; second, the son of Noah “Ham” and slavery; third, the scientific movement and racism; and fourth, the slave trade. This study uses inductive, historical, and critical methods to discuss the four headings stated above. The most important conclusion is that the division into those who were Greeks and those who were non-Greeks (barbarians) had led into a belief in Greek superiority emphasised that, and being a member of a superior group gives a right of doing violence towards barbarians. Second, the story of Ham was an excuse for enslaving black Africans and linking blackness with slavery, while this relationship was not known until the seventeenth century. The story supports the idea of discriminating against black slaves and linking colour with social class and prepares Europeans to accept the modern practice of slavery in the Atlantic slave trade. Third, scientists participated in provoking racism to value the European race over other races, considering it as a central race. Forth, The trade slave was the only alternative to a search for cheap labour in order to cover the gap in supply and stem this increase.

Introduction to Part 1 of the Themed Issue, ‘Racism and Colonialism in Hegel's Philosophy’: Rationale and Topics

It is increasingly realized today that Western modernity has not only promoted progressive ideals such as scientific thought, human rights and democratic political systems. Its history is also marked by a much darker side, one of brutal conquest, biological and cultural destruction, enslavement and exploitation of non-European peoples in the context of European colonialism. This dark side of Western modernity was legitimized by pro-colonial ideologies of property, war, civilization, progress and race. Such ideologies emerged in areas like jurisprudence and philosophy since the 16th century, often building on views from classical antiquity (Pagden 1995). They shaped academic paradigms such as ‘scientific racism’, colonial anthropology and Orientalism in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and in many ways continue to influence contemporary societies and their academic practices.

Populations, individuals, and biological race

In this paper, I plan to show that the use of a specific population concept—Millstein’s Causal Interactionist Population Concept (CIPC)—has interesting and counter-intuitive ramifications for discussions of the reality of biological race in human beings. These peculiar ramifications apply to human beings writ large and to individuals. While this in and of itself may not be problematic, I plan to show that the ramifications that follow from applying Millstein’s CIPC to human beings complicates specific biological racial realist accounts—naïve or otherwise. I conclude with the notion that even if biological races do exist—by fulfilling all of the criteria needed for Millstein’s population concept (which, given particular worries raised by Gannett (Synthese 177:363–385, 2010), and Winther and Kaplan (Theoria 60:54–80, 2013) may not)—the lower-bound limit for the scope of biological racial realism is at the level of populations, and as such they cannot say anything about whether or not individual organisms themselves have races.

Racial and ethnic harm in patient care is a patient safety issue

Health equity and antiracism can contribute to enhanced patient safety in healthcare settings. The Oath of the Pharmacist states, “I will promote inclusion, embrace diversity, and advocate for justice to advance health equity.” Part of this commitment means upholding these principles in patient care settings. Racial and ethnic harm negatively impact patient safety. Racial and ethnic harm are reviewed in the context of social learning theory, critical race theory, and medical and scientific racism. Pharmacists and healthcare systems must actively prevent and mitigate racial and ethnic harm to patients from personal and organizational levels to create a culture of safety. Part of this strategy involves acknowledging when you have contributed to patient harm, issuing a genuine apology, and offering to mend or re-establish trust between racially and ethnically minoritized patients and the pharmacist or the health system to contribute to patient safety. These strategies may help create a culturally safe space for racially and ethnically marginalized patients in the healthcare system.

Brown Skins, White Coats: Race Science in India, 1920–66 by Projit Bihari Mukharji, and: Medicine, Science, and Making Race in Civil War America by Leslie A. Schwalm, and: Masters of Health: Racial Science and Slavery in U.S. Medical Schools by Christopher D. E. Willoughby (review)

Brown Skins, White Coats: Race Science in India, 1920–66 by Projit Bihari Mukharji, and: Medicine, Science, and Making Race in Civil War America by Leslie A. Schwalm, and: Masters of Health: Racial Science and Slavery in U.S. Medical Schools by Christopher D. E. Willoughby (review)

Reproductive Justice, Race, and the Prescience of the Past

The question of control—over bodies, knowledge, narrative, and nation—interweaves throughout Dana Medoro’s Certain Concealments: Poe, Hawthorne, and Early Nineteenth-Century Abortion and Stephanie Peebles Tavera’s (P)rescription Narratives: Feminist Medical Fiction and the Failure of American Censorship. Medoro focuses on discourses of life and women’s (non)reproductive sexuality in Edgar Allan Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s fiction. She establishes that the two authors were deeply skeptical of medicolegal definitions of life that created racial and economic hierarchies; through focal characters and indirect, playful prose, they critique discourses of life that valued some lives over others in the creation of Anglo-American nationalism. Tavera investigates late-nineteenth-century woman-authored medical fiction as directly engaging many of the same concepts Medoro explores. (P)rescription Narratives calls attention to the ways that Comstock-era censorship colluded with race science, medicine, and the law to limit women’s sexual and reproductive autonomy. It demonstrates literature’s agential capacities as the writers it addresses explicitly refute and redirect objectifying narratives. Combined, these texts show that questions of what “counts” as life, and by what (and whose) paradigms those lives can be lived, are hardly theoretical musings. Rather, they determine, systemically and corporeally, “life’s legibility and reproduction … in the name of American citizenship” (Medoro 19). These texts, in other words, are highly relevant and important as literary and cultural scholarship, making a powerful argument for the study of the humanities. But they are also important because they document the subversive and agential power of the written word to discern, document, and possibly heal—to affect change for today and the future.

Racial Discourses in Aegean Prehistory c. 1900: The Case of the Cupbearer Fresco at Knossos

This article traces characterizations of the Cupbearer fresco, named after the large vessel the figure holds and uncovered at the site of Knossos in 1900, in light of the research agendas about the ‘races’ of the prehistoric Aegean and traditions of racial science current in late Victorian Britain. The head of the Cupbearer was compared to Classical Greek art, modern Cretan populations, and cranial remains from prehistoric contexts. Drawing from academic publications, articles in the press, and reports of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, the author situates the discourse surrounding the Cupbearer in the context of scholars seeking the origins of ‘European’ civilization in prehistory, and the creation of racial typologies, especially using cranial measurements and photography. The Cupbearer gained a dual status as a racial portrait comparable to past and present human populations, but also as a work of art that prefigured the later achievements of Classical Greece.

Why we need to decolonize the biosciences curriculum

Bioscience has a history linked to exploitation, colonialism and marginalization. Biology has been dominated by white European perspectives, and pseudoscientific ‘biological’ arguments have been used to justify discrimination and oppression, particularly on the basis of disability and ethnicity. Addressing this legacy within bioscience education is challenging, particularly as many bioscientists are unaware of this history and its on-going influence on the discipline. In this article, we explore what decolonization of the curriculum means within the context of bioscience. To demystify terminology for those new to the subject, we first consider the differences between diversification and decolonization. We then explore the historical connections between colonial activity and bioscience, including scientific racism, bioprospecting and eugenics. Additionally, we highlight where white western biases are still present in bioscience, from the dominance of European samples in genomic studies to the lack of Black and Asian academics in UK bioscience. Multiple barriers to decolonization are also considered, from individual lack of knowledge to structural and societal issues. We call on bioscience educators to actively decolonize their curricula, ensuring the discipline is presented in its appropriate historical and cultural context and is inclusive for all.

Where Did Hegel Go Wrong on Race?

AbstractWhere exactly did Hegel go wrong on race? Moellendorf helpfully tells us that Hegel's treatment of race begins systematically in the Philosophy of Subjective Spirit and that he went wrong philosophically in the use of the biological category of race. This is basically correct but requires precisification. This article considers why Hegel's category of race is not unambiguously biological. Race's biological status can be problematized from the standpoint of contemporary biology and from the standpoint of Hegel's system. The textual placement of Hegel's systematic discussion of race in the philosophy of spirit makes clear that Hegel conceived of race in spiritual terms. Hegel took race to be a biospiritual category. Hegel was clearly committed to the now-controversial proposition that there is such a thing as human biological race, that there is a plurality of biological human races. He regarded race as a robust natural kind. His preferred list of races includes Caucasians, Negros, Mongolian, Malaysians and Americans. One noteworthy feature of his understanding of race's physical aspect was his focus on the formation of the skull and the face. At the same time, he clearly held that there were other deeper physical differences that accounted for the spiritual differences of race. Hegel was perfectly clear that race has a spiritual as well as physical aspect. He held that that the members of racial groups essentially shared certain fundamental, heritable, moral, intellectual and cultural characteristics with one another that they did not share with members of any other race and that these differences were such as to support an objective ranking. This shows that Hegel took the category of race to be the sort of category we today would characterize as ‘racialist’. Hegel's concept of race was the racialist concept of race.

Slavery and Its Afterlives in US Psychiatry.

Antecedents of racist treatments of Black patients by the psychiatric profession in the United States affect the way they view treatment today. Specifically, in this essay, we explore the enduring consequences of racial science on various treatment practices. We examined a range of primary sources on the history of racial theories about the mind, medical and psychiatric publications, and hospitals. We contextualize this analysis by examining the secondary literature in the history and sociology of psychiatry. Through analyzing racial thinking from the antebellum through the Jim Crow periods, we show how US medicine and psychiatry have roots in antebellum racial science and how carceral logics underpinned the past and present politics of Black mental health. Changing this trajectory requires practitioners to interrogate the historical foundations of racist psychiatric concepts. This essay urges them to reject biological racial realism, which bears reminiscences to 19th-century racial science, and embrace the variable of race as a social construct to study social inequalities in health as a first step toward moving away from the legacies of past injustices in medicine. (Am J Public Health. 2024;114(S3):S250-S257. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2023.307554).

Masters of Health: Racial Science and Slavery in U.S. Medical Schools

Masters of Health: Racial Science and Slavery in U.S. Medical Schools

Timely Hospitality and Cholera Care in Mary Seacole’s Wonderful Adventures

Abstract: In Wonderful Adventures of Mrs Seacole in Many Lands (1857), Mary Seacole investigates assumptions about where bodies should be and how they should be treated during times of cholera epidemic, negotiating ideas promoted by race science and maintained within the disciplined orderings of certain nineteenth-century medical spaces. Offering an alternative to these temporal orderings, Seacole revives antiquated formations of medicine, centered on the early Christian hospital, while also drawing upon diasporic knowledge cast outside the bounds of medical modernity. In doing so, Wonderful Adventures illustrates that “progress” does not necessarily entail ethical advancements. Seacole’s hotels, medical praxis, and theories of nature and disease simultaneously borrow from and offer alternatives to the liberal, linear orderings of a history written in European centers of science.