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Linnaeus' Homo ferus doesn't really belong here. It (and Homo anthropomorpha) don't refer to any real group of people; anthropomorpha didn't exist at all, it was just an idiosyncratic idea of Linnaeus's about ape-like creatures inspiring certain myths, and ferus was Linnaeus' mis-interpretation of feral children (since they walked quadrupedally and couldn't speak) as a separate species. Both were thought of as totally different species nevertheless related to humanity more closely than to apes; but they don't fall into a "racism" category at all. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Vultur ( talk • contribs) 05:47, 14 July 2009 (UTC)
I've removed Francis Galton’s 1870 Hereditary Genius: An Inquiry into Its Laws and Consequences from the overview's "other scientific racist works that largely influenced Nazism" as the cited reference (Tucker 1994) doesn't appear to have a title, and Tucker 2002 appears to make no mention of that work by Galton. It precedes his coining of the term eugenics. While it's clearly about ideas of good breeding, it's about scientific snobbery rather than racism and it's very questionable if it can be included as a "scientific racist work". The transition from that work to eugenics to the racist eugenics of the United States and thence to the Nazis is complex, and the current overview appears over-focussed on the Nazis, thus missing the point of the pre-eugenics tradition of scientific racism, in particular the racist anthropology of the American school from the 1850s onwards. Something to sort. . dave souza, talk 18:07, 9 September 2009 (UTC)
The human race, via races (within itself as a whole race), was on the path of diversity through allopatric speciation; has any scientific racism source made the argument that race mixing destroys the change which allopatric speciation brings on since separate geographically distinct types were the initial steps in allopatric speciation.? 4.242.174.238 ( talk) 09:21, 25 October 2009 (UTC)
Sorry, the caption for the picture on the page made me laugh. Those are depictions of the SUPPOSED physical differences between the various races? So it might not be true that blacks look like that? lmao. 216.185.250.92 ( talk) 06:02, 4 January 2010 (UTC)
On what basis would you exclude the graph depicting the gap in intelligence of the major races? This is one of, if not the, predominant driving forces behind acknowledgment of differences in the potential of racial populations for modern-day "scientific racists". It represents the scientifically racist worldview in a more current, not to mention scientific, fashion than a cartoon from 1899 with no scientific data available. This article needs to have more relevance with the current era, rather than dismissing so many philosophers and intellectuals of by-gone eras as if racism -- and racial differences -- are no longer an issue in society.
If the scope of this article is so limited as to render it completely biased, you will need to further define what "scientific racism" is -- i.e. who coined the term, and why it's relevant enough to have its own utterly biased article -- in order to provide a rationale for including what appears to be propaganda. [-- 17:23, 10 June 2010 User:Tyrtamus
some people, actually some vocal contributors to this article, appear to think that "racism" automatically equals "racial supremacism". Hence the train of thought "racism, zomg, racial supremacism, anti-semitism, eugenics, nazis". This is completely beside the point. A detached analysis of the topic will reveal, I am sure, that there are two uses of "scientific racism", one used neutrally of a historical field of scholarly study, and the other a pejorative used in postmodernist criticisms of racism. The dividing line between the mainstream academic field and the postmodernist bickering lies, not coincidentially, in the WWII period. Of course it is not possible today to speak of "racism" free of any negative implications. But it must be possible, in an encyclopedia, to discuss neutrally a historical field of scholarship.
Yes, this article should discuss the pitfalls of racial supremacism and eugenics inherent in scientific racism, but these are strictly marginal topics and they should not be allowed to dominate any significant portion of the article. In the very definition of the term, this article used, in Wikipedia's voice, the reference
I mean, are we writing articles from the point of view of "black feminism" now? You might as well use quotes from Joseph McCarthy to "define" the subject matter at Communism. These are opinions, and they may be referenced, but please under a section "postmodernist criticism" and nowhere near the lead or introductory parts of the article. -- dab (𒁳) 10:59, 29 June 2010 (UTC)
The lead conflated scientific racism, plain "racism", and racial supremacism completely and without remorse.
For example, the claim of an "official debunking of scientific racism" by the UN is "substantiated" by a quote on "the myth of 'race'". I ask you, is it possible for the UN to "debunk" a scholarly hypothesis, and (b) is the quote on "the myth on 'race'" more likely to refer to racial supremacism or to scholarly attempts to group human populations? --
dab
(𒁳) 11:09, 29 June 2010 (UTC)
you are right, it is now mostly a pejorative. This is mostly because the topic itself has become untouchable, and it is more or less impossible to find a non-pejorative term for something that is widely regarded pejoratively (i.e. no matter what euphemism you come up with, it will again turn into a pejorative almost immediately).
Now this seems to be our main article on the academic research into the question of "race" in the period of say 1880 to 1930. Of course the article should spend a lot of time detailing why and how the field fell from favour, but it also needs to make clear that for 50 years the validity of the approach was considered to be more or less self-evident.
It may be best to scan the literature for terminology and try to find a better title for this article. -- dab (𒁳) 12:27, 6 July 2010 (UTC)
You may find it helpful while reading or editing articles to look at a bibliography of Intelligence Citations, posted for the use of all Wikipedians who have occasion to edit articles on human intelligence and related issues. I happen to have circulating access to a huge academic research library at a university with an active research program in these issues (and to another library that is one of the ten largest public library systems in the United States) and have been researching these issues since 1989. You are welcome to use these citations for your own research. You can help other Wikipedians by suggesting new sources through comments on that page. It will be extremely helpful for articles on human intelligence to edit them according to the Wikipedia standards for reliable sources for medicine-related articles, as it is important to get these issues as well verified as possible. -- WeijiBaikeBianji ( talk) 17:00, 4 July 2010 (UTC)
Saying outright that it is racism disguised as science doesn't seem very NPOV to me. - Disko
It is science that is maligned in this perjorative (sic) term, a point that is not made in the current stub. Wetman 03:00, 15 Jun 2004 (UTC)
I'm not 100% sure what you mean by that, Wetman. "Scientific racism" is usually meaned to imply that the work labeled as such is not really science at all, but is using a veneer of science to justify notions which are simply racist at their core, at least in my experience (as someone who has done a lot of professional work on the history of "scientific racism"). This doesn't imply that science itself is racist, which is how I'm reading your comments as is. I've tried to make the entire article a little more NPOV by trying to put it all into historical context, without commenting on whether any particular work is actually an example of "scientific racism" except where it is relatively safe, such as the racial theories of the Nazis and early 20th century eugenicists, which are pretty well established as being politics wrapped in a blanket of statistics. --
Fastfission 03:49, 15 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Perhaps what's meant here is Pseudoscientific racism. The heading "Scientific" racism is false and maligns science, by which naturally I mean genuine science. See Stephen Jay Gould, The Mismeasure of Man. Wetman 03:55, 15 Jun 2004 (UTC)
I've read the Mismeasure of Man -- what part are you talking about? (Page #s would be fine, I can look it up) "Scientific racism" is a very common term and is used to describe what you are calling "Pseudoscientific racism," which is a term I've never seen in any reputable literature (I can't remember whether it is in Gould or not to be honest, it has been a few years). "Scientific racism" as a term is used as I have used it, in my experience: to describe work which is purported to not be science at all. I've never seen it used in a way which implies that all science is racist in anything reputable -- if you have an example of that, I'd love to see it. And though it's not the end-all metric, "Pseudoscientific racism" gets 220 hits in Google, "Scientific racism" gets 6,900. If you want to add a line that says that Gould doesn't like the term "scientific racism," and explains why, that would be fine by me and would, I think, keep this article useful. -- Fastfission 04:04, 15 Jun 2004 (UTC) (also, I can't find "psuedoscientific racism" in the index of Mismeasure of Man, though I do see that Gould uses the term "scientific racists" all over the place in the book to indicate people who purport to use science to justify racism.. if there's something I'm missing here please let me know, and I don't mean to come off snotty with that)
-The opening sentence is poor phrasing. Has anyone here read their Thomas Kuhn? "Science" as a practice and institution, when done right or wrong, is something full of cultural ideas, aesthetics, and, consequently it would seem to follow, social and political ideas. It can have incorrect premises, methodology, conclusions, etc, have biases, etc, and still be science. "Scientific racism" is something, then, that envelopes both racist pseudoscience and authentic science that is bad science which purports there is meterial legitimacy to the concept of race, superior and inferior races, etc. -Tom
There is no explanation for why the skulls drawn by Samuel George Morton illustrate scientific racism. What is it about these skulls that is racist? Forensic anthropologists can tell the race of a skull in an instant, so the racism cannot be simply that the drawing compares skulls. If the skulls are mis-drawn, an accurate drawing or photograph should be presented for comparison. (Be sure that the African skull is of a Congoid as some African (Somalis, Khosians) have a Eurasian heritage.) The same can be said of the other skulls. What is it exactly about the angle the skulls are at that makes them racist? The ape skull is presented for comparison. If it is not accurate, then the discussion should point out the distortions. Samuel George Morton is a respected natural scientist. The American Philosophical Society has assembled and catalogued a complete collection of his works. By suggesting, without submitting an explanation or evidence of his error, that he has in some way mis-used science this entry does him an injustice. rdfuerle 15:57, 22 January 2007
I have a question... is this scientific racism? Is it merely "propaganda" to suggest that natural selection may have continued to occur after the races separated 40,000-100,000 years ago? I have to agree with the Disko. That opening paragraph is extremely non-NPOV. -- Big Brother 1984 20:17, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
I propose changing the first paragraph to read:
Scientific racism is a term that describes either certain scientific theories of the 19th century or historical and contemporary racist propaganda presented as scientific research. It may also refer to the notion, advanced by some relativists, that the very root of western science is fundamentally racist.[citation needed]
It makes the opening more neutral. However, some amplification would be needed to specify which theories are referred to in this way. Madgenberyl 17:23, 17 October 2007 (UTC)
I'm just commenting to add my voice to the consensus that this article is incredibly biased and inaccurate (the first sentence alone is just not true - there's nothing necessarily racist about racial anthropology). Perhaps a new article should be created about this, but if not, this needs to be rewritten by someone without an axe to grind about the subject, which is certainly how the article reads now. Wikipedia should certainly not be a forum for propaganda as this article appears to be. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.254.146.68 ( talk) 01:38, 15 November 2010 (UTC)
Do we really want/need maps suggesting Homo Sapiens existed before the Pleistocene? Dougweller ( talk) 11:35, 16 October 2010 (UTC)
The original map captions are "Pleistocene" and "Early Post-Pleistocene" (see now the image pages on commons). The "before the Pleistocene" bit was just anonymous vandalism. [2] -- dab (𒁳) 15:27, 15 November 2010 (UTC)
alright, trying to figure out proper terminology, I can trace the term "scientific racism" to 1961. It was apparently coined by anthropologist Juan Comas in Current Anthropology, albeit in scare quotes, in the essay title "'Scientific' Racism Again?" [3]
So, the term was coined during the 1960s, clearly in the context of deconstructing the early 20th century scientific approach to race as "racist" and as leading to Nazi atrocities and as rationalizing racial segregation in the USA. Of course there is no dispute that these are in fact things that this approach has been used for, but not necessarily what it had been intended for: I am saying that the "scientific approach to race" during 1880 to 1920 may well have been bona fide science. The question, can "scientific racism" be applied to the bona fide scientific part, or is it a pejorative that already presupposes ideological misuse? A promising start to finding the answer to that might be
Barkan states in the introduction that the topic of race was "transformed from a scientific fact into a political hot potato" in the interbellum period. The term racism itself was coined during the interbellum, already with negative connotations (similarly, racialism, although the OED recently unearthed an early attestation from 1902). I conclude that apparently, "scientific racism" is inherently derogatory and part of the postmodernist discourse of 1960ff.
I think that the study of race during 1880-1920 simply fell under anthropology and should be considered part of the topic of historical definitions of race.
The question is, should this article be concerned more with the historical anthropology of 1880-1920, or more with its deconstruction of 1960-1990? Obviously, both parts are relevant, reflecting two historical periods (modern vs. postmodern), but what exactly do we want as the scope of this article, and what would be the best title for it? -- dab (𒁳) 13:31, 21 July 2010 (UTC)
Here is an interesting reference suggesting that a neutral term might be racial anthropology. But note the existennce of biological anthropology. -- dab (𒁳) 13:45, 21 July 2010 (UTC)
I have tried to mould the article into a sensible toc structure. It still contains a lot of offtopic material. Especially the "ideological" parts which aren't "scientific" at all and belong under simple racism. The basic structure of the article could be
-- dab (𒁳) 14:13, 21 July 2010 (UTC)
You may find it helpful while reading or editing articles to look at a bibliography of Anthropology and Human Biology Citations, posted for the use of all Wikipedians who have occasion to edit articles on human genetics and related issues. I happen to have circulating access to a huge academic research library system at a university with an active research program in these issues (and to other academic libraries in the same large metropolitan area) and have been researching these issues sporadically since 1989. You are welcome to use these citations for your own research. You can help other Wikipedians by suggesting new sources through comments on that page. It will be extremely helpful for articles on human genetics to edit them according to the Wikipedia standards for reliable sources for medicine-related articles, as it is important to get these issues as well verified as possible. -- WeijiBaikeBianji ( talk, how I edit) 04:02, 15 November 2010 (UTC)
I'm not particularly happy with 'raciology'. Although it is used in scholarly sources, it isn't in my (very big) Oxford dictionary, and I'm not clear how it differs from 'racial anthropology' - the sources I've seen use both, but not as synonyms so far as I can tell. Dougweller ( talk) 07:45, 25 November 2010 (UTC)
In my opinion, "raciology" is a marginal pseudo-academic term with no real currency. Yes it exists and it can be mentioned, but certainly not prominently in the lead. -- dab (𒁳) 22:01, 25 November 2010 (UTC)
Fortunately we have an alternative which has the same meaning but more accurately describes the discipline while avoiding c[onfusion. I don't see how it can be considered pseudo-academic when prominent scholars such as William Shockley have used it to describe their work and it clearly has currency when a multitude scholars have used the term to describe similar work. In fact I did a search on Google and found a review of Vincent Sarich's book Race: The Reality of Human Differences, published in Nature in which Robert N. Proctor refers to J Philippe Rushton and Arthur Jensen as "raciologists." How's that for currency? EgalitarianJay ( talk) 17:06, 26 November 2010 (UTC)
um, you misunderstand completely. "Scientific racism" was a term the study of the physical characteristics of humans to be used in an objective way, not in racial or political charged ways. That's how it is different from "political racism". "Scientific racism" will say that there are such and such races in existence, but it will not derive any politics from that, or it will cease to be "scientific".
As has become clear in the discussion above, "scientific racism" is simply a propaganda term coined to disparage historical physical anthropology. Now it is certainly true that historical physical anthropology had its flaws, but that is no excuse to discussing it under a pejorative title. If there is to remain an article on "scientific racism", it will have to focus on the term exclusively. In this sense, yes, "Scientific Racism" is pejorative. It is a pejorative term for Physical Anthropology. The problem here is that the pejorative term is being used in Wikipedia's voice.
Apparently, the term "race" has been discredited so thoroughly that you are unable to hear it and assume that it refers to some scientific concept. But at the end of the day, this is just terminology. The people writing before 1920 used "race" in the same sense you would use "ethnicity" today. It is very easy to bash historical literature because it uses terms that have changed their meaning since it was written. The same goes for "gay" and other words that started out as normal unmarked terms and became charged in the 20th century. Ha-di-ha, "nothing more gay or sprightly than [the poems] of sir John Suckling" ( wikt:gay), written 1810. How gay. If you think that everyone using "race" in historical literature is a "racist" you are making the same silly mistake. -- dab (𒁳) 11:49, 11 July 2011 (UTC)
The difference being, Race and Genetics IS a science. Physical anthropology is now BIOLOGICAL anthropology, courtesy of genetic fragments that are recoverable from remains found on digs, rather than purely based upon physical appearance of the specimen, which in early days, a jutting jaw, large occipital bone and brow ridges were "evidence of lower intelligence" than Homo Sapiens, utterly ignoring brain size and frontal lobe size, which are FAR more indicative of intelligence. One fine example of race and genetics being of import is with some drugs and foods. Consider Chloroquine in both African descended and Mediterranean peoples, the latter, largely being considered Caucasian, yet both have potentially lethal issues with the drug. Consider how many of European descent can eat fava beans, but ONE Caucasian group will be hospitalized, due to favism, a genetic mutation in that sub-group causing the body to be unable to break down one protein and cause the red blood cells to break down. According to Racial Science, such things should be untrue. As ALL MODERN, evidence based science refutes every claim of racial science, the article is substantially correct, those in favor of the pseudo-science are proved incorrect in their assumptions, by SCIENTIFIC FACTS that were peer reviewed. Wzrd1 ( talk) 03:45, 13 August 2011 (UTC)
An RfC: Which descriptor, if any, can be added in front of Southern Poverty Law Center when referenced in other articles? has been posted at the Southern Poverty Law Center talk page. Your participation is welcomed. – MrX 17:16, 22 September 2012 (UTC)
Do not the existence (or nonexistence) or racial differences, and the scientific evidence for them (or lack thereof) belong simply under Race? If not, why not?
Paul Magnussen ( talk) 22:12, 22 August 2013 (UTC)
"The apparent disagreement among taxonomists can be almost completely resolved by applying the term race at three different levels according to the purpose of the investigator. The first level describes the largest unit observed and is termed a geographical race; it corresponds with the races recognized by Blumenbach and Boyd. There are no more than ten geographical races (Garn, 1961) at the present time. Each race comprises a collection of populations within geographical limits bounded by formerly insurmountable barriers to outbreeding, such a deserts, oceans and mountains. Each shares a degree of homogeneity for blood-group genes and some morphological features, but still retains a considerable degree of heterogeneity for various characteristics. Some examples of geographical races are the Amerindians ranging from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego, with very low incidences of the genes for Type B blood and Rh-negative blood, and the African geographical race which occupies sub-Sahara Africa and which is characterized by extremely high frequency of the rhesus group gene R0 and the sickling gene associated with a type of anemia (Mourant, 1954). The presence of blood-group genes is easily inferred from chemical tests that clot samples of blood.
A second level of usage of the term race is local race. This term is necessitated by the fact that subordinate to a geographical race are the different breeding populations themselves, the groups which anthropologists and geneticists study when they speak of samples of Navajos, Bantu, or Eskimos. Local races may be separated by physical or social obstacles, they mate chiefly within the group (endogamy), and they are most like their nearest neighbors in gene frequencies. They number in the hundreds as contrasted with the six to ten geographical races, even though only thirty-four are singled out in Figure 1.1 as representative of the utility of the concept.
Even when looking at the genetic characteristics of a local race, one can observe significant pockets of variation. The populations are statistically distinct from neighboring pockets in some gene frequencies in the absence of geographical barriers or extensive cultural prohibitions. With high population density, mating tends to occur as a function of distance. Future geneticists may have to take note of the routes of buses and subway systems to understand their data. This phenomenon gives rise to our final level for the race concept, which is termed micro-geographical race or micro-race to avoid confusion with the first level above. An example of micro races, which number in the thousands, is provided by a survey of blood types for the ABO blood groups in Wales (Mourant and Watkins,1952). As illustrated in Figure 1.2, there were significant local variations in the gene frequencies even though Wales is a small country. […]
References
Garn, S.M. Human Races (C.C. Thomas, 1961)
Mourant A.R. The Distribution of the Human Blood Groupings (Blackwell, 1954)
Mourant and Watkins Blood groups, anthropology, and language in Wales and the western counties (Heredity,1952, 6, 13–36)"
In the United States, it seems that scientific racism was really most respectable and broadly accepted during the first half of the 1920's, when a lot of factors (the publication of the results of the Yerkes army tests, the rise of the second KKK, the Palmer raid or red scare, discussions leading to the new restrictive immigration laws of 1924, etc.) coincided. 1920s advocates of scientific racism tended to feel that they had hard numerical proof for their claims (as opposed to the mostly anecdotal speculations and small-scale experiments of earlier periods). AnonMoos ( talk) 09:41, 9 November 2011 (UTC)
If I understand this article correctly, what is defined under the name Scientific racism is actually pseudoscientific racism. What, then, is the correct term for properly conducted scientific research that shows differences between races? As, for example, differential proneness to sickle-cell anæmia and other medical conditions? Paul Magnussen ( talk) 19:32, 2 October 2012 (UTC)
Reference 1 in the first paragraph is not to an authoritative definition of scientific racism, as it should be; it's to an assertion by Kuper et al. that the "science" cited was not, in fact, properly conducted. That isn't the same thing. Paul Magnussen ( talk) 19:44, 2 October 2012 (UTC)
Since, according to the assertions in the article, the racism concerned is not in fact scientific, shouldn't the title be 'Scientific racism' (with the quotes)? Paul Magnussen ( talk) 20:51, 3 October 2012 (UTC)
the article is inherently broken because of problems with terminology. Since "racism" is today a bad word, people will continue to assume that anything called 'racism' in the past must automatically classify as evil. This creates a lot of moral outrage and people will go out of their way to emphasize just how wrong racial discrimination is. Ignoring that this article isn't about racial discrimination in the first place. It is simply about the history of what would now be described as human genetic variation, avoiding the r word. The upshot is that perfectly innocent and perfectly valid observations about the variations in human populations as they developed over the past 40k years is branded "pseudoscientific" just because they were made 100 years ago and did use the word race, not knowing that just the use of that term would turn people off a few generations later.
I have little hope that this article can ever be fixed and become an objective treatment both of the field, of its terminology, and its various historical misuses, because there will always be drive-by editors who see the word "racism" and go into moral berserk mode just to show "they are not racist". Some time it would help to stop and thing about semantics and knee-jerk reactions. -- dab (𒁳) 10:18, 20 January 2013 (UTC)
This article is nothing but race-baiting politically-incorrect POV. Wikipedia has officially jumped the shark. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.12.183.6 ( talk) 15:08, 22 February 2014 (UTC)
I was just reading the article and realized that there are inaccuracy in the section "Origins of scientific racism", especially when listing Robert Boyle and Carl Linnaeus. Racism is always a controversial topic, thus we should be both sensitive and sensible. Describing physical differences and aspects of physical appearance is not racism if you never talk about "superiority" or "inferiority". The article should only include those hypotheses that have been used to "support or justify the belief in racism: [the idea of] racial inferiority, or racial superiority", but it should not include those hypothesis and people who merely described physical appearance by naturalistic reasons. It's imprecise, unethical and inaccurate to include in a list of scientific racists' views, the names and photos of those who never talked about "superiority" or "inferiority" among human beings, because it makes them seem as if they had been racists. If you have a quote of THEM talking about "superiority" or "inferiority", then include it, and I'll shut up, but if not, please stop dirtying the names of these men and their reputation with scandals, please, out of respect to their memory. -- Goose friend ( talk) 22:36, 26 February 2013 (UTC)
…fails as a properly formatted, referenced, and integrated sentence in an encyclopedic article. It is placed here so its content, if important, can be sourced, better expressed, and properly placed (rather than appearing as a quick fly-by addition). Note, the reference to URLs and Wiki content in this way is also a clear WP sourcing policy issue; needed is a proper historical reference.
Note, this article does deserve a couple of well-sourced, POV-neutral sentences on Louis Agassiz, who is accused of racism based on his polygenic beliefs, see here [8]. The content there, and the Blowers citation in particular, can be relied on to present the opposing argument. I have no strong opinion on this matter, other than that the way in which it is addressed should be encyclopedic in style, and reflect preponderant views of historians (rather than focus on news story content), with those sources clearly and correctly stated, and that the result should be POV neutral. Le Prof Leprof 7272 ( talk) 18:59, 8 June 2014 (UTC)
So its not pejorative if applied to old theories? KevinFrom ( talk) 07:18, 23 July 2014 (UTC)
The Antecedents section should be Deleted!
I have never seen a Wiki Article Structured in such a Way before:
Antecedents 1.1 Classical thinkers 1.2 Enlightenment thinkers 1.3 Monogenism and polygenism 1.4 Voltaire 1.5 Lord Kames 1.6 Carl Linnaeus 1.7 Immanuel Kant 1.8 John Hunter 1.9 Charles White 1.10 Blumenbach and Buffon 1.11 John Mitchell 1.12 Benjamin Rush 1.13 Christoph Meiners 1.14 Samuel Stanhope Smith 1.15 Georges Cuvier 1.16 G.W.F. Hegel 1.17 Arthur Schopenhauer 1.18 Franz Ignaz Pruner
You're basically giving Creditably to Scientific Racism using Famous Name of the Past, which I'm pretty sure is the goal of the Editor who added it in such a way.
That Section is down right shameful. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.135.17.66 ( talk) 02:26, 7 December 2014 (UTC)
I (Mark v1.0) added a link to the German Wikipedia article of Ludwig Ferdinand Clauss, that showed up as (de). A minor edit that a reader fluent in German would be happy to have to click on. I don't think it should be reverted.
The second minor edit (that was reverted) was adding the title of doctor to Josef Mengele, which he was. It was doctors who started and carried out the Nazi final solution. I started a Wikipedia article on the subject called Nazi doctors. "Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it".-- Mark v1.0 ( talk) 22:17, 10 December 2014 (UTC)
Blacks have a disproportionately high representation in the National Baskbetball league, and in prisons of all mixed race countries, and there is a scientific explanation for it, somewhere.
The questions are about everything else, i.e. who is brave and foolish enough to publish theories and risk their careers, enraging a class of people predisposed to violence and contradict political dogma as given to us by the one world government.
And honest Wikipedia articles mentions all the reasons why a fair and balanced article on this topic will never be allowed for a long list of reasons, and the best that a vulnerable-to-the-will-of-the-retarded-and-centrally-indoctrinated-and-controlled-majority will be able to produce is something that looks just like this. Long on condemnation and moralizing, and short on actual scientific data that shows relevant and reliably measurable differences between (primarily) the black and white race, with supporting and corroborating data comparing black to asian races. Jonny Quick ( talk) 06:02, 30 June 2014 (UTC)
"Truly scientific"? Anyway, this is becoming WP:FORUM. Please discuss the article itself, not the topic. EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{ re}} 23:10, 23 August 2014 (UTC)
P.S. For athletic factors mentioned in User:Jonny_Quick's original message, we have article Race and sports... -- AnonMoos ( talk) 04:16, 17 August 2014 (UTC)
Reference? If none, then the above needs to be deleted. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.79.143.139 ( talk) 02:24, 17 May 2015 (UTC)
Not one word on the political pressure on the hereditarian viewpoint. Very biased article. NICK BOWMANwiki ( talk) 20:23, 27 December 2014 (UTC)
No, he means it today. Political pressure and economic persecution for everybody who disagrees. People are losing their jobs and careers. It should be mentioned in an article that pretends to be balanced and objective. It's certainly not. KevinFrom ( talk) 08:00, 7 June 2015 (UTC)
Is there any source for the broad claim that "Scientific racism was common during the New Imperialism period (c. 1880s – 1914) where it was used in justifying White European imperialism"? Since both China and Japan also thought they were racially superior to other counties, the claim - if substantiated - should not be limited to "White European imperialism". Royalcourtier ( talk) 07:30, 8 April 2015 (UTC)
Not currently mentioned by the article but seems worth mentioning that both the EB 9 and 11's articles on "Anthropology" (both written by E.B. Tylor) have a kind of neurotic "science" to them whereby race is taken for granted even as it's admitted that the science to date has been sloppy and question-begging and racial mixing practiced on such as a scale as to render proper treatment impossible pending decades of further research:
— LlywelynII 18:26, 29 July 2015 (UTC)
Link between Scientific Racism and Highland clearances not cited. If no proof/sources given then it should be removed 82.35.211.203 ( talk) 19:57, 15 September 2015 (UTC)
I am sure that if 13th century Europeans had Wikipedia they would create pages such as "scientific heresy" or that sort. But I wouldn't blame them because at least they had the excuse of ignorance towards the value of the scientific method and what it has done for humanity. This pesky,racist thing we call "science"(if you didn't know) is what humanity uses to discern truth from lies,if this happens to bulldoze your doctrine then maybe you should consider that the doctrine is wrong and not "science". Skyb0x ( talk) 14:35, 31 October 2015 (UTC)
Would it make sense to modify the lead as follows (additions in bold):
"Pejorative term" reference is made lower down in the lead, but it may make sense to bring it up higher so that it's clear early on that the article is not supporting 'scientific racism.' -- K.e.coffman ( talk) 23:58, 25 November 2015 (UTC)
@ Maunus, EvergreenFir, and Volunteer Marek: - you're the last active editors to edit this so pinging you. The article states that ". In its 1950 The Race Question, UNESCO did not reject the idea of a biological basis to racial categories,[110] but instead defined a race as: "A race, from the biological standpoint, may therefore be defined as one of the group of populations constituting the species Homo sapiens", which were broadly defined as the Caucasian, Mongoloid,Negroid races but stated that" etc. It's a raw url so it isn't clear what page it comes from but my point is that it does not call these races, it calls them "divisions". The source actually says:
"Now what has the scientist to say about the groups of mankind which may be recognized at the present time? Human races can be and have heen differently classified by different anthropologists, but at the present time most anthropologists agree on classifying the greater part of present-day mankind into three major divisions, as follows :
The Mongoloid Division
The Negroid Division
The Caucasoid Division
The biological processes which the classifier has here embalmed, as it were, are dynamic, not static. These divisions were not the same in the past as they are at present, and there is every reason to believe that they will change in the future."
So this has been completely misrepresented. This can be fixed, but how much do we want to include of this 66 year old statement? Doug Weller talk 08:26, 22 April 2016 (UTC)
Are your sure "racial biology" should lead here? -- YOMAL SIDOROFF-BIARMSKII ( talk) 06:17, 28 July 2016 (UTC)
The current definition is pointlessly bloated, and contradicts the article title.
Scientific racism is the use of ostensibly scientific or pseudo-scientific techniques and hypotheses to support or justify the belief in racism, racial inferiority, racialism, or racial superiority;
Alternatively, it is the practice of classifying individuals of different phenotypes into discrete races. This practice is now generally considered pseudo-scientific, yet historically it received much credence in the scientific community.
This second clause is not an alternative definition; it is the exact same definition. It directly restates the sentiment of the first. The use of a pseudo-scientific technique to separate individuals into discrete races.
This entire sentence could be reduced to:
The use of pseudoscience to justify racism.
The current definition in tandem with the double-think title of this article implicitly suggests, without reference, that all racism is pseudo-scientific. The title of this article needs to be changed to Pseudo-scientific Racism since that is what it is about. Fawby ( talk) 20:41, 12 July 2016 (UTC)
"scientific racism" is indeed a term that has been used since the 1940s, and it can be used meaningfully, but always as a pejorative, there is no objective definition. It is a purely political term. As becomes evident if you google its historical usage since the 1960s. But this article has completely dropped the ball by discussing the history of the concept of race back to Voltaire, which is obviously completely irrelevant to the term "scientific racism" in particular. As it stands, it is simply a WP:CFORK of the "race" article. An ad-hoc change of the title to something like "pseudo-scientific racism" would not help at all, you just made this term up on the fly. It will not fix the article, because only rewriting the article, not re-titling it, will be helpful. -- dab (𒁳) 16:19, 22 July 2016 (UTC)
If someone would like to include him here i think that'd be helpful! Alfredo Niceforo — Preceding unsigned comment added by Paolorausch ( talk • contribs) 05:43, 25 August 2016 (UTC)
A literal reading of the title of this page would suggest that racism can be scientifically justified when nothing could be further from fact.
The name was used as a label but does not hold in our present day and age.
So how about renaming the page to pseudoscientific racism and have a redirect lead here? -- JamesPoulson ( talk) 15:56, 3 September 2016 (UTC)
critical whiteness studies and white privilege theory are nothing else, but a modern form of scientific racism 12:50, 26 September 2016 (UTC) 46.5.184.105 ( talk) 12:50, 26 September 2016 (UTC)
See Human Races Exist: Refuting 11 Common Arguments Against the Existence of Race.
It would not be a reliable source but there are references at the bottom of this blog article that someone could look into. -- JamesPoulson ( talk) 20:00, 10 September 2016 (UTC)
This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 | Archive 2 | Archive 3 | Archive 4 | Archive 5 |
Linnaeus' Homo ferus doesn't really belong here. It (and Homo anthropomorpha) don't refer to any real group of people; anthropomorpha didn't exist at all, it was just an idiosyncratic idea of Linnaeus's about ape-like creatures inspiring certain myths, and ferus was Linnaeus' mis-interpretation of feral children (since they walked quadrupedally and couldn't speak) as a separate species. Both were thought of as totally different species nevertheless related to humanity more closely than to apes; but they don't fall into a "racism" category at all. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Vultur ( talk • contribs) 05:47, 14 July 2009 (UTC)
I've removed Francis Galton’s 1870 Hereditary Genius: An Inquiry into Its Laws and Consequences from the overview's "other scientific racist works that largely influenced Nazism" as the cited reference (Tucker 1994) doesn't appear to have a title, and Tucker 2002 appears to make no mention of that work by Galton. It precedes his coining of the term eugenics. While it's clearly about ideas of good breeding, it's about scientific snobbery rather than racism and it's very questionable if it can be included as a "scientific racist work". The transition from that work to eugenics to the racist eugenics of the United States and thence to the Nazis is complex, and the current overview appears over-focussed on the Nazis, thus missing the point of the pre-eugenics tradition of scientific racism, in particular the racist anthropology of the American school from the 1850s onwards. Something to sort. . dave souza, talk 18:07, 9 September 2009 (UTC)
The human race, via races (within itself as a whole race), was on the path of diversity through allopatric speciation; has any scientific racism source made the argument that race mixing destroys the change which allopatric speciation brings on since separate geographically distinct types were the initial steps in allopatric speciation.? 4.242.174.238 ( talk) 09:21, 25 October 2009 (UTC)
Sorry, the caption for the picture on the page made me laugh. Those are depictions of the SUPPOSED physical differences between the various races? So it might not be true that blacks look like that? lmao. 216.185.250.92 ( talk) 06:02, 4 January 2010 (UTC)
On what basis would you exclude the graph depicting the gap in intelligence of the major races? This is one of, if not the, predominant driving forces behind acknowledgment of differences in the potential of racial populations for modern-day "scientific racists". It represents the scientifically racist worldview in a more current, not to mention scientific, fashion than a cartoon from 1899 with no scientific data available. This article needs to have more relevance with the current era, rather than dismissing so many philosophers and intellectuals of by-gone eras as if racism -- and racial differences -- are no longer an issue in society.
If the scope of this article is so limited as to render it completely biased, you will need to further define what "scientific racism" is -- i.e. who coined the term, and why it's relevant enough to have its own utterly biased article -- in order to provide a rationale for including what appears to be propaganda. [-- 17:23, 10 June 2010 User:Tyrtamus
some people, actually some vocal contributors to this article, appear to think that "racism" automatically equals "racial supremacism". Hence the train of thought "racism, zomg, racial supremacism, anti-semitism, eugenics, nazis". This is completely beside the point. A detached analysis of the topic will reveal, I am sure, that there are two uses of "scientific racism", one used neutrally of a historical field of scholarly study, and the other a pejorative used in postmodernist criticisms of racism. The dividing line between the mainstream academic field and the postmodernist bickering lies, not coincidentially, in the WWII period. Of course it is not possible today to speak of "racism" free of any negative implications. But it must be possible, in an encyclopedia, to discuss neutrally a historical field of scholarship.
Yes, this article should discuss the pitfalls of racial supremacism and eugenics inherent in scientific racism, but these are strictly marginal topics and they should not be allowed to dominate any significant portion of the article. In the very definition of the term, this article used, in Wikipedia's voice, the reference
I mean, are we writing articles from the point of view of "black feminism" now? You might as well use quotes from Joseph McCarthy to "define" the subject matter at Communism. These are opinions, and they may be referenced, but please under a section "postmodernist criticism" and nowhere near the lead or introductory parts of the article. -- dab (𒁳) 10:59, 29 June 2010 (UTC)
The lead conflated scientific racism, plain "racism", and racial supremacism completely and without remorse.
For example, the claim of an "official debunking of scientific racism" by the UN is "substantiated" by a quote on "the myth of 'race'". I ask you, is it possible for the UN to "debunk" a scholarly hypothesis, and (b) is the quote on "the myth on 'race'" more likely to refer to racial supremacism or to scholarly attempts to group human populations? --
dab
(𒁳) 11:09, 29 June 2010 (UTC)
you are right, it is now mostly a pejorative. This is mostly because the topic itself has become untouchable, and it is more or less impossible to find a non-pejorative term for something that is widely regarded pejoratively (i.e. no matter what euphemism you come up with, it will again turn into a pejorative almost immediately).
Now this seems to be our main article on the academic research into the question of "race" in the period of say 1880 to 1930. Of course the article should spend a lot of time detailing why and how the field fell from favour, but it also needs to make clear that for 50 years the validity of the approach was considered to be more or less self-evident.
It may be best to scan the literature for terminology and try to find a better title for this article. -- dab (𒁳) 12:27, 6 July 2010 (UTC)
You may find it helpful while reading or editing articles to look at a bibliography of Intelligence Citations, posted for the use of all Wikipedians who have occasion to edit articles on human intelligence and related issues. I happen to have circulating access to a huge academic research library at a university with an active research program in these issues (and to another library that is one of the ten largest public library systems in the United States) and have been researching these issues since 1989. You are welcome to use these citations for your own research. You can help other Wikipedians by suggesting new sources through comments on that page. It will be extremely helpful for articles on human intelligence to edit them according to the Wikipedia standards for reliable sources for medicine-related articles, as it is important to get these issues as well verified as possible. -- WeijiBaikeBianji ( talk) 17:00, 4 July 2010 (UTC)
Saying outright that it is racism disguised as science doesn't seem very NPOV to me. - Disko
It is science that is maligned in this perjorative (sic) term, a point that is not made in the current stub. Wetman 03:00, 15 Jun 2004 (UTC)
I'm not 100% sure what you mean by that, Wetman. "Scientific racism" is usually meaned to imply that the work labeled as such is not really science at all, but is using a veneer of science to justify notions which are simply racist at their core, at least in my experience (as someone who has done a lot of professional work on the history of "scientific racism"). This doesn't imply that science itself is racist, which is how I'm reading your comments as is. I've tried to make the entire article a little more NPOV by trying to put it all into historical context, without commenting on whether any particular work is actually an example of "scientific racism" except where it is relatively safe, such as the racial theories of the Nazis and early 20th century eugenicists, which are pretty well established as being politics wrapped in a blanket of statistics. --
Fastfission 03:49, 15 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Perhaps what's meant here is Pseudoscientific racism. The heading "Scientific" racism is false and maligns science, by which naturally I mean genuine science. See Stephen Jay Gould, The Mismeasure of Man. Wetman 03:55, 15 Jun 2004 (UTC)
I've read the Mismeasure of Man -- what part are you talking about? (Page #s would be fine, I can look it up) "Scientific racism" is a very common term and is used to describe what you are calling "Pseudoscientific racism," which is a term I've never seen in any reputable literature (I can't remember whether it is in Gould or not to be honest, it has been a few years). "Scientific racism" as a term is used as I have used it, in my experience: to describe work which is purported to not be science at all. I've never seen it used in a way which implies that all science is racist in anything reputable -- if you have an example of that, I'd love to see it. And though it's not the end-all metric, "Pseudoscientific racism" gets 220 hits in Google, "Scientific racism" gets 6,900. If you want to add a line that says that Gould doesn't like the term "scientific racism," and explains why, that would be fine by me and would, I think, keep this article useful. -- Fastfission 04:04, 15 Jun 2004 (UTC) (also, I can't find "psuedoscientific racism" in the index of Mismeasure of Man, though I do see that Gould uses the term "scientific racists" all over the place in the book to indicate people who purport to use science to justify racism.. if there's something I'm missing here please let me know, and I don't mean to come off snotty with that)
-The opening sentence is poor phrasing. Has anyone here read their Thomas Kuhn? "Science" as a practice and institution, when done right or wrong, is something full of cultural ideas, aesthetics, and, consequently it would seem to follow, social and political ideas. It can have incorrect premises, methodology, conclusions, etc, have biases, etc, and still be science. "Scientific racism" is something, then, that envelopes both racist pseudoscience and authentic science that is bad science which purports there is meterial legitimacy to the concept of race, superior and inferior races, etc. -Tom
There is no explanation for why the skulls drawn by Samuel George Morton illustrate scientific racism. What is it about these skulls that is racist? Forensic anthropologists can tell the race of a skull in an instant, so the racism cannot be simply that the drawing compares skulls. If the skulls are mis-drawn, an accurate drawing or photograph should be presented for comparison. (Be sure that the African skull is of a Congoid as some African (Somalis, Khosians) have a Eurasian heritage.) The same can be said of the other skulls. What is it exactly about the angle the skulls are at that makes them racist? The ape skull is presented for comparison. If it is not accurate, then the discussion should point out the distortions. Samuel George Morton is a respected natural scientist. The American Philosophical Society has assembled and catalogued a complete collection of his works. By suggesting, without submitting an explanation or evidence of his error, that he has in some way mis-used science this entry does him an injustice. rdfuerle 15:57, 22 January 2007
I have a question... is this scientific racism? Is it merely "propaganda" to suggest that natural selection may have continued to occur after the races separated 40,000-100,000 years ago? I have to agree with the Disko. That opening paragraph is extremely non-NPOV. -- Big Brother 1984 20:17, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
I propose changing the first paragraph to read:
Scientific racism is a term that describes either certain scientific theories of the 19th century or historical and contemporary racist propaganda presented as scientific research. It may also refer to the notion, advanced by some relativists, that the very root of western science is fundamentally racist.[citation needed]
It makes the opening more neutral. However, some amplification would be needed to specify which theories are referred to in this way. Madgenberyl 17:23, 17 October 2007 (UTC)
I'm just commenting to add my voice to the consensus that this article is incredibly biased and inaccurate (the first sentence alone is just not true - there's nothing necessarily racist about racial anthropology). Perhaps a new article should be created about this, but if not, this needs to be rewritten by someone without an axe to grind about the subject, which is certainly how the article reads now. Wikipedia should certainly not be a forum for propaganda as this article appears to be. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.254.146.68 ( talk) 01:38, 15 November 2010 (UTC)
Do we really want/need maps suggesting Homo Sapiens existed before the Pleistocene? Dougweller ( talk) 11:35, 16 October 2010 (UTC)
The original map captions are "Pleistocene" and "Early Post-Pleistocene" (see now the image pages on commons). The "before the Pleistocene" bit was just anonymous vandalism. [2] -- dab (𒁳) 15:27, 15 November 2010 (UTC)
alright, trying to figure out proper terminology, I can trace the term "scientific racism" to 1961. It was apparently coined by anthropologist Juan Comas in Current Anthropology, albeit in scare quotes, in the essay title "'Scientific' Racism Again?" [3]
So, the term was coined during the 1960s, clearly in the context of deconstructing the early 20th century scientific approach to race as "racist" and as leading to Nazi atrocities and as rationalizing racial segregation in the USA. Of course there is no dispute that these are in fact things that this approach has been used for, but not necessarily what it had been intended for: I am saying that the "scientific approach to race" during 1880 to 1920 may well have been bona fide science. The question, can "scientific racism" be applied to the bona fide scientific part, or is it a pejorative that already presupposes ideological misuse? A promising start to finding the answer to that might be
Barkan states in the introduction that the topic of race was "transformed from a scientific fact into a political hot potato" in the interbellum period. The term racism itself was coined during the interbellum, already with negative connotations (similarly, racialism, although the OED recently unearthed an early attestation from 1902). I conclude that apparently, "scientific racism" is inherently derogatory and part of the postmodernist discourse of 1960ff.
I think that the study of race during 1880-1920 simply fell under anthropology and should be considered part of the topic of historical definitions of race.
The question is, should this article be concerned more with the historical anthropology of 1880-1920, or more with its deconstruction of 1960-1990? Obviously, both parts are relevant, reflecting two historical periods (modern vs. postmodern), but what exactly do we want as the scope of this article, and what would be the best title for it? -- dab (𒁳) 13:31, 21 July 2010 (UTC)
Here is an interesting reference suggesting that a neutral term might be racial anthropology. But note the existennce of biological anthropology. -- dab (𒁳) 13:45, 21 July 2010 (UTC)
I have tried to mould the article into a sensible toc structure. It still contains a lot of offtopic material. Especially the "ideological" parts which aren't "scientific" at all and belong under simple racism. The basic structure of the article could be
-- dab (𒁳) 14:13, 21 July 2010 (UTC)
You may find it helpful while reading or editing articles to look at a bibliography of Anthropology and Human Biology Citations, posted for the use of all Wikipedians who have occasion to edit articles on human genetics and related issues. I happen to have circulating access to a huge academic research library system at a university with an active research program in these issues (and to other academic libraries in the same large metropolitan area) and have been researching these issues sporadically since 1989. You are welcome to use these citations for your own research. You can help other Wikipedians by suggesting new sources through comments on that page. It will be extremely helpful for articles on human genetics to edit them according to the Wikipedia standards for reliable sources for medicine-related articles, as it is important to get these issues as well verified as possible. -- WeijiBaikeBianji ( talk, how I edit) 04:02, 15 November 2010 (UTC)
I'm not particularly happy with 'raciology'. Although it is used in scholarly sources, it isn't in my (very big) Oxford dictionary, and I'm not clear how it differs from 'racial anthropology' - the sources I've seen use both, but not as synonyms so far as I can tell. Dougweller ( talk) 07:45, 25 November 2010 (UTC)
In my opinion, "raciology" is a marginal pseudo-academic term with no real currency. Yes it exists and it can be mentioned, but certainly not prominently in the lead. -- dab (𒁳) 22:01, 25 November 2010 (UTC)
Fortunately we have an alternative which has the same meaning but more accurately describes the discipline while avoiding c[onfusion. I don't see how it can be considered pseudo-academic when prominent scholars such as William Shockley have used it to describe their work and it clearly has currency when a multitude scholars have used the term to describe similar work. In fact I did a search on Google and found a review of Vincent Sarich's book Race: The Reality of Human Differences, published in Nature in which Robert N. Proctor refers to J Philippe Rushton and Arthur Jensen as "raciologists." How's that for currency? EgalitarianJay ( talk) 17:06, 26 November 2010 (UTC)
um, you misunderstand completely. "Scientific racism" was a term the study of the physical characteristics of humans to be used in an objective way, not in racial or political charged ways. That's how it is different from "political racism". "Scientific racism" will say that there are such and such races in existence, but it will not derive any politics from that, or it will cease to be "scientific".
As has become clear in the discussion above, "scientific racism" is simply a propaganda term coined to disparage historical physical anthropology. Now it is certainly true that historical physical anthropology had its flaws, but that is no excuse to discussing it under a pejorative title. If there is to remain an article on "scientific racism", it will have to focus on the term exclusively. In this sense, yes, "Scientific Racism" is pejorative. It is a pejorative term for Physical Anthropology. The problem here is that the pejorative term is being used in Wikipedia's voice.
Apparently, the term "race" has been discredited so thoroughly that you are unable to hear it and assume that it refers to some scientific concept. But at the end of the day, this is just terminology. The people writing before 1920 used "race" in the same sense you would use "ethnicity" today. It is very easy to bash historical literature because it uses terms that have changed their meaning since it was written. The same goes for "gay" and other words that started out as normal unmarked terms and became charged in the 20th century. Ha-di-ha, "nothing more gay or sprightly than [the poems] of sir John Suckling" ( wikt:gay), written 1810. How gay. If you think that everyone using "race" in historical literature is a "racist" you are making the same silly mistake. -- dab (𒁳) 11:49, 11 July 2011 (UTC)
The difference being, Race and Genetics IS a science. Physical anthropology is now BIOLOGICAL anthropology, courtesy of genetic fragments that are recoverable from remains found on digs, rather than purely based upon physical appearance of the specimen, which in early days, a jutting jaw, large occipital bone and brow ridges were "evidence of lower intelligence" than Homo Sapiens, utterly ignoring brain size and frontal lobe size, which are FAR more indicative of intelligence. One fine example of race and genetics being of import is with some drugs and foods. Consider Chloroquine in both African descended and Mediterranean peoples, the latter, largely being considered Caucasian, yet both have potentially lethal issues with the drug. Consider how many of European descent can eat fava beans, but ONE Caucasian group will be hospitalized, due to favism, a genetic mutation in that sub-group causing the body to be unable to break down one protein and cause the red blood cells to break down. According to Racial Science, such things should be untrue. As ALL MODERN, evidence based science refutes every claim of racial science, the article is substantially correct, those in favor of the pseudo-science are proved incorrect in their assumptions, by SCIENTIFIC FACTS that were peer reviewed. Wzrd1 ( talk) 03:45, 13 August 2011 (UTC)
An RfC: Which descriptor, if any, can be added in front of Southern Poverty Law Center when referenced in other articles? has been posted at the Southern Poverty Law Center talk page. Your participation is welcomed. – MrX 17:16, 22 September 2012 (UTC)
Do not the existence (or nonexistence) or racial differences, and the scientific evidence for them (or lack thereof) belong simply under Race? If not, why not?
Paul Magnussen ( talk) 22:12, 22 August 2013 (UTC)
"The apparent disagreement among taxonomists can be almost completely resolved by applying the term race at three different levels according to the purpose of the investigator. The first level describes the largest unit observed and is termed a geographical race; it corresponds with the races recognized by Blumenbach and Boyd. There are no more than ten geographical races (Garn, 1961) at the present time. Each race comprises a collection of populations within geographical limits bounded by formerly insurmountable barriers to outbreeding, such a deserts, oceans and mountains. Each shares a degree of homogeneity for blood-group genes and some morphological features, but still retains a considerable degree of heterogeneity for various characteristics. Some examples of geographical races are the Amerindians ranging from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego, with very low incidences of the genes for Type B blood and Rh-negative blood, and the African geographical race which occupies sub-Sahara Africa and which is characterized by extremely high frequency of the rhesus group gene R0 and the sickling gene associated with a type of anemia (Mourant, 1954). The presence of blood-group genes is easily inferred from chemical tests that clot samples of blood.
A second level of usage of the term race is local race. This term is necessitated by the fact that subordinate to a geographical race are the different breeding populations themselves, the groups which anthropologists and geneticists study when they speak of samples of Navajos, Bantu, or Eskimos. Local races may be separated by physical or social obstacles, they mate chiefly within the group (endogamy), and they are most like their nearest neighbors in gene frequencies. They number in the hundreds as contrasted with the six to ten geographical races, even though only thirty-four are singled out in Figure 1.1 as representative of the utility of the concept.
Even when looking at the genetic characteristics of a local race, one can observe significant pockets of variation. The populations are statistically distinct from neighboring pockets in some gene frequencies in the absence of geographical barriers or extensive cultural prohibitions. With high population density, mating tends to occur as a function of distance. Future geneticists may have to take note of the routes of buses and subway systems to understand their data. This phenomenon gives rise to our final level for the race concept, which is termed micro-geographical race or micro-race to avoid confusion with the first level above. An example of micro races, which number in the thousands, is provided by a survey of blood types for the ABO blood groups in Wales (Mourant and Watkins,1952). As illustrated in Figure 1.2, there were significant local variations in the gene frequencies even though Wales is a small country. […]
References
Garn, S.M. Human Races (C.C. Thomas, 1961)
Mourant A.R. The Distribution of the Human Blood Groupings (Blackwell, 1954)
Mourant and Watkins Blood groups, anthropology, and language in Wales and the western counties (Heredity,1952, 6, 13–36)"
In the United States, it seems that scientific racism was really most respectable and broadly accepted during the first half of the 1920's, when a lot of factors (the publication of the results of the Yerkes army tests, the rise of the second KKK, the Palmer raid or red scare, discussions leading to the new restrictive immigration laws of 1924, etc.) coincided. 1920s advocates of scientific racism tended to feel that they had hard numerical proof for their claims (as opposed to the mostly anecdotal speculations and small-scale experiments of earlier periods). AnonMoos ( talk) 09:41, 9 November 2011 (UTC)
If I understand this article correctly, what is defined under the name Scientific racism is actually pseudoscientific racism. What, then, is the correct term for properly conducted scientific research that shows differences between races? As, for example, differential proneness to sickle-cell anæmia and other medical conditions? Paul Magnussen ( talk) 19:32, 2 October 2012 (UTC)
Reference 1 in the first paragraph is not to an authoritative definition of scientific racism, as it should be; it's to an assertion by Kuper et al. that the "science" cited was not, in fact, properly conducted. That isn't the same thing. Paul Magnussen ( talk) 19:44, 2 October 2012 (UTC)
Since, according to the assertions in the article, the racism concerned is not in fact scientific, shouldn't the title be 'Scientific racism' (with the quotes)? Paul Magnussen ( talk) 20:51, 3 October 2012 (UTC)
the article is inherently broken because of problems with terminology. Since "racism" is today a bad word, people will continue to assume that anything called 'racism' in the past must automatically classify as evil. This creates a lot of moral outrage and people will go out of their way to emphasize just how wrong racial discrimination is. Ignoring that this article isn't about racial discrimination in the first place. It is simply about the history of what would now be described as human genetic variation, avoiding the r word. The upshot is that perfectly innocent and perfectly valid observations about the variations in human populations as they developed over the past 40k years is branded "pseudoscientific" just because they were made 100 years ago and did use the word race, not knowing that just the use of that term would turn people off a few generations later.
I have little hope that this article can ever be fixed and become an objective treatment both of the field, of its terminology, and its various historical misuses, because there will always be drive-by editors who see the word "racism" and go into moral berserk mode just to show "they are not racist". Some time it would help to stop and thing about semantics and knee-jerk reactions. -- dab (𒁳) 10:18, 20 January 2013 (UTC)
This article is nothing but race-baiting politically-incorrect POV. Wikipedia has officially jumped the shark. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.12.183.6 ( talk) 15:08, 22 February 2014 (UTC)
I was just reading the article and realized that there are inaccuracy in the section "Origins of scientific racism", especially when listing Robert Boyle and Carl Linnaeus. Racism is always a controversial topic, thus we should be both sensitive and sensible. Describing physical differences and aspects of physical appearance is not racism if you never talk about "superiority" or "inferiority". The article should only include those hypotheses that have been used to "support or justify the belief in racism: [the idea of] racial inferiority, or racial superiority", but it should not include those hypothesis and people who merely described physical appearance by naturalistic reasons. It's imprecise, unethical and inaccurate to include in a list of scientific racists' views, the names and photos of those who never talked about "superiority" or "inferiority" among human beings, because it makes them seem as if they had been racists. If you have a quote of THEM talking about "superiority" or "inferiority", then include it, and I'll shut up, but if not, please stop dirtying the names of these men and their reputation with scandals, please, out of respect to their memory. -- Goose friend ( talk) 22:36, 26 February 2013 (UTC)
…fails as a properly formatted, referenced, and integrated sentence in an encyclopedic article. It is placed here so its content, if important, can be sourced, better expressed, and properly placed (rather than appearing as a quick fly-by addition). Note, the reference to URLs and Wiki content in this way is also a clear WP sourcing policy issue; needed is a proper historical reference.
Note, this article does deserve a couple of well-sourced, POV-neutral sentences on Louis Agassiz, who is accused of racism based on his polygenic beliefs, see here [8]. The content there, and the Blowers citation in particular, can be relied on to present the opposing argument. I have no strong opinion on this matter, other than that the way in which it is addressed should be encyclopedic in style, and reflect preponderant views of historians (rather than focus on news story content), with those sources clearly and correctly stated, and that the result should be POV neutral. Le Prof Leprof 7272 ( talk) 18:59, 8 June 2014 (UTC)
So its not pejorative if applied to old theories? KevinFrom ( talk) 07:18, 23 July 2014 (UTC)
The Antecedents section should be Deleted!
I have never seen a Wiki Article Structured in such a Way before:
Antecedents 1.1 Classical thinkers 1.2 Enlightenment thinkers 1.3 Monogenism and polygenism 1.4 Voltaire 1.5 Lord Kames 1.6 Carl Linnaeus 1.7 Immanuel Kant 1.8 John Hunter 1.9 Charles White 1.10 Blumenbach and Buffon 1.11 John Mitchell 1.12 Benjamin Rush 1.13 Christoph Meiners 1.14 Samuel Stanhope Smith 1.15 Georges Cuvier 1.16 G.W.F. Hegel 1.17 Arthur Schopenhauer 1.18 Franz Ignaz Pruner
You're basically giving Creditably to Scientific Racism using Famous Name of the Past, which I'm pretty sure is the goal of the Editor who added it in such a way.
That Section is down right shameful. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.135.17.66 ( talk) 02:26, 7 December 2014 (UTC)
I (Mark v1.0) added a link to the German Wikipedia article of Ludwig Ferdinand Clauss, that showed up as (de). A minor edit that a reader fluent in German would be happy to have to click on. I don't think it should be reverted.
The second minor edit (that was reverted) was adding the title of doctor to Josef Mengele, which he was. It was doctors who started and carried out the Nazi final solution. I started a Wikipedia article on the subject called Nazi doctors. "Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it".-- Mark v1.0 ( talk) 22:17, 10 December 2014 (UTC)
Blacks have a disproportionately high representation in the National Baskbetball league, and in prisons of all mixed race countries, and there is a scientific explanation for it, somewhere.
The questions are about everything else, i.e. who is brave and foolish enough to publish theories and risk their careers, enraging a class of people predisposed to violence and contradict political dogma as given to us by the one world government.
And honest Wikipedia articles mentions all the reasons why a fair and balanced article on this topic will never be allowed for a long list of reasons, and the best that a vulnerable-to-the-will-of-the-retarded-and-centrally-indoctrinated-and-controlled-majority will be able to produce is something that looks just like this. Long on condemnation and moralizing, and short on actual scientific data that shows relevant and reliably measurable differences between (primarily) the black and white race, with supporting and corroborating data comparing black to asian races. Jonny Quick ( talk) 06:02, 30 June 2014 (UTC)
"Truly scientific"? Anyway, this is becoming WP:FORUM. Please discuss the article itself, not the topic. EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{ re}} 23:10, 23 August 2014 (UTC)
P.S. For athletic factors mentioned in User:Jonny_Quick's original message, we have article Race and sports... -- AnonMoos ( talk) 04:16, 17 August 2014 (UTC)
Reference? If none, then the above needs to be deleted. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.79.143.139 ( talk) 02:24, 17 May 2015 (UTC)
Not one word on the political pressure on the hereditarian viewpoint. Very biased article. NICK BOWMANwiki ( talk) 20:23, 27 December 2014 (UTC)
No, he means it today. Political pressure and economic persecution for everybody who disagrees. People are losing their jobs and careers. It should be mentioned in an article that pretends to be balanced and objective. It's certainly not. KevinFrom ( talk) 08:00, 7 June 2015 (UTC)
Is there any source for the broad claim that "Scientific racism was common during the New Imperialism period (c. 1880s – 1914) where it was used in justifying White European imperialism"? Since both China and Japan also thought they were racially superior to other counties, the claim - if substantiated - should not be limited to "White European imperialism". Royalcourtier ( talk) 07:30, 8 April 2015 (UTC)
Not currently mentioned by the article but seems worth mentioning that both the EB 9 and 11's articles on "Anthropology" (both written by E.B. Tylor) have a kind of neurotic "science" to them whereby race is taken for granted even as it's admitted that the science to date has been sloppy and question-begging and racial mixing practiced on such as a scale as to render proper treatment impossible pending decades of further research:
— LlywelynII 18:26, 29 July 2015 (UTC)
Link between Scientific Racism and Highland clearances not cited. If no proof/sources given then it should be removed 82.35.211.203 ( talk) 19:57, 15 September 2015 (UTC)
I am sure that if 13th century Europeans had Wikipedia they would create pages such as "scientific heresy" or that sort. But I wouldn't blame them because at least they had the excuse of ignorance towards the value of the scientific method and what it has done for humanity. This pesky,racist thing we call "science"(if you didn't know) is what humanity uses to discern truth from lies,if this happens to bulldoze your doctrine then maybe you should consider that the doctrine is wrong and not "science". Skyb0x ( talk) 14:35, 31 October 2015 (UTC)
Would it make sense to modify the lead as follows (additions in bold):
"Pejorative term" reference is made lower down in the lead, but it may make sense to bring it up higher so that it's clear early on that the article is not supporting 'scientific racism.' -- K.e.coffman ( talk) 23:58, 25 November 2015 (UTC)
@ Maunus, EvergreenFir, and Volunteer Marek: - you're the last active editors to edit this so pinging you. The article states that ". In its 1950 The Race Question, UNESCO did not reject the idea of a biological basis to racial categories,[110] but instead defined a race as: "A race, from the biological standpoint, may therefore be defined as one of the group of populations constituting the species Homo sapiens", which were broadly defined as the Caucasian, Mongoloid,Negroid races but stated that" etc. It's a raw url so it isn't clear what page it comes from but my point is that it does not call these races, it calls them "divisions". The source actually says:
"Now what has the scientist to say about the groups of mankind which may be recognized at the present time? Human races can be and have heen differently classified by different anthropologists, but at the present time most anthropologists agree on classifying the greater part of present-day mankind into three major divisions, as follows :
The Mongoloid Division
The Negroid Division
The Caucasoid Division
The biological processes which the classifier has here embalmed, as it were, are dynamic, not static. These divisions were not the same in the past as they are at present, and there is every reason to believe that they will change in the future."
So this has been completely misrepresented. This can be fixed, but how much do we want to include of this 66 year old statement? Doug Weller talk 08:26, 22 April 2016 (UTC)
Are your sure "racial biology" should lead here? -- YOMAL SIDOROFF-BIARMSKII ( talk) 06:17, 28 July 2016 (UTC)
The current definition is pointlessly bloated, and contradicts the article title.
Scientific racism is the use of ostensibly scientific or pseudo-scientific techniques and hypotheses to support or justify the belief in racism, racial inferiority, racialism, or racial superiority;
Alternatively, it is the practice of classifying individuals of different phenotypes into discrete races. This practice is now generally considered pseudo-scientific, yet historically it received much credence in the scientific community.
This second clause is not an alternative definition; it is the exact same definition. It directly restates the sentiment of the first. The use of a pseudo-scientific technique to separate individuals into discrete races.
This entire sentence could be reduced to:
The use of pseudoscience to justify racism.
The current definition in tandem with the double-think title of this article implicitly suggests, without reference, that all racism is pseudo-scientific. The title of this article needs to be changed to Pseudo-scientific Racism since that is what it is about. Fawby ( talk) 20:41, 12 July 2016 (UTC)
"scientific racism" is indeed a term that has been used since the 1940s, and it can be used meaningfully, but always as a pejorative, there is no objective definition. It is a purely political term. As becomes evident if you google its historical usage since the 1960s. But this article has completely dropped the ball by discussing the history of the concept of race back to Voltaire, which is obviously completely irrelevant to the term "scientific racism" in particular. As it stands, it is simply a WP:CFORK of the "race" article. An ad-hoc change of the title to something like "pseudo-scientific racism" would not help at all, you just made this term up on the fly. It will not fix the article, because only rewriting the article, not re-titling it, will be helpful. -- dab (𒁳) 16:19, 22 July 2016 (UTC)
If someone would like to include him here i think that'd be helpful! Alfredo Niceforo — Preceding unsigned comment added by Paolorausch ( talk • contribs) 05:43, 25 August 2016 (UTC)
A literal reading of the title of this page would suggest that racism can be scientifically justified when nothing could be further from fact.
The name was used as a label but does not hold in our present day and age.
So how about renaming the page to pseudoscientific racism and have a redirect lead here? -- JamesPoulson ( talk) 15:56, 3 September 2016 (UTC)
critical whiteness studies and white privilege theory are nothing else, but a modern form of scientific racism 12:50, 26 September 2016 (UTC) 46.5.184.105 ( talk) 12:50, 26 September 2016 (UTC)
See Human Races Exist: Refuting 11 Common Arguments Against the Existence of Race.
It would not be a reliable source but there are references at the bottom of this blog article that someone could look into. -- JamesPoulson ( talk) 20:00, 10 September 2016 (UTC)