Racism in Science: the History and Social Context of the Race Concept

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reproducibility, this reliance on race as a biological concept persists in fields from genet- ics to medicine. The consequences of that reliance have ranged from justifications for school and housing segregation, to support HARRISON DAVID for the Atlantic slave trade of the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries, genocidal policies against Indigenous communities around the world, and the Holocaust. Saini reminds us that in early-nineteenth- century Europe, the dehumanization of people of colour allowed for the caging and public exhibition of a South African Khoi khoi woman. Sara Baartman (her birth name is unknown) was insultingly dubbed “the Hottentot Venus” owing to a fascination with her genitalia. A century later, early-twentieth- century eugenic pseudoscience came to influ- ence US policy. The US Immigration Act of 1924 was consciously designed to discour- age southern and Eastern Europeans from entering the United States, and barred Asian immigrants outright. In Superior, one cannot help but see similarities between the twentieth-century movement of race-making ideologies from Glass eyes of a type used in the twentieth century for ‘racial’ classification. laboratories to political stages, and the current rise of xenophobic politics around the world. SCIENTIFIC BIAS LONG HISTORY The book, Saini tells us, reflects her child- hood dream to understand and speak about Racism in science: the history and social context of the race concept. She does so accessibly and cogently, tracing the trajectory from that history to knotty topics such as research on the emer- a lingering taint gence of Homo sapiens, or the production of pharmaceuticals targeting people of colour. (For instance, the heart-failure medication Angela Saini’s book indicts a destructive bias in BiDil (isosorbide dinitrate/hydralazine), research, writes Robin G. Nelson. approved by the US Food and Drug Admin- istration in 2005, was marketed solely to African Americans.) The durability of the n her latest book, Superior, Angela Saini she now explores a race concept transcends disciplines, colour- investigates how the history and pres- similarly persistent ing everything from data collection to policy ervation of dubious science has justi- taint: the search by recommendations regarding immigration. Ified and normalized the idea of hierarchies some scientists for In a chapter entitled ‘Race Realists’, Saini between ‘racial’ groups. measurable biological paints a vivid picture of the palpable fear In a reflection on power and conquest, differences between that Barry Mehler, a Jewish historian of Superior opens in the halls of London’s ‘races’, despite decades eugenics and genocide, felt in the 1980s on British Museum, among collections from of studies yielding no discovering an active network of ‘race sci- Lower Nubia and ancient Egypt. This over- supporting evidence. entists’ working long after the end of the ture to imperialism sets the stage for an Superior: The Research has repeat- Second World War. She points to shadow eminently readable history lesson on the Return of Race edly shown that race is financing by the extremist US non-profit origins, rise, disavowal and resurgence of Science not a scientifically valid Pioneer Fund, which supports studies on race research in Western science. That story ANGELA SAINI concept. Across the eugenics, race and intelligence, and outlets spans the survival of German doctor Johann Beacon (2019) world, humans share such as the pro-eugenics so-called science Blumenbach’s eighteenth-century region- 99.9% of their DNA. journal Mankind Quarterly. She also notes ally based characterization of five human The characteristics that have come to define that in the 1980s, the academic Ralph Scott, ‘races’ (Caucasians, Mongolians, Ethiopi- our popular understanding of race — hair tex- a contributor to that outlet, was appointed by ans, Americans and Malays), and modern ture, skin colour, facial features — represent the administration of US President Ronald discussions about presumed correlations only a few of the thousands of traits that define Reagan to serve on the Iowa Advisory between race and intelligence. us as a species. Visible traits tell us something Commission on Civil Rights. Saini’s celebrated 2017 Inferior investigated about population histories and gene–environ- Aside from a brief discussion of the slave the troubling relationship between sexism ment interactions. But we cannot consistently trade and profits in the pharmaceuticals and scientific research. Pivoting deftly from divide humans into discrete groups. industry, the role of capitalist and colonialist personal reflection to technical exposition, Yet, despite its lack of scientific rigour or expansion in propping up the race concept is

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not given much analysis here. Yet Saini does to couch her critical analysis of race science in that has been proved to have demonstrably show that our current moment is part of a language often used by those more interested deleterious outcomes left me longing for a broader and longer span of social experience. in silencing such critiques. A generous read- stronger take-away message. She posits that the racial categories that many ing of her approach might be that it is a sub- Ultimately, Superior is most impactful perceive as immutable could be transformed, versive attempt to appeal to sceptical readers. in describing the persistence of support as they have been in the past. These catego- However, I am unsure that that is her intent. for ideas of hierarchal differences from the ries shift and align with the social ‘needs’ of It is less clear what Saini makes of con- Enlightenment onwards, in the face of politi- the moment and have ranged, for example, temporary practitioners of race science. For cal backlash and researchers’ inability to even from Celtic, to Hispanic, to the current US her, it seems, there is a difference between define the primary variable at play: race. Saini census categorization of people from the past scientists who used financing from the rightly calls out the denial that runs through Middle East as white. Pioneer Fund to support eugenics research, so much of our public dialogue. She reveals That mutability might make racial catego- and current researchers, those “race real- how shame about an unreconciled past ries seem random and purposeless. However, ists”, who continue to search for a biologi- affects our ability to engage in tough conver- they have long served as the scaffolding for cal component of race. She does explore the sations about its long shadows. the creation and maintenance of empires. shortcomings of current research and openly Superior is perhaps best understood as I wondered whom Saini imagines her questions why people persist with this field continuing in a tradition of groundbreaking primary audience to be. She uses the royal of fruitless inquiry. work that contextualizes the deep and prob- ‘we’, perhaps as a way of creating community This tension between the deadly legacy of lematic history of race science. These include with readers, whom I sense she sees as scien- historical race science and the ethically trou- the 2011 Fatal Invention by Dorothy Roberts tifically literate white people. This is perhaps bling reification of racial frameworks in cur- and The Social Life of DNA (2016) by Alondra due to the lack of diversity in science and sci- rent research emerges in a lengthy interview Nelson (see F. L. C. Jackson Nature 529, 279– ence writing. At the same time, she reminds with David Reich, a geneticist at Harvard 280; 2016). Saini contributes to this conversa- us that she is a Briton of Indian origin, and University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, tion by linking the desire to make race real, so would be a subject in race-based inquir- known for his work on ancient DNA and particularly with regards to measurable health ies. In her discussion of Mankind Quarterly, human evolution. Reich tells her: “There disparities, to society’s underlying desire to let she earnestly uses the term “political cor- are real ancestry differences across popula- itself off the hook for these very inequalities. rectness” — which has been levelled dispar- tions that correlate to the social construc- She closes by arguing that researchers agingly at those calling for more inclusive tions we have.” He adds: “We have to deal must at least know what it is they are meas- dialogue. And in a reflection on the Human with that.” But, as Saini notes, when racism is uring when they use race as a proxy. I would Genome Diversity Project, which aimed to embedded in society’s core structures, such add that they should have to contend with collect DNA from Indigenous communities research is born of the same social relations. what it isn’t — and what they have created around the world, she references the 1990s instead. ■ as the dawn of “identity politics” — a term COLLECTIVE DENIAL often used to denigrate the perspectives of In my view, too many scholarly voices pro- Robin Nelson is in the Department of minoritized individuals. She does not ques- vide this kind of cover for their peers. This Anthropology at Santa Clara University in tion these tropes. unwillingness to reckon with the possibil- California. In this way, Saini seems surprisingly willing ity that racism actually underpins research e-mail: [email protected]

EARTH SYSTEM SCIENCE Lovelock at 100: the Gaia saga Tim Radford reassesses the scientist’s groundbreaking body of writing.

ames Lovelock will always be associated nomination to the planet such as Mars harboured life? with one big idea: Gaia. The Oxford Royal Society in 1974 With microbiologist Lynn Margulis, JEnglish Dictionary defines this as “the listed his work on “res- Lovelock published a series of papers on the global ecosystem, understood to function in piratory infections, air subject. In 1974, they developed a view of the manner of a vast self-regulating organism, sterilisation, blood- Earth’s atmosphere as “a component part of in the context of which all living things col- clotting, the freezing the biosphere rather than as a mere environ- lectively define and maintain the conditions of living cells, arti- ment for life” (J. E. Lovelock and L. Margulis conducive for life on earth”. It cites the inde- ficial insemination, Tellus 26, 2–10; 1974). Earth’s atmosphere pendent scientist as the first to use the term gas chromatography contains oxygen and methane — reactive (ancient Greek for Earth) in this way, in 1972. and so on”. The “and gases, constantly renewed. That disequi- On 26 July, Lovelock will be 100; his long so on” briefly referred Novacene: The librium radiates an infrared signal, which Coming Age of career has sparkled with ideas. His first solo to climate science, Hyperintelligence Lovelock later described as an “unceasing letter to Nature — on a new formula for the and to the possibil- JAMES LOVELOCK song of life” that is “audible to anyone with a wax pencils used to mark Petri dishes — was ity of extraterrestrial Allen Lane (2019) receiver, even from outside the Solar System”. published in 1945. But, unusually for a sci- life. The story of Gaia Thus, the answer to NASA’s question entist, books are his medium of choice. He began with a question posed by NASA sci- was already written in the static Martian has written or co-authored around a dozen; entists while Lovelock was a consultant at atmosphere, composed almost entirely of the latest, Novacene, is published this month. the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, non-reactive carbon dioxide. As that book’s preface notes, Lovelock’s California. That is, how could you tell if a That was the beginning of a sustained