Even though I hated the undergraduate program in electrical engineering, I continued to be impressed with how humans had figured out so many fascinating aspects of electrons that we cannot even see. i mean, it is one thing to observe the world in which we are able to see things, it is another to deal with aspects that we simply cannot see.
I was in graduate school when one of the main brains behind the transistor, William Shockley, died. Many reports of this Nobel laureate's death provided details on his racist views that he claimed were based on science. Neither in my high school years nor in my undergraduate study of transistors was I made aware of the racism that Shockley spouted as science.
Yes, I had some vague understanding of how Nazis abused science in order to "validate" their views on racial superiority. But, an American researcher who created the transistor? Naive and uninformed I was!
John Horgan reviews Angela Saini's book on scientific racism, in which he writes "scientific racism--an oxymoron if ever there was one--is a relatively recent, localized phenomenon. It emerged in Europe during the so-called Enlightenment and accelerated after the publication of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species."
It is an important issue that Horgan and Saini bring to our attention. "Race science has nonetheless recently re-emerged, heartening white supremacists, neo-Nazis and other bigots."
Those who espouse this ideology call themselves “race realists.” They insist that racial injustice and inequality “isn’t injustice or inequality at all,” Saini explains. “It’s there because the racial hierarchy is real.” Race realists claim that “they are challenging the politically correct wider world by standing up for good science and that those who oppose them are irrational science deniers.”Scientists like Shockley and Watson and others want us to think that it is scientific to ask questions about race, and that their conclusions about the supposed superiority or inferiority of races are based on science. And to deny their questions, research, and conclusions mean that we are deniers!
But then, one might say that there are some real benefits into investigating differences between races. Like hypertension among African-Americans. Right?
Wrong.
Saini presents evidence that environmental factors—including stress and poverty resulting from discrimination—are the primary causes of African-Americans’ elevated hypertension. Rural Africans, she points out, have low levels of hypertension The claim that black Americans’ hypertension stems from their genes “lays the blame for inequality at the feet of biology,” Saini writes.It is like with diabetes that I often complain about. There is nothing genetic among Indians or Chinese for them to have such significant numbers of diabetic patients. I am now compelled to re-think this "masala" project!
Horgan adds:
Superior left me pondering hard questions: Can scientists study race in a way that doesn’t exacerbate racism? Or does all such research, no matter how well-intentioned, subtly reinforce the idea that an individual’s race matters? If scientists do research with the explicit goal of countering racism, are they really scientists, or are they social activists?Do they systematically and consistently engage with science students about these? I hope so, though I think not.
I agree with Horgan's concluding remarks:
I once suggested that, given the harm done by research on alleged cognitive differences between races, it should be banned. I stand by that proposal. I also agree with Saini that online media firms should do more to curb the dissemination of racist pseudoscience. “This is not a free speech issue,” she writes in Scientific American, “it’s about improving the quality and accuracy of information that people see online, and thereby creating a fairer, kinder society.”
(Check out the comments at that YouTube clip--the racist language will shock you!
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