How the history of scientific racism justified hierarchy

The history of scientific racism concerns the pseudoscientific belief, sometimes termed biological racism, that humans are divided into biologically distinct races and that evidence supports racial discrimination or superiority and inferiority. It was common from the 1600s to the end of World War II, particularly in European and American academic writings from the mid-19th century through the early-20th century.

2 articles, 1 book · about 1 hr 17 min of reading and viewing

The reading path

1. Read
   the history of scientific racism · Wikipedia · 60+ min read

   Scientific racism justified Black African slavery in the United States to assuage moral opposition to the Atlantic slave trade. The term drapetomania (mania of the runaway slave) derives from the Greek δραπέτης (drapetes, 'a runaway [slave]') and μανία (mania, 'madness, frenzy'). Swedish racial hygiene advocates lobbied Swedish parliamentarians and medical institutes, leading to a decree creating the Swedish State Institute for Racial Biology in 1921. It was the first such government-funded institute in the world performing research into "racial biology". Benjamin Rush, a Founding Father of the United States and a physician, proposed that being black was a hereditary skin disease he called "negroidism" and believed it could be cured. Rush concluded that "whites should not tyrannize over [blacks], for their disease should entitle them to a double portion of humanity."

2. Read
   

   W. E. B. Du Bois Fought "Scientific" Racism - JSTOR Daily · JSTOR Daily · 3 min read

   Psychologists imbued with concepts of white supremacy promoted IQ tests to verify that the offspring of upper-class whites were proven to be more intelligent. Racist scientists argued that an intelligent black person had emerged only because they had white ancestry.

3. Book
   

   Racism: A Short History · Bookshop.org

   Racism by George M. Fredrickson describes the history of Western racism from the late Middle Ages to the present, tracing racist thinking from medieval antisemitism through European expansionism and the beginnings of the African slave trade.

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