EncycloReader

Scientific racism is the belief that empirical evidence exists to support or justify racism, racial inferiority, or racial superiority.^[1]^[2]^[3] Historically, scientific racism received credence throughout the scientific community.^[2]^[3]

↑ "Ostensibly scientific": cf. Theodore M. Porter, Dorothy Ross (eds.) 2003. The Cambridge History of Science: Volume 7, The Modern Social Sciences Cambridge University Press, p. 293 "Race has long played a powerful popular role in explaining social and cultural traits, often in ostensibly scientific terms"; Adam Kuper, Jessica Kuper (eds.), The Social Science Encyclopedia (1996), "Racism", p. 716: "This [sc. scientific] racism entailed the use of 'scientific techniques', to sanction the belief in European and American racial Superiority"; Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Questions to Sociobiology (1998), "Race, theories of", p. 18: "Its exponents [sc. of scientific racism] tended to equate race with species and claimed that it constituted a scientific explanation of human history"; Terry Jay Ellingson, The myth of the noble savage (2001), 147ff. "In scientific racism, the racism was never very scientific; nor, it could at least be argued, was whatever met the qualifications of actual science ever very racist" (p. 151); Paul A. Erickson, Liam D. Murphy, A History of Anthropological Theory (2008), p. 152: "Scientific racism: Improper or incorrect science that actively or passively supports racism".
↑ ^2.0 ^2.1 Gould, Stephen Jay (1981). The Mismeasure of Man. New York: W W Norton and Co., 28–29. ISBN 978-0-393-01489-1. “Few tragedies can be more extensive than the stunting of life, few injustices deeper than the denial of an opportunity to strive or even to hope, by a limit imposed from without, but falsely identified as lying within.”
↑ ^3.0 ^3.1 Kurtz, Paul (Sep 2004). "Can the Sciences Help Us to Make Wise Ethical Judgments?". Skeptical Inquirer. http://www.csicop.org/si/2004-09/scientific-ethics.html. Retrieved 1 December 2007. "There have been abundant illustrations of pseudoscientific theories-monocausal theories of human behavior that were hailed as "scientific"-that have been applied with disastrous results. Examples: ... Many racists today point to IQ to justify a menial role for blacks in society and their opposition to affirmative action.".

Scientific Racism

See also[edit]

References[edit]