Scientific Racism Affected American Culture

Phrenology remained a scientific study even though its conclusions and concepts were understood to be flawed. The decades prior to the final studies of phrenology affected the perceptions of American culture directed towards minority races, and created a prejudice towards the abilities of these races which was reflected in negative actions. The impressions towards certain races which were influenced by phrenological studies affected American society in both real life and fictional life. Cathy Beckmann, author of A Question of Character: Scientific Racism and the Genres of American Fiction, explains how scientific racism affected American fiction books during the late nineteenth century. Using multiple resources of how minority races were portrayed

Boeckmann also clearly states that the physical representation of African Americans in American fiction was directly affected by the popular conceptions of race constructed by these sciences (50). Phrenology’s effects can also be seen in real world actions that were skewed from the biases that the science created. A study conducted by Pilar Ossorio and Troy Duster tested the effects that concepts in controversial studies such as phrenology had on criminalized behavior. Ossorio and Duster attempted to explain that race and genetics could not dictate criminal behavior, and that sciences like phrenology had “findings of genetic markers that correlate with criminalized behavior” (126), but that these were only “correlations and not explanations of the causes of violence or crime” (126). Phrenology attempted to mark genetics as the cause of behavior and it only took an individual to suspect that criminal behavior was caused by genetics just like any other behavior. As Ossorio and Duster explain, criminal behavior was due to a wide range of variables from family history to how strict the penal system of a certain area