Examples Of Scientific Racism

One of the greatest blemishes across the American timeline is the consistent racism and prejudice that continues to rot our classic claim of being the “land of the free.” The most obvious presentation of our blatant racism were the years between 1501 and 1865 where slavery was its most prominent and legal in society. Throughout those horrible times many found ways to excuse the absolute injustice of owning someone through the means of scientific evidence. The word used to describe this is scientific racism and it is simply the belief that there is valid evidence to support the claim of some races being superior to others through DNA, bone structure, intelligence, etc… Formerly few scientists considered these ideas to be rooted in actual fact

Melanin is a term for the pigment found in our skin, hair, and eyes. The more exposure you have to the sun, the more pigment is found in your body. Darker skin tones are more absorbent of sunlight, thereby protecting the skin cells from UV damage and also lowering the chances of developing skin cancer. So contrary to the belief of many racists, your skin color doesn't determine your status, or your place in their delusional world, darker skin color is a natural reaction to the harmful rays of the sun. These bigoted beliefs fall into scientific racism as arguably one of the first scientific racists, Immanuel Kant, believed darker skinned Africans were “vain and stupid”. As Well as in Frederick Douglass's autobiography: Frederick Douglass, it is apparent that he gets overall better treatment as a result of him being mixed, which falls under the category of racists believing the lighter someone’s skin is, the more respect that very person should

Though it is true, some forms of our skulls differ as to better adapt to our surroundings, and some may be slightly deformed as a result of inbreeding due to genetic defects, we all contain a similar skull unlike any other species of mammals. Though in many classic scientific racism arguments, those in support of the idea fight for the fact that Africans have different bone structures in comparison to those of a white person. Social Darwinism is a common term for this sort of belief. Social darwinism is the ideology that humans can be classified into different sections just as plants and animals might be according to Darwinian laws of nature. Largely advocated for in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by men such as Herbert Spencer who was an English philosopher, biologist, anthropologist, sociologist, biologist, anthropologist, sociologist, and political theorist. Though as time has passed, social darwinism has been largely disregarded due to an array of reasons. One would be how it was entirely misnamed, having nothing to do with the work of Charles Darwin or his ideals, its concept was more akin to “survival of the fittest.” This term was used to promote the belief that those of lower classes and the less fortunate, the “less fit” should be denied funding from the government. The lower class at that time was largely the african american