Cultural Reactions to Scientific Knowledge: The Creation of Race Emily Garza ‘20

ST112 – Introduction to Science, Technology, and Society Colby College – Waterville, ME

Introduction By exploring race through the scientific lens, one can begin to understand the social construct of race, its degree of scientific validity, and the implications of the term throughout history and present-day in science and society. Merriam-Webster’s general and medical dictionary define race as “a category of humankind that shares certain distinctive physical traits”; however, there is no legal definition for the term “race” despite the acceptance of “visual racial identification” as an identification method in legal court. The use of racial characteristics to sort people is based on the evolutionary characteristic of interactive sociality likened to that of several animals who are also able to identify members of their own social groups and others in order to adjust their behaviors towards certain individuals – this can be seen in humans as early as the age of three.

While lauded for his contributions to science due to his methodology, there is trouble discerning discovery of fact with that of invention as Morton had a strong belief of racial distinctions having been created and not evolutionized, which when paired with the social climate of his time, not only shaped his assumption that skull size was a signifier of intelligence, but probably colored it with his result being that Caucasian heads were the largest and thus the Caucasian race was superior to other races. Morton’s work became the basis for the term “scientific racism” as he methodologically “explored” ways to differentiate men through race. Another method of supporting nonwhite intellectual inferiority is done so through the debate of race and IQ. Disregarding the idea that “intelligence” can not be clearly defined or tested for, the popularized representation of IQ scores and the correlation between those scores and racial groups has falsely provided support for believers in heritability of IQ – which is irrelevant to race in the biological sense due to countless other outside factors.

Science as Evidence for Racial Hierarchy Samuel George Morton was as American naturalist who acquired a collection of almost a thousand human skulls - widely known for his exhaustive measurements on those skulls. His work on racial differences as evidenced by skull size is shown below, image from Crania Americana.

Current Climate on Race The official American Anthropological Association “Statement on Race” is :

Given what we know about the capacity of normal humans to achieve and function within any culture, we conclude that present-day inequalities between so-called "racial" groups are not consequences of their biological inheritance but products of historical and contemporary social, economic, educational, and political circumstances.

This statement and other similar statements by other large organizations are causing a widespread belief that “race” is not a real concept and thus should not be used. However, a juxtaposing interest of race has also risen from the growing popularity of personal genomics and biotechnology companies, such as 23andme and Illumina, who analyze and identify individual’s genomes in order to identify trait expression, ancestry, and even disease risk.

Conclusion - Effects of “Race” • Results of African Americans on IQ tests when compared

to their white counterparts are greatly affected by the social stigma and environment constructed from racial prejudices against them.

• Assumptions of academic disinterest by professors and academic professionals due to the already established community [example: Assumption by some philosophy professors that African American students are not likely to want to learn philosophy leads to less recruitment of African American students as majors or graduate students; thus, resulting in a never changing white monopoly of the philosophical profession.]

• Structural racism resulting in racial inequalities that cause health inequalities due to an abundance of stressors. African Americans have a higher risk of disease, such as high blood pressure and increased rates of infant death, due to racial discrimination, which leads to stress impacts health, and not biology.

• Medical reception of minorities is also vastly different from that of their white counterparts. [example: A black woman is less likely to be prescribed painkillers by an ER physician than her white counterpart despite same symptoms and level of pain being expressed.]

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