Episode 47: The legacy of scientific racism

Magneto prepares to make Homo sapiens tremble before the might of Homo superior, a move that Carl Linnaeus would probably enjoy.

Scientific racism means using science to justify racist beliefs or ideas, and it has a long history. In this episode, we explore the origins of scientific racism, and how it's still affecting both evolutionary biology and fantastical stories about "other species" like the X-men's Homo superior or Underworld's vampires. Plus, we've got an interview with journalist Angela Saini, author of the recent book Superior: The Return of Race Science.

Citations, Links, & Etc.

Superior: The Return of Race Science, by Angela Saini

Systema Naturae, by Carl Linnaeus

More on Linnaeus’ system of racial classifications can be found in “Who is the type of Homo sapiens?” by Notton D.G. & Stringer, C. See also “The Roots of Scientific Racism: Black Bile and Phlegm,” by Désirée Wariaro.

There is a lot of debate about whether Darwin was really a racist, or simply a friend to racists (his cousin Francis Galton popularized eugenics and is often considered the father of modern scientific racism). Though Darwin was an abolitionist, he wrote in The Descent of Man about how “Caucasians” were more civilized than “the negro or Australian,” and would “exterminate or replace” them. He also predicted that eventually an even more civilized Homo sapiens would come along to replace all of us. Here is the full passage from The Descent of Man, linked above:

At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace, the savage races throughout the world. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes, as Professor Schaaffhausen has remarked (18. 'Anthropological Review,' April 1867, p. 236.), will no doubt be exterminated. The break between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilised state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as now between the negro or Australian and the gorilla.

Samuel George Morton and his cranial collection

The belief that whites are smarter than other races persists in allegedly scientific studies like the one described by Charles Murray in The Bell Curve.

You can learn about the history of American medical texts claiming that African-Americans are “stronger” than whites in episode 4 of the 1619 Project podcast, “How the Bad Blood Started.”

The Lensman series, by E.E. “Doc” Smith

Odd John, by Olaf Stapledon

Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley

The Eugenics Wars in Star Trek

A Discovery of Witches, TV series on AMC and book series by Deborah Harkness

Underworld franchise

Species, dir. Roger Donaldson

True Blood series

Richard Lynn, editor of the race science journal Mankind Quarterly

Chris Brand, professor and proponent of the idea that race and intelligence are linked

James Watson, geneticist who has a history of racist and sexist ideas

Steven Pinker, a Harvard professor who argues that Ashkenazi Jews have superior intelligence

Geoffrey Miller, an evolutionary psychology professor, who wrote that obese people are less likely to finish a Ph.D. than thin ones