Scientific racism

Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress

by Steven Pinker  · 13 Feb 2018  · 1,034pp  · 241,773 words

to precisely measurable, deterministic physical processes. . . . Positivist assumptions provided the epistemological foundations for Social Darwinism and pop-evolutionary notions of progress, as well as for scientific racism and imperialism. These tendencies coalesced in eugenics, the doctrine that human well-being could be improved and eventually perfected through the selective breeding of the

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academic rivals. Science is commonly blamed for intellectual movements that had a pseudoscientific patina, though the historical roots of those movements ran deep and wide. “Scientific racism,” the theory that races fall into an evolutionary hierarchy of mental sophistication with Northern Europeans at the top, is a prime example. It was popular

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Hitler a Darwinian?” (a common claim among creationists) with “The only reasonable answer to the question . . . is a very loud and unequivocal No!”34 Like “scientific racism,” the movement called Social Darwinism is often tendentiously attributed to science. When the concept of evolution became famous in the late 19th and early 20th

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exacerbated by, 78, 459n36 opposition to religion, 430, 436, 438 “primitive,” 102–3 quality of life and, 247, 248 romantic heroism and, 31, 165, 445 “scientific racism” and, 398 See also Marxism; Marxist guerrillas and terrorists Compstat program, 380 computation and consciousness, 426 and knowledge, 21 computers, delayed productivity growth from, 330

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d’Alembert, Jean-Baptiste, 10 Dante, 63 Darfur, 162 Darwin, Charles Argument from Design refuted by, 421 death of children of, 56 falsely tied to scientific racism, 398, 400, 486n32 falsely tied to Social Darwinism, 398–9, 400 on humans as single species, 398 and replicating systems and evolution, 18–19 See

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ideology of, 397 eugenics and, 399 Holocaust, 161, 397, 399, 430 intellectual fans of, 447 Nietzsche as influence on, 445 public health invoked by, 399 “scientific racism” of, 397–8 See also Germany; Hitler, Adolf Negativity bias, 47–8, 293 Negroponte, John, 310 Nemirow, Jason, 140 neo-fascism, 419, 448, 451 neo

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Africans, 397 police shootings of African Americans, 215–16, 471n6 public opinion in the U.S., 216–17, 216, 471n8 of Romans toward Britons, 397 “scientific racism” misdescribed, 397–8, 486n32 Trump’s election and, 339–40 Radelet, Steven, 59, 90, 91, 93, 459n16 radioactive fallout, 133–4, 315 Radner, Gilda, 266

Science Fictions: How Fraud, Bias, Negligence, and Hype Undermine the Search for Truth

by Stuart Ritchie  · 20 Jul 2020

far-fetched theories about the entirely separate origins of different human races, were an international sensation and played a key role in the rise of scientific racism, the movement that attempted to split humans into a hierarchy of superior and inferior groups and helped fuel some of the worst horrors of the

Human Diversity: The Biology of Gender, Race, and Class

by Charles Murray  · 28 Jan 2020  · 741pp  · 199,502 words

but against the idea of race itself. Its most prominent spokesman was Franz Boas, a pioneering anthropologist and a fierce opponent of what he labeled “scientific racism.”2 A British anthropologist who studied under Boas, Ashley Montagu, took his mentor’s position to new levels of passion (“Race is the witchcraft, the

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race has been freighted with cultural baggage that has nothing to do with biological differences. The word carries with it the legacy of nineteenth-century scientific racism combined with Europe’s colonialism and America’s history of slavery and its aftermath. Scientifically, it is an error to think of races as primordial

The Genetic Lottery: Why DNA Matters for Social Equality

by Kathryn Paige Harden  · 20 Sep 2021  · 375pp  · 102,166 words

To avoid any mention of race leaves a vacuum that would be filled with errors and that would be interpreted as a tacit approval of scientific racism. At the same time, because discussions of genetics in relationship to class structure and to redistribution of resources have been poisoned by decades of race

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socioeconomic attainments from the racist rhetoric about differences between human groups. In this chapter, I aim to clarify why today’s genetically inflected incarnation of scientific racism is both empirically wrong and morally blinkered. I will first describe what geneticists mean by ancestry and why it is false to collapse the idea

The Quiet Coup: Neoliberalism and the Looting of America

by Mehrsa Baradaran  · 7 May 2024  · 470pp  · 158,007 words

efficient and scientific mass murder of Jews and other undesirables by the “superior race.” So much savagery disguised as progress. After the Allied victory, pseudo-scientific racism and state-supported eugenics programs, which were British and American innovations, were abandoned without fanfare. The steady self-assured rise of Western Europe gave way

The State and the Stork: The Population Debate and Policy Making in US History

by Derek S. Hoff  · 30 May 2012

to restrain American manufacturing, unwise to do anything to discourage economic opportunity and growth within the empire.”26 Franklin is also well known for anticipating scientific racism and eugenics. He desired the preservation not only of the British Empire but also of an empire of Englishmen, a reactionary goal given the ethnic

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as the first colonies, but Manifest Destiny expanded these ideas, emerging in the second quarter of the nineteenth century as the product of several factors: scientific racism and the social construc- 40 chapter 1 tion of a unique and superior “Anglo-Saxon race”; the development of an American Romantic movement; confidence resulting

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Democratic Party.158 According to historian Thomas Hietala, Democrats’ recourse to Manifest Destiny reflected a “crisis of confidence” more than it did the rise of scientific racism—and central to the anxieties prompting western adventures were fears of population growth and modernization.159 Many Democrats, especially in the South, supported several Jef

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The 1965 Immigration (Hart-Celler) Act was primarily designed to end the racist immigration system erected in the 1920s. A legacy of earlycentury eugenics and scientific racism, the 1921–65 immigration regime discriminated against prospective immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe by assigning nations in those regions absurdly low quotas of immigrants

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Is Beautiful, 191, 223 Schumpeter, Joseph, 51, 92, 175, 230; Capi- index talism, Socialism, and Democracy, 281n100; long-term cycles, or waves, of economy, 274n17 scientific racism, 39–40, 157 Scott, Daryl, 156 Scott, William, 259n147 Scranton, William, 201 Scripps, Edward W., 63 Scripps Foundation for Research in Population Problems, Miami University

Sorting Things Out: Classification and Its Consequences

by Geoffrey C. Bowker and Susan Leigh Star  · 25 Aug 2000  · 357pp  · 125,142 words

categorical bioscience, the taxonomies could neither pinpoint nor contain their terrible discursive product. (1997, 234) Although a vague conception of eugenics and other forms of scientific racism are woven throughout the debates about apartheid, this lack of a scientific definition of race appears repeatedly. Dr. M. Shapiro, at a meeting of the

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University Press. Douglas, Mary, and David L. Hull. 1992. How Classification Works: Nelson Goodman among the Social Sciences. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Dubow, Saul. 1995. Scientific Racism in Modern South Africa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dumas, Alexandre. 1858. La Dame aux Camelias ; Preface de Jules Janin. Ed. illustre par Gavarni. Paris: G

The Gene: An Intimate History

by Siddhartha Mukherjee  · 16 May 2016  · 824pp  · 218,333 words

to Agassiz and Galton, to the American eugenicists of the nineteenth century, and to the Nazi geneticists of the twentieth. Genetics unleashed the specter of scientific racism in the nineteenth century. Genomics, thankfully, has stuffed it back into its bottle. Or, as Aibee, the African-American maid, tells Mae Mobley plainly in

The Unknowers: How Strategic Ignorance Rules the World

by Linsey McGoey  · 14 Sep 2019

racism also led to early social scientific classifications of human worth that were later ‘refined’ and enlisted in the service of full-blown systems of scientific racism: to the rise of equally abhorrent and, in ways, even more inhumane treatments of enslaved peoples than in earlier eras. They were more inhumane because

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Sarch, Alexander, 231–2, 233–5, 304 Sartre, Jean-Paul, 293–4 Schiebinger, Londa, 11 Schwartz, Anna, 54–5, 59–61 science, 8, 64–7 scientific racism, 48, 319 Scotland Yard, 112–14 Scott, Tom, 207, 212 Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), 53–4 self-interest, 125–6, 126, 136, 139–40

War Without Mercy: PACIFIC WAR

by John Dower  · 11 Apr 1986  · 516pp  · 159,734 words

the immensely influential teacher of Mead and Ruth Benedict, among many others. Boas played a leading role in repudiating the theories of biological determinism, or “scientific racism,” which dominated the mainstream of European and American anthropological teaching throughout the nineteenth century. Many of the scholars who became associated with the national-character

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,” involving the rationalization of racism beginning with the great debates among Spanish theologians and philosophers at the time of the conquistadores, and carrying through the “scientific racism” of the nineteenth century right up to the Pacific War. The image of the nonwhite in European eyes was initially shaped by the simultaneous encounter

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of Western rational inquiry and empirical investigation, a welcome finding indeed in an age of intensified empire building. Even with all the new theoretical language, scientific racism had a familiar ring. Here, for instance, is a well-known example of how nineteenth-century scholars used the concept of childishness to explain the

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emphasis on culture, enculturation, and socialization.7 In the United States, attitudes nurtured in the harshness of slavery and Indian fighting, reinforced by the new scientific racism, also shaped perceptions of another group of Asians in the latter half of the nineteenth century: the Chinese, whom many Americans first encountered as immigrants

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insane persons.” Three years later, all further Chinese immigration to the United States was prohibited.9 These events occurred in tandem with the rise of scientific racism, which left little doubt about how the Chinese were to be perceived. As early as 1839, before the first Chinese emigrants even arrived in the

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factors. First, the half century or more during which the Japanese initially turned to the West for education coincided almost exactly with the period when scientific racism dominated the natural and social sciences in Europe and the United States. In Japan, that is, the very process of Westernization involved being told that

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6, 8, and 16, 1944; Judith Schachter Modell, Ruth Benedict: Patterns of a Life (1983: University of Pennsylvania Press), 247–55. For general appraisals of scientific racism–and, more specifically, racist anthropology–cf. Stephen Jay Gould, The Mismeasure of Man (1981: Norton); Marvin Harris, The Rise of Anthropological Theory (1968: Crowell), esp

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, 1785–1882 (1969: University of California Press), and “Benevolent Assimilation”: The American Conquest of the Philippines, 1899–1903 (1982: Yale University Press). The themes of scientific racism from the mid-nineteenth century have been lucidly presented by Stephen Jay Gould in The Mismeasure of Man (1981: Norton). Although not developed in the

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”; see his essay in Logan, esp. 133–35, 139, 152–53, 161–62. CHAPTER 8: THE PURE SELF 1 For some Japanese reactions to the scientific racism of the West, see the observations of Inoue Tetsujirō and Miyake Setsurei cited in Kenneth B. Pyle, The New Generation in Meiji Japan: Problems in

Empire of Things: How We Became a World of Consumers, From the Fifteenth Century to the Twenty-First

by Frank Trentmann  · 1 Dec 2015  · 1,213pp  · 376,284 words

She Has Her Mother's Laugh

by Carl Zimmer  · 29 May 2018

The Upswing: How America Came Together a Century Ago and How We Can Do It Again

by Robert D. Putnam  · 12 Oct 2020  · 678pp  · 160,676 words

Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution

by Francis Fukuyama  · 1 Jan 2002  · 350pp  · 96,803 words

The Next Great Migration: The Beauty and Terror of Life on the Move

by Sonia Shah

Whiteshift: Populism, Immigration and the Future of White Majorities

by Eric Kaufmann  · 24 Oct 2018  · 691pp  · 203,236 words

Dark Laboratory: On Columbus, the Caribbean, and the Origins of the Climate Crisis

by Tao Leigh. Goffe  · 14 Mar 2025  · 441pp  · 122,013 words

Everything Is Predictable: How Bayesian Statistics Explain Our World

by Tom Chivers  · 6 May 2024  · 283pp  · 102,484 words

Stories Are Weapons: Psychological Warfare and the American Mind

by Annalee Newitz  · 3 Jun 2024  · 251pp  · 68,713 words

Sorting Things Out: Classification and Its Consequences (Inside Technology)

by Geoffrey C. Bowker  · 24 Aug 2000

Who We Are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past

by David Reich  · 22 Mar 2018  · 372pp  · 110,208 words

Bourgeois Dignity: Why Economics Can't Explain the Modern World

by Deirdre N. McCloskey  · 15 Nov 2011  · 1,205pp  · 308,891 words

The Idea of Decline in Western History

by Arthur Herman  · 8 Jan 1997  · 717pp  · 196,908 words

More Everything Forever: AI Overlords, Space Empires, and Silicon Valley's Crusade to Control the Fate of Humanity

by Adam Becker  · 14 Jun 2025  · 381pp  · 119,533 words

How to Be a Liberal: The Story of Liberalism and the Fight for Its Life

by Ian Dunt  · 15 Oct 2020

The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations

by Christopher Lasch  · 1 Jan 1978

Ever Since Darwin: Reflections in Natural History

by Stephen Jay Gould  · 1 Jan 1977  · 266pp  · 76,299 words

Democracy's Data: The Hidden Stories in the U.S. Census and How to Read Them

by Dan Bouk  · 22 Aug 2022  · 424pp  · 123,180 words

A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things: A Guide to Capitalism, Nature, and the Future of the Planet

by Raj Patel and Jason W. Moore  · 16 Oct 2017  · 335pp  · 89,924 words

The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity

by David Graeber and David Wengrow  · 18 Oct 2021

Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness

by Simone Browne  · 1 Oct 2015  · 326pp  · 84,180 words

Political Order and Political Decay: From the Industrial Revolution to the Globalization of Democracy

by Francis Fukuyama  · 29 Sep 2014  · 828pp  · 232,188 words

Black Pill: How I Witnessed the Darkest Corners of the Internet Come to Life, Poison Society, and Capture American Politics

by Elle Reeve  · 9 Jul 2024

Animal Spirits: The American Pursuit of Vitality From Camp Meeting to Wall Street

by Jackson Lears

Risk: A User's Guide

by Stanley McChrystal and Anna Butrico  · 4 Oct 2021  · 489pp  · 106,008 words

Age of Anger: A History of the Present

by Pankaj Mishra  · 26 Jan 2017  · 410pp  · 106,931 words

Unfinished Empire: The Global Expansion of Britain

by John Darwin  · 12 Feb 2013

What's Left?: How Liberals Lost Their Way

by Nick Cohen  · 15 Jul 2015  · 414pp  · 121,243 words

Small Men on the Wrong Side of History: The Decline, Fall and Unlikely Return of Conservatism

by Ed West  · 19 Mar 2020  · 530pp  · 147,851 words

Flight of the WASP

by Michael Gross  · 562pp  · 177,195 words

The Cult of Smart: How Our Broken Education System Perpetuates Social Injustice

by Fredrik Deboer  · 3 Aug 2020  · 236pp  · 77,546 words

The Heat Will Kill You First: Life and Death on a Scorched Planet

by Jeff Goodell  · 10 Jul 2023  · 347pp  · 108,323 words

Eurowhiteness: Culture, Empire and Race in the European Project

by Hans Kundnani  · 16 Aug 2023  · 198pp  · 54,815 words

Equality

by Darrin M. McMahon  · 14 Nov 2023  · 534pp  · 166,876 words

Empireland: How Imperialism Has Shaped Modern Britain

by Sathnam Sanghera  · 28 Jan 2021  · 430pp  · 111,038 words

White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America

by Nancy Isenberg  · 20 Jun 2016  · 709pp  · 191,147 words

The Patterning Instinct: A Cultural History of Humanity's Search for Meaning

by Jeremy Lent  · 22 May 2017  · 789pp  · 207,744 words

Live Work Work Work Die: A Journey Into the Savage Heart of Silicon Valley

by Corey Pein  · 23 Apr 2018  · 282pp  · 81,873 words

The Empire Project: The Rise and Fall of the British World-System, 1830–1970

by John Darwin  · 23 Sep 2009

The Pursuit of Power: Europe, 1815-1914

by Richard J. Evans  · 31 Aug 2016  · 976pp  · 329,519 words

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by Nick Couldry and Ulises A. Mejias  · 19 Aug 2019  · 458pp  · 116,832 words

Your Face Belongs to Us: A Secretive Startup's Quest to End Privacy as We Know It

by Kashmir Hill  · 19 Sep 2023  · 487pp  · 124,008 words

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by Naomi Klein  · 11 Sep 2023

Head, Hand, Heart: Why Intelligence Is Over-Rewarded, Manual Workers Matter, and Caregivers Deserve More Respect

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The Rise and Fall of the Third Chimpanzee

by Jared Diamond  · 2 Jan 1991  · 436pp  · 140,256 words

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by Yochai Benkler  · 8 Aug 2011  · 187pp  · 62,861 words

To the Edges of the Earth: 1909, the Race for the Three Poles, and the Climax of the Age of Exploration

by Edward J. Larson  · 13 Mar 2018  · 422pp  · 119,123 words

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by Ashley Shew  · 18 Sep 2023  · 154pp  · 43,956 words

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by John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge  · 31 Mar 2009  · 518pp  · 143,914 words

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by Matthew Cobb  · 15 Nov 2022  · 772pp  · 150,109 words

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by David Gange  · 10 Jul 2019

Editing Humanity: The CRISPR Revolution and the New Era of Genome Editing

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The Rough Guide to Brazil

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by Ian Morris  · 11 Oct 2010  · 1,152pp  · 266,246 words

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