Introduction
Scientific racism is a false scientific belief that certified evidence that is available supports racial discrimination, inferiority and exalting other races as superior of the other races. The world has several races ranging from the whites, reds and the blacks. In the past days, scientific racism received applause all through in the scientific world, but currently, the people do not consider it scientific anymore. Scientific racism applies craniometry, anthropometry, and anthropology alongside several other disciplines of semi-disciplines that support typologies in anthropology that propose the categorization of human population into physical human races such as those mentioned earlier which further stratifies the races as superior and inferior (Blatt 17). In the early 1600s, scientific racism was highest up to the end of the century. However, with the available research advancements as well as education that the people were acquiring over the years, the became aware and started criticizing the idea of scientific racism around the second half of the 20th century (Blatt 17) .Currently, this idea has been subject to criticism as obsolete and discredited. Nevertheless, historically the idea has continuously had staunch support to validate racist perception. Scientific racism was a wrong ideology which should not be applied and was meant to make other races look inferior.
Research Question:
How and why did scientists try to make their racist ideas scientific and plausible?
Working Thesis:
Scientific racism is an endeavour to co-opt the specialist of science to legitimize racial partiality. A race may be an item of politics, culture and human creative ability; it has no logical premise. The thoughts displayed by proponents of reasonable prejudice are planned to form discrimination appear reasonable and satisfactory when, in reality, it is not one or the other.
Among the troubles in talking about the marvel of "scientific racism" is the reality that there exists no exact explanations of what it precisely stands for. And racists got to get it that "science" and prejudice occurs in totally disjointed domains of beliefs, and "scientific racism" is, in this manner, an insignificant word (Blatt 17). Science does not advance bigot inferences; science only provides the people with information. The translations and societal consequences come due to this information depending on the perspective of a person making deductions from it! Racists are referring to themselves as "racialists" or "race realists" as they allude to their convictions on the issue of the skin color (Blatt 19). Supposing the ridiculous state "scientific racism" never got conjoined within the, to begin with, put, racists and "racialists" would not have acquired the culminate simultaneous identity that recognize themselves. "Within each complexion, there exists substantial differences in the bodily appearances and brain function though no interconnection between the body and the mind has been substantially portrayed (Blatt 19). If there exist no special capabilities attributed to individual races then, there has not been any evidence yet. Racial monopolies do not exist on the virtues or vices of a human being -Earnest Hooton.
Some scientists have attempted to measure different people's skulls to spread their racist ideas to link racial differences to the size of the head to different people's intelligence.
Dutch researcher Pieter Camper (1722–89) was one of the primary scholars of the craniometrist, the measure of skulls, which utilized to legitimize racial contrasts. In 1770, he concocted in one of his various journals to the concept of the “facial angle”, a degree implied to decide insights among different species. Concurring to this strategy, a “facial angle” was shaped by drawing two lines: one evenly from the nostril to the ear, and the other oppositely from the progressing portion of the upper jawbone to the first unmistakable portion of the temple.
Samuel George Morton (1799–1851), one of the inspirations of physical human studies, collected hundreds of human skulls from all over the world and began attempting to discover a way to classify them concurring to a few coherent criteria. Impacted by the mere bigot speculations of his time, he claimed that he might judge the mental capacity of a race by the cranial capacity. A massive skull implied a colossal brain and a tremendous mental function. However, a little cranium demonstrated a small mind and diminished mental capacity.
"The matter of intelligence being attributed to the race has not been able to develop adequately to guarantee the incorporation of a generalized work of the history of racism. Additionally, it has offered a ready arena for political use to be regarded and understood as an issue that has no scientific attachment. The study of various races is done comfortably without the idea of superiority or inferiority. -Carleton Coon (1939).
Enlightenment Thinkers Era
The 1650s to 1780s were years characterized by an increased number of thinkers who were enlightened and the ideologies of monogenism and polygenism gained momentum and became popular among the scientists (Blatt 24). Nonetheless, they would only have a systematic epistemology during the 19th century. The thinking of monogenism was providing that the different races available in the world have a standard beginning. Conversely, polygenism ideology contended that the races had different origins. It was until the 18th century that the terms race and species were used interchangeably (Blatt 24).
Scientific Racism in the 19th Century
Scientific racism was highest in 1600, as mentioned earlier in this text. With advancements, people started to disregard it and became more enlightened over the years (Blatt 24). Nevertheless, with the improvements over the centuries, it did not become obsolete, but other people embraced in even in the 19th century. All through the 18th and 19th centuries, there was the rise in industrial and scientific revolutions in Europe, which later extended to the United States of America and facilitated substantial alteration and transformation among the people's ways of life (Blatt 27). Almost simultaneously, the Atlantic slave trade kicked in as the labor force was highly needed in the scientific institution and the industries that were mushrooming by the day. The proliferation of imperialism in Europe, numerous cases of genocides among the aboriginals in America, became rampant and fueled racism. It was during these centuries that racism was at its worst with the African suffering the most in the hands of the white racists.
It was not an appropriate action towards the Africans, and there grew uproar about the mistreatment of the people who scientists claimed were less human. To justify and protect themselves from the blame these elites during this age that was famously known as the science age gave reasons and scientific explanations which were supposed to justify the exploitation of human beings based on their races, and they continued to emphasize that it was scientific racism based on their answers (Jackson, Weidman, and Rubin 69). The reasons they provided were embraced by the whites and other atrocities that found the black race as inferior and wanted to exploit them by enslaving them in their farms, research institutes, and industries where they used them as the workers. In the scientific institutions, other blacks would be used as trial objects for various innovations such as in chemical and pharmaceutical plants.
Phrenology
In the 19th century, scientists came up with a technique. They named it phrenology, which they used to facilitate their attempts to connect personality, behavior, and intelligence to the shape of a human's skull (Jackson et al., 70). The method was, however, pseudoscientific. The human skulls which were subjected to this kind of technique would be assessed using instruments that were specially designed and then evaluated by experts to be able to locate the position of the brain where certain feelings and emotions were believed to originate. The method was of choice in the attempt of the scientists in justification of their racist beliefs, especially the notion that the Africans were not as intelligent as the people from Europe. Similarly to a majority of what can be termed as scientific racism, the inferences derived from phrenology appeared first, and the evidence to support would be sought later for these scientists to justify their assumptions after conducting phrenology (Jackson et al., 70).
Charles Darwin on the Origin of Species
A publication in the year 1859 by Charles Darwin had a significant influence on the intellectual movements of the 19th century (Jackson et al., 70). In a variety of aspects, the ideas of Charles Darwin contradicted substantially with those of the scientific racists as Darwin's views were distorted by theorists who were staunch believers of racism who gave their perceptions on the legitimacy of scientific racism. A majority of scientific racists believed that different races in the world must have evolved from different points and that the theory of evolution by Charles Darwin was trying to explain that all Africans and other non-white races were inferior humans as compared to their European counterparts (Jackson et al., 70). The sentiments would late cause an untold amount of racial discrimination among the Europeans towards the Africans and other non-white persons of the world.
The views of many scientists on scientific racism were misleading and constructed to deviate from the truth and to impact the beliefs of other people on the issues of a group of humans being inferior to the other negatively. Most of those scientists were blindly convinced and satisfied to apply illegitimate statistics, poor research methodologies, and illogic inferences to justify the theory that biology predicts the way of life of a people (Jackson et al., 71). They had no recognition of the actual evidence that states otherwise.
Modern Scientific Racism
The previous understanding of scientific racism has been provided in this text and is instrumental in the knowledge of current scientific racism. Over the years, science has empirically been trusted by many people due to its objectivity in testing theories and phenomena using standard scientific methodologies. Scientific racism is the ultimate opposite of what science is as it targets designing definitions of the race as well as the culture based on the perceptions of individuals with evidence that is ultimately questionable (Blatt 19). Marshaling up what can be termed as supposed scientific evidence was put together to find out the existence of the various races in the world as well as their anticipated hierarchy of superiority and inferiority of the races with the black race being the most underrated one. There exists a visible difference between science and scientific racism, with the most significant one being the creation of distinct races, which was not isolated for biological reasons and systems of stratification but political and economic reasons (Jackson et al., 71). These beliefs wore founded on the ideology of nature and not the social aspects that led to divisions in society.
Implications of Scientific Racism
Racism is among the most primitive practices of prejudice towards human beings across the world and may lead to hatred in the world. Scientific racism is no different from what is currently happening in the world. In fact, the racism that existed in the world over the years and up to date is as a result of what was termed as scientific racism which incorporated perceptions and beliefs among the people to believe that some races are superior to others and therefore, they are subject to their control in all their activities. Scientific racism contributed signific...
