Theorizing Racism
Kenzie Helmick
The pursuit of scientific knowledge has always sought to answer questions about our common experiences by exposing the underlying functions and mechanics of the world around us. It seems natural that this scientific questioning would eventually turn to race, which, for centuries, has served as an omnipresent control over the experiences of others and as an enormous source of debate, as society repeatedly asks itself what role race should play in daily life. These theories of racial science have been brought into the popular sphere as justifications for certain government actions and utilized by politicians in an attempt to influence the opinions of their constituents.
Yet the political adoption of these theories should hardly come as a surprise, as the conditions and experiences of race itself are inherently defined by social and political constructs — not biological premises. Studies have confirmed that races are not genetically homogenous, and the hereditary lines that supposedly designate various races are increasingly blurred. Historically, our definitions of race have proven to be malleable, as public opinion was altered to include previously-excluded ethnicities, such as Italian or Irish, into the white race.
As a result, theories of race science are inherently entrenched in the social framework and cultural norms of the time from which they are borne, forming a reciprocal bond of influence. These theories, influenced by the conscious and subconscious beliefs internalized by their founders, play an important role in shaping future societal thought, either confirming, and subsequently compounding, already-present views or challenging them. Consequently, to understand these theories fully, we must examine the historical and political context surrounding them.
In the 1830s, the United States witnessed a shift in the power and intensity of the abolitionist movement as the fight for emancipation gradually transformed into a militant crusade that exerted considerable social and political pressure on the institution of slavery. Emerging evangelical religious movements, known as the Second Great Awakening, contributed to the surge of abolitionism by preaching morality and individual responsibility. This religious revivalism wrought several important abolitionist figures, such as William Lloyd Garrison and Lewis Tappan. Together, Garrison and Tappan founded the American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS), a successful and widespread abolitionist organization that, by 1838, had over 250,000 members and 1,350 different, local chapters.
Supporters of slavery felt threatened by abolitionist organizations like AASS, and their resulting pushback was severely violent and suppressive. Organized mobs disrupted abolitionist meetings and burned abolitionist literature, while Southerners in Congress helped push for a gag rule, which prevented any political discussion concerning anti-slavery petitions.
For pro-slavery individuals, theories of scientific racism “proving” black inferiority became an important political tool for defending the institution of slavery. These theories raised prejudice to the level of science, granting them an objective authority and justification to dehumanize black individuals. Moreover, the theories and their scientific “data” allowed slaveholders to avoid abolitionists’ main arguments against enslavement, which preached human equality, by claiming that blacks were sub-human or inferior.
The leading scientists behind the Antebellum Period’s racial theories were a part of the American School of Ethnography, which included notable natural scientists such as Samuel George Morton, George Robins Gliddon, and Josiah C. Nott. During the 19th century, ethnography, or the anthropological examination of people and cultures, sought to explain the perceived moral and intellectual deficiencies of various races through physical differences. In their studies, they backed their hypothesis with oftentimes skewed and biased scientific data.
Morton, the father of the American School of Ethnography, was a craniologist who measured and studied the human skulls of various races, comparing their measurements to determine differences amongst them. In his work Crania Americana, Morton supposedly proved the inherent intellectual superiority of Caucasians, rooting his conclusion in the race’s on-average larger skull measurements, which offered whites bigger brains and greater mental capacity. Conveniently, these final discoveries of Morton supported the already-present social hierarchy advocated by slave supporters, though it is widely believed that Morton selectively chose the skulls to be measured, purposefully omitting ones that did not fit his racial trend.
The scientists of the American School of Ethnography used measured physical differences between the races, like those discovered by Morton, to justify a racist theory of human origin known as polygenesis.
This theory contested an earlier concept of origin, monogenesis, which believed that the various races stemmed from a single origin, as stated explicitly in the Bible. Following this theory, Africans and other “inferior” races developed their physical and mental insufficiencies from their natural environment. Yet according to polygenesis, each race had their own lineage and stemmed from a unique, independent origin.
Like monogenesis, this theory also derives its support from Christianity, following a Biblical timeline formulated from a literal interpretation of the Old Testament. Natural scientists George Gliddon and Josiah Nott founded the theory after discovering Ancient Egyptian images that portrayed several, distinct races. Following their Biblical timeline, which placed the peak of Ancient Egyptian society only 1,000 years after the creation of the universe, these physical differences would have had to develop within a single millennium, a feat that Nott argued was biologically impossible. Instead, he insisted that these variations must have been present since human creation, thus the distinct races were, in fact, different species.
Nott was also an adamant opponent of miscegenation, or the interbreeding of races, citing his polygenist claims that races were different species. According to Nott, just as the breeding of two different species, such as a horse and a donkey, would lead to the creation of a barren or infertile mule, the mix of the races would eventually lead to a sterilized human population. To support these claims, Nott cited the supposed health problems and decreased fertility present amongst mulattoes, or mixed races.
In total, the theory of polygenesis and its subsequent condemnation of interbreeding reinforced ideas of permanent or innate differences amongst the various races and allowed for the further dehumanization of blacks.
Outside of the school of ethnography, historical context continued to shape scientific thought and the perception of race throughout the 1800s. As the Civil War became inevitable, predictions claiming that emancipation would lead to the eventual extermination of the black race were rampant amongst slaveholders. This widespread belief eventually gained scientific backing through Darwinism, which was adopted by pro-slavery individuals and simplified into Social Darwinism.
Darwinism determined that natural selection would lead to the survival of the fittest species, with lower or inferior groups eventually being overrun and replaced completely. Social Darwinism applied this evolutionary concept of natural selection to society and human races. For Social Darwinists, the institution of slavery served as a paternalistic force, sheltering blacks from competition against the “superior” white race. Once freed, they would lose this protection, leading to a certain extinction.
Once again, the scientific racism of Social Darwinism served as an important political asset for its believers. Its promulgation of a natural, scientifically-backed determinism denied whites any responsibility over the fate of blacks and made their subsequent oppression more palatable to the masses. The theory even helped to justify active, intentional oppression of blacks, as these actions through the lens of Social Darwinism were viewed as negligible contributions to the “inevitable unfolding of biological destiny.” Consequently, for these believers, the rampant income, health, and education disparities between minorities and whites were not a result of conscious political and economic exclusion. Instead, they were the unavoidable outcome of a fixed, biological hierarchy.
Unfortunately, theories and practices of scientific racism have never dissipated from the political sphere, and to this day they remain a pervasive and influential source for racist justifications.
Though scientific racism fell out of public acceptance after the Holocaust, World War II, and the devastation of German eugenics, the U.S. government continued to utilize theories of scientific racism, authorizing practices such as the forced sterilization of minority men and women throughout the 70s.
Recently, scientific racism has once more experienced a revitalization, finding newfound support in the Trump administration and the rise of the Alt-Right. However, the mainstream growth of scientific racism is rooted in the 90s, when scientific racists, inspired by the initiation of the Human Genome Project, realized genetics could be a potential medium to promote their ideas. The scientific racism of this decade culminated in vital pieces of literature such as political scientist Charles Murray’s The Bell Curve.
The Bell Curve is the result of a study conducted by both Murray and Richard Herrnstein analyzing the connections between race and IQ, a project that originated from Herrnstein’s claim that an intellectual hierarchy, with those with a high-IQ dominating the social system, was forming within the U.S. According to Murray and Herrnstein’s findings, IQ is a heritable characteristic that correlates with race, with lower IQs and negative behavioral patterns concentrated amongst the poor and, most especially, blacks and Hispanics. Thus, the crime and poverty rates of any individual in a lower socioeconomic class are, in part, a result of inherent genetic disposition, and any attempts to manipulate their status through policy would be ineffective.
Of course, there are several problematic aspects to Murray’s work. First, the study is grounded in a widely- contested assumption that intelligence is immutable and unchanged over time. Moreover, the results are based on a testing method that is flawed and severely biased. The IQ test used by Murray and Herrnstein is widely considered to discriminate against those of lower socioeconomic status and fails to separate the influence of education, a contributor to intelligence that is clearly affected by political, and not genetic, structures.
Like all other works of scientific racism, behind this publications’ façade of scholarship and academic pursuit lies a political intent. Murray used his empirical findings and data to support a staunchly conservative agenda of disbanding welfare programs and other forms of aid to the poor, ending affirmative action in college admissions, and limiting immigration. These discoveries, supposedly the result of objective studies, are representative of Murray’s own political leanings, and have supported his work at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank in Washington D.C.
Though works like Murray’s support and promote a clearly conservative agenda, politicians of the Pre-Trump era were painfully aware of the controversy and protests surrounding them and avoided aligning themselves outright with theorists of scientific racism.
However, the Trump administration has forgone this decorum, surrounding themselves with individuals who fearmonger the societal consequences of a rising, corrupting minority and immigrant population and blatantly support ideas of heritable inferiority. Trump’s failure to condemn more-overtly racist individuals and actions, from Klansman and Trump-supporter David Duke to the tiki-torch-wielding neo-Nazi protests of Charlottesville, has created a breeding ground for scientific racists and their supporters, emboldening believers who were once limited by their former representatives. It is this political and social context that explains the recent surge in The Bell Curve’s book sales and emerging theories such as the neo-eugenics of human biodiversity.
As seen during the Trump era of news, and throughout history, science has been repeatedly appropriated to support certain political ends, with individuals taking advantage of its perceived objectivity and unwavering veracity to manipulate the opinions of others. Without widespread acknowledgement of the social and political factors underlying and shaping the context in which the research itself is being conducted, these racist scientific pursuits will continue to alter the opinions and prejudices of others, contributing to policies that justify the degradation and exclusion of vulnerable populations.
