Eugenics and the Birth of Scientific Racism
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, as evolutionary theory gained public attention, a darker interpretation emerged: eugenics, the idea that human populations could be improved through selective breeding. Championed by Francis Galton, cousin of Charles Darwin, eugenics quickly became a popular movement in the United States and Europe. Its adherents—often university-educated scientists and physicians—used statistical arguments and anatomical studies to promote forced sterilizations, anti-immigration laws, and the institutionalization of people deemed “unfit.”
Elite universities like Harvard, Yale, and Stanford were central to the eugenics movement. Harvard’s president, A. Lawrence Lowell, supported restrictions on Jewish enrollment, while professors like Charles Davenport led major eugenics research projects, funded by the Carnegie Institution and the Rockefeller Foundation. These efforts culminated in U.S. policies such as the Immigration Act of 1924 and Supreme Court rulings like Buck v. Bell (1927), which legitimized the sterilization of “feeble-minded” individuals. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes infamously wrote, “Three generations of imbeciles are enough.”
The Globalization of Bigoted Science
Eugenics was not limited to the United States. In Germany, American eugenic ideas influenced Nazi racial laws and programs. German doctors and scientists adopted race hygiene as state policy under Hitler, leading to sterilizations, medical experiments, and mass murder—what began as “science” ultimately culminated in the Holocaust.
Yet after World War II, even as Nazi atrocities were exposed, many in the West continued promoting soft forms of scientific bigotry under different names. Race-based intelligence theories were repackaged for Cold War audiences. Psychological studies, for instance, used IQ testing—originally developed by Alfred Binet for individualized education—as tools to argue for the innate intellectual inferiority of Black, Indigenous, and immigrant populations. American psychologists like Arthur Jensen and later Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein (The Bell Curve, 1994) insisted on a genetic basis for racial disparities in intelligence and income. Their ideas were roundly criticized but widely circulated in elite circles and conservative think tanks.
Medical Racism and Human Experimentation
Bigotry under the banner of science was not limited to intelligence testing. In medicine, scientific racism was used to justify brutal experimentation on marginalized populations. The most infamous case is the Tuskegee Syphilis Study (1932–1972), in which Black men in Alabama were denied treatment for syphilis by the U.S. Public Health Service so researchers could observe the disease’s natural progression. These men were never told they had syphilis, even after penicillin became widely available in the 1940s.
In Puerto Rico and other U.S. colonies, women were used in early birth control trials without informed consent. Poor people, incarcerated people, and mentally ill individuals were also subjected to invasive procedures under the guise of scientific advancement.
Even today, racial biases continue to shape medical education and practice. Myths such as Black people having “thicker skin” or feeling less pain still influence clinical decision-making, leading to disparities in treatment and outcomes.
The Rhetoric of “Objectivity” and the Persistence of Bias
What makes science-based bigotry particularly dangerous is the claim to objectivity. Unlike openly ideological or religious justifications for inequality, scientific arguments seem neutral, rational, and data-driven. This gave them an air of credibility that allowed policymakers, judges, and educators to embed discriminatory practices into laws, institutions, and curricula.
Throughout the 20th century, bigoted science influenced criminal justice (through phrenology and “criminal anthropology”), education (through tracking and segregated schooling), and labor markets (through biased aptitude testing and “merit-based” hiring). University researchers were frequently at the forefront of these movements, aided by philanthropic funding and government contracts.
Resistance from Within Science
It is important to note that many scientists, doctors, and educators resisted these abuses. Activists like W.E.B. Du Bois, a sociologist and the first Black American to earn a Ph.D. from Harvard, used empirical research to debunk racist theories. In the mid-20th century, geneticists like Richard Lewontin and Stephen Jay Gould challenged biological determinism, showing that racial categories have no firm biological basis and that environmental factors play a dominant role in shaping intelligence and behavior.
Gould’s The Mismeasure of Man (1981) exposed the flawed data and assumptions behind IQ science and craniometry. Lewontin, meanwhile, demonstrated that genetic variation within racial groups far exceeded variation between them, undercutting race as a meaningful biological concept.
Legacy and Modern Manifestations
Despite these corrections, echoes of science-based bigotry persist. Racial disparities in standardized testing, policing algorithms, facial recognition software, and genetic research reflect uncritical assumptions about “objectivity” and “merit.” Tech companies and university researchers now traffic in new forms of algorithmic bias that often reproduce the old hierarchies under new names.
Moreover, white supremacist groups and alt-right ideologues continue to misuse evolutionary biology, neuroscience, and social psychology to justify racial segregation and misogyny. The internet has made this misinformation harder to regulate and easier to disseminate.
Scientific Authority
The history of science-based bigotry reveals a troubling pattern: when scientific authority is wielded without ethical oversight or historical awareness, it can become a weapon of oppression. Higher education institutions—many of which played central roles in promoting pseudoscientific racism—must reckon with this legacy. That means more than issuing apologies or renaming buildings; it requires a critical reassessment of how knowledge is produced, validated, and applied.
Understanding the misuse of science in the past is essential to ensuring that the knowledge of the future uplifts rather than excludes. A truly democratic science must be self-critical, historically informed, and deeply engaged with questions of power and justice.
Sources:
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Gould, Stephen Jay. The Mismeasure of Man. W.W. Norton, 1981.
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Kevles, Daniel J. In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Uses of Human Heredity. Harvard University Press, 1985.
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Washington, Harriet A. Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present. Doubleday, 2006.
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Lombardo, Paul A. Three Generations, No Imbeciles: Eugenics, the Supreme Court, and Buck v. Bell. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008.
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Lewontin, Richard C. “The Apportionment of Human Diversity.” Evolutionary Biology, vol. 6, 1972, pp. 381–398.
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Allen, Garland E. "The Eugenics Record Office at Cold Spring Harbor, 1910–1940: An Essay in Institutional History." Osiris, vol. 2, 1986, pp. 225–264.
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Duster, Troy. Backdoor to Eugenics. Routledge, 2003.
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Reverby, Susan M. Examining Tuskegee: The Infamous Syphilis Study and Its Legacy. University of North Carolina Press, 2009.You said:
