An overview of the different components included in the field of chemical biology
Chemical biology is a scientific discipline between the fields of chemistry and biology. The discipline involves the application of chemical techniques, analysis, and often small molecules produced through synthetic chemistry, to the study and manipulation of biological systems. Although often confused with biochemistry,
which studies the chemistry of biomolecules and regulation of
biochemical pathways within and between cells, chemical biology remains
distinct by focusing on the application of chemical tools to address
biological questions.
History
Although considered a relatively new scientific field, the term "chemical biology" has been in use since the early 20th century, and has roots in scientific discovery from the early 19th century. The
term 'chemical biology' can be traced back to an early appearance in a
book published by Alonzo E. Taylor in 1907 titled "On Fermentation", and was subsequently used in John B. Leathes' 1930 article titled "The Harveian Oration on The Birth of Chemical Biology". However, it is unclear when the term was first used.
Friedrich Wöhler's 1828 synthesis of urea is an early example of the application of synthetic chemistry to advance biology. It showed that biological compounds could be synthesized with inorganic starting materials and weakened the previous notion of vitalism, or that a 'living' source was required to produce organic compounds.Wöhler's work is often considered to be instrumental in the development of organic chemistry and natural product synthesis, both of which play a large part in modern chemical biology.
Friedrich Miescher's work during the late 19th century
investigating the cellular contents of human leukocytes led to the
discovery of 'nuclein', which would later be renamed DNA. After isolating the nuclein from the nucleus of leukocytes through
protease digestion, Miescher used chemical techniques such as elemental
analysis and solubility tests to determine the composition of nuclein. This work would lay the foundations for Watson and Crick's discovery of the double-helix structure of DNA.
The rising interest in chemical biology has led to several journals dedicated to the field. Nature Chemical Biology, created in 2005, and ACS Chemical Biology, created in 2006, are two of the most well-known journals in this field, with impact factors of 14.8 and 4.0 respectively.
Applications of click chemistry in living organisms
Research areas
Glycobiology
Example of a sialic acid, a commonly studied molecule in glycobiology.
Glycobiology is the study of the structure and function of carbohydrates. While DNA, RNA, and proteins are encoded at the genetic level, carbohydrates are not encoded directly from the genome, and thus require different tools for their study. By applying chemical principles to glycobiology, novel methods for analyzing and synthesizing carbohydrates can be developed. For example, cells can be supplied with synthetic variants of natural sugars to probe their function. Carolyn Bertozzi's research group has developed methods for site-specifically reacting molecules at the surface of cells via synthetic sugars.
Combinatorial chemistry
The process of selecting a receptor in combinatorial chemistry.
Combinatorial chemistry involves simultaneously synthesizing a large number of related compounds for high-throughput analysis. Chemical biologists are able to use principles from combinatorial
chemistry in synthesizing active drug compounds and maximizing screening
efficiency. Similarly, these principles can be used in areas of agriculture and food research, specifically in the syntheses of unnatural products and in generating novel enzyme inhibitors.
Chemical synthesis of proteins is a valuable tool in chemical biology
as it allows for the introduction of non-natural amino acids as well as
residue-specific incorporation of "posttranslational modifications" such as phosphorylation, glycosylation, acetylation, and even ubiquitination. These properties are valuable for chemical biologists as non-natural amino acids
can be used to probe and alter the functionality of proteins, while
post-translational modifications are widely known to regulate the
structure and activity of proteins. Although strictly biological techniques have been developed to achieve
these ends, the chemical synthesis of peptides often has a lower
technical and practical barrier to obtaining small amounts of the
desired protein.
To make protein-sized polypeptide chains with the small peptide
fragments made by synthesis, chemical biologists can use the process of native chemical ligation. Native chemical ligation involves the coupling of a C-terminal
thioester and an N-terminal cysteine residue, ultimately resulting in
formation of a "native" amide bond. Other strategies that have been used for the ligation of peptide
fragments using the acyl transfer chemistry first introduced with native
chemical ligation include expressed protein ligation, sulfurization/desulfurization techniques, and use of removable thiol auxiliaries.
Enrichment techniques for proteomics
Chemical biologists work to improve proteomics
through the development of enrichment strategies, chemical affinity
tags, and new probes. Samples for proteomics often contain many peptide
sequences and the sequence of interest may be highly represented or of
low abundance, which creates a barrier for their detection. Chemical
biology methods can reduce sample complexity by selective enrichment
using affinity chromatography. This involves targeting a peptide with a distinguishing feature like a biotin label or a post translational modification. Methods have been developed that include the use of antibodies, lectins to capture glycoproteins, and immobilized metal ions to capture phosphorylated peptides and enzyme substrates to capture select enzymes.
Enzyme probes
To
investigate enzymatic activity as opposed to total protein,
activity-based reagents have been developed to label the enzymatically
active form of proteins (see Activity-based proteomics). For example, serine hydrolase- and cysteine protease-inhibitors have been converted to suicide inhibitors. This strategy enhances the ability to selectively analyze low abundance constituents through direct targeting. Enzyme activity can also be monitored through converted substrate. Identification of enzyme substrates is a problem of significant
difficulty in proteomics and is vital to the understanding of signal
transduction pathways in cells. A method that has been developed uses
"analog-sensitive" kinases to label substrates using an unnatural ATP
analog, facilitating visualization and identification through a unique
handle.
Employing biology
Many
research programs are also focused on employing natural biomolecules to
perform biological tasks or to support a new chemical method. In this
regard, chemical biology researchers have shown that DNA can serve as a
template for synthetic chemistry, self-assembling proteins can serve as a
structural scaffold for new materials, and RNA can be evolved in vitro
to produce new catalytic function. Additionally, heterobifunctional
(two-sided) synthetic small molecules such as dimerizers or PROTACs
bring two proteins together inside cells, which can synthetically
induce important new biological functions such as targeted protein
degradation.
Directed evolution
A primary goal of protein engineering is the design of novel peptides or proteins with a desired structure and chemical activity. Because our knowledge of the relationship between primary sequence, structure, and function of proteins is limited, rational design of new proteins with engineered activities is extremely challenging. In directed evolution, repeated cycles of genetic diversification followed by a screening or selection process, can be used to mimic natural selection in the laboratory to design new proteins with a desired activity.
Several methods exist for creating large libraries of sequence variants. Among the most widely used are subjecting DNA to UV radiation or chemical mutagens, error-prone PCR, degenerate codons, or recombination. Once a large library of variants is created, selection or screening
techniques are used to find mutants with a desired attribute. Common
selection/screening techniques include FACS, mRNA display, phage display, and in vitro compartmentalization. Once useful variants are found, their DNA sequence is amplified and
subjected to further rounds of diversification and selection.
Successful
labeling of a molecule of interest requires specific functionalization
of that molecule to react chemospecifically with an optical probe. For a
labeling experiment to be considered robust, that functionalization
must minimally perturb the system. Unfortunately, these requirements are
often hard to meet. Many of the reactions normally available to organic
chemists in the laboratory are unavailable in living systems. Water- and redox- sensitive reactions would not proceed, reagents prone
to nucleophilic attack would offer no chemospecificity, and any
reactions with large kinetic barriers would not find enough energy in
the relatively low-heat environment of a living cell. Thus, chemists have recently developed a panel of bioorthogonal chemistry that proceed chemospecifically, despite the milieu of distracting reactive materials in vivo.
The coupling of a probe to a molecule of interest must occur within a reasonably short time frame; therefore, the kinetics of the coupling reaction should be highly favorable. Click chemistry
is well suited to fill this niche, since click reactions are rapid,
spontaneous, selective, and high-yielding. Unfortunately, the most
famous "click reaction," a [3+2] cycloaddition between an azide and an acyclic alkyne, is copper-catalyzed, posing a serious problem for use in vivo due to copper's toxicity. To bypass the necessity for a catalyst, Carolyn R. Bertozzi's lab introduced inherent strain into the alkyne species by using a cyclic alkyne. In particular, cyclooctyne reacts with azido-molecules with distinctive vigor.
Discovery of biomolecules through metagenomics
The
advances in modern sequencing technologies in the late 1990s allowed
scientists to investigate DNA of communities of organisms in their
natural environments ("eDNA"), without culturing individual species in
the lab. This metagenomic
approach enabled scientists to study a wide selection of organisms that
were previously not characterized due in part to an incompetent growth
condition. Sources of eDNA include soils, ocean, subsurface, hot springs, hydrothermal vents, polar ice caps, hypersaline habitats, and extreme pH environments. Of the many applications of metagenomics, researchers such as Jo Handelsman, Jon Clardy, and Robert M. Goodman, explored metagenomic approaches toward the discovery of biologically active molecules such as antibiotics.
Overview of metagenomic methods
Functional or homology
screening strategies have been used to identify genes that produce
small bioactive molecules. Functional metagenomic studies are designed
to search for specific phenotypes
that are associated with molecules with specific characteristics.
Homology metagenomic studies, on the other hand, are designed to examine
genes to identify conserved sequences that are previously associated with the expression of biologically active molecules.
Functional metagenomic studies enable the discovery of novel
genes that encode biologically active molecules. These assays include
top agar overlay assays where antibiotics generate zones of growth
inhibition against test microbes, and pH assays that can screen for pH
change due to newly synthesized molecules using pH indicator on an agar plate. Substrate-induced gene expression screening (SIGEX), a method to screen
for the expression of genes that are induced by chemical compounds, has
also been used to search for genes with specific functions. Homology-based metagenomic studies have led to a fast discovery of
genes that have homologous sequences as the previously known genes that
are responsible for the biosynthesis of biologically active molecules.
As soon as the genes are sequenced, scientists can compare thousands of
bacterial genomes simultaneously. The advantage over functional metagenomic assays is that homology
metagenomic studies do not require a host organism system to express the
metagenomes, thus this method can potentially save the time spent on
analyzing nonfunctional genomes. These also led to the discovery of
several novel proteins and small molecules. In addition, an in silico examination from the Global Ocean Metagenomic Survey found 20 new lantibiotic cyclases.
Kinases
Posttranslational modification of proteins with phosphate groups by kinases
is a key regulatory step throughout all biological systems.
Phosphorylation events, either phosphorylation by protein kinases or
dephosphorylation by phosphatases,
result in protein activation or deactivation. These events have an
impact on the regulation of physiological pathways, which makes the
ability to dissect and study these pathways integral to understanding
the details of cellular processes. There exist a number of
challenges—namely the sheer size of the phosphoproteome, the fleeting
nature of phosphorylation events and related physical limitations of
classical biological and biochemical techniques—that have limited the
advancement of knowledge in this area.
Through the use of small molecule modulators of protein kinases,
chemical biologists have gained a better understanding of the effects of
protein phosphorylation. For example, nonselective and selective kinase
inhibitors, such as a class of pyridinylimidazole compounds are potent inhibitors useful in the dissection of MAP kinase signaling pathways. These pyridinylimidazole compounds function by targeting the ATP binding pocket. Although this approach, as well as related approaches, with slight modifications, has proven effective in a number of cases,
these compounds lack adequate specificity for more general applications.
Another class of compounds, mechanism-based inhibitors, combines
knowledge of the kinase enzymology with previously utilized inhibition
motifs. For example, a "bisubstrate analog" inhibits kinase action by
binding both the conserved ATP binding pocket and a protein/peptide
recognition site on the specific kinase. Research groups also utilized ATP analogs as chemical probes to study kinases and identify their substrates.
The development of novel chemical means of incorporating phosphomimetic
amino acids into proteins has provided important insight into the
effects of phosphorylation events. Phosphorylation events have
typically been studied by mutating an identified phosphorylation site (serine, threonine or tyrosine) to an amino acid, such as alanine,
that cannot be phosphorylated. However, these techniques come with
limitations and chemical biologists have developed improved ways of
investigating protein phosphorylation. By installing phospho-serine,
phospho-threonine or analogous phosphonate
mimics into native proteins, researchers are able to perform in vivo
studies to investigate the effects of phosphorylation by extending the
amount of time a phosphorylation event occurs while minimizing the
often-unfavorable effects of mutations. Expressed protein ligation,
has proven to be successful techniques for synthetically producing
proteins that contain phosphomimetic molecules at either terminus. In addition, researchers have used unnatural amino acid mutagenesis at targeted sites within a peptide sequence.
Advances in chemical biology have also improved upon classical
techniques of imaging kinase action. For example, the development of peptide biosensors—peptides containing incorporated fluorophores improved temporal resolution of in vitro binding assays. One of the most useful techniques to study kinase action is Fluorescence Resonance Energy Transfer (FRET).
To utilize FRET for phosphorylation studies, fluorescent proteins are
coupled to both a phosphoamino acid binding domain and a peptide that
can be phosphorylated. Upon phosphorylation or dephosphorylation of a
substrate peptide, a conformational change occurs that results in a
change in fluorescence. FRET has also been used in tandem with Fluorescence Lifetime Imaging Microscopy (FLIM) or fluorescently conjugated antibodies and flow cytometry to provide quantitative results with excellent temporal and spatial resolution.
Biological fluorescence
Chemical biologists often study the functions of biological macromolecules using fluorescence
techniques. The advantage of fluorescence versus other techniques
resides in its high sensitivity, non-invasiveness, safe detection, and
ability to modulate the fluorescence signal. In recent years, the
discovery of green fluorescent protein (GFP) by Roger Y. Tsien and others, hybrid systems and quantum dots have enabled assessing protein location and function more precisely. Three main types of fluorophores are used: small organic dyes, green fluorescent proteins, and quantum dots.
Small organic dyes usually are less than 1 kDa, and have been modified
to increase photostability and brightness, and reduce self-quenching.
Quantum dots have very sharp wavelengths, high molar absorptivity and
quantum yield. Both organic dyes and quantum dyes do not have the
ability to recognize the protein of interest without the aid of
antibodies, hence they must use immunolabeling.
Fluorescent proteins are genetically encoded and can be fused to your
protein of interest. Another genetic tagging technique is the
tetracysteine biarsenical system, which requires modification of the
targeted sequence that includes four cysteines, which binds
membrane-permeable biarsenical molecules, the green and the red dyes
"FlAsH" and "ReAsH", with picomolar affinity. Both fluorescent proteins
and biarsenical tetracysteine can be expressed in live cells, but
present major limitations in ectopic expression and might cause a loss
of function.
Fluorescent techniques have been used to assess a number of
protein dynamics including protein tracking, conformational changes,
protein–protein interactions, protein synthesis and turnover, and enzyme
activity, among others. Three general approaches for measuring protein
net redistribution and diffusion are single-particle tracking, correlation spectroscopy
and photomarking methods. In single-particle tracking, the individual
molecule must be both bright and sparse enough to be tracked from one
video to the other. Correlation spectroscopy analyzes the intensity
fluctuations resulting from migration of fluorescent objects into and
out of a small volume at the focus of a laser. In photomarking, a
fluorescent protein can be dequenched in a subcellular area with the use
of intense local illumination and the fate of the marked molecule can
be imaged directly. Michalet and coworkers used quantum dots for
single-particle tracking using biotin-quantum dots in HeLa cells. One of the best ways to detect conformational changes in proteins is to
label the protein of interest with two fluorophores within close
proximity. FRET
will respond to internal conformational changes result from
reorientation of one fluorophore with respect to the other. One can also
use fluorescence to visualize enzyme activity, typically by using a
quenched activity-based proteomics
(qABP). Covalent binding of a qABP to the active site of the targeted
enzyme will provide direct evidence concerning if the enzyme is
responsible for the signal upon release of the quencher and regain of
fluorescence.
Education in chemical biology
Undergraduate education
Despite
an increase in biological research within chemistry departments,
attempts at integrating chemical biology into undergraduate curricula
are lacking. For example, although the American Chemical Society (ACS) requires for
foundational courses in a Chemistry Bachelor's degree to include
biochemistry, no other biology-related chemistry course is required.
Although a chemical biology course is often not required for an
undergraduate degree in Chemistry, many universities now provide
introductory chemical biology courses for their undergraduate students.
The University of British Columbia, for example, offers a fourth-year course in synthetic chemical biology.
Solid
lipid nanoparticles (SLNs). There is only one phospholipid layer
because the bulk of the interior of the particle is composed of
lipophilic substance. Payloads such as modRNA, RNA vaccine or others can be embedded in the interior, as desired. Optionally, targeting-molecules such as antibodies, cell-targeting peptides, and/or other drug molecules can be bound to the exterior surface of the SLN.Liposomes
are ("hollow") lipid nanoparticles which have a phospholipid bilayer as
coat, because the bulk of the interior of the particle is composed of
aqueous substance. In various popular uses, the optional payload is e.g.
DNA vaccines, Gene therapy, vitamins, antibiotics, cosmetics and many others.
Lipid-based nanoparticles are very small spherical particles composed of lipids. They are a novel pharmaceutical drug delivery system (part of nanoparticle drug delivery), and a novel pharmaceutical formulation. There are many subclasses of lipid-based nanoparticles such as: lipid
nanoparticles (LNPs), solid lipid nanoparticles (SLNs), and
nanostructured lipid carriers (NLCs).
Sometimes the term "LNP" describes all lipid-based nanoparticles.
In specific applications, LNPs describe a specific type of lipid-based
nanoparticle, such as the LNPs used for the mRNA vaccine.
A lipid nanoparticle is typically spherical with an average diameter between 10 and 1000 nanometers. LNPs are made up of phospholipids, cholesterols, ionizable lipids, and polyethylene glycol-derived lipids (PEGylated lipids). Each of these components play a key role in LNPs used for mRNA vaccines that target SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19). The ionizable cationic lipids bind to mRNA, PEGylated lipids stabilize LNPs, and phospholipids and cholesterol give LNPs their structure. Because of rapid clearance by the immune system of the positively
charged lipid, neutral ionizable amino lipids were developed. A novel squaramide lipid (a partially aromatic four-membered ring that can participate in pi–pi interactions) has been used as part of the delivery system used, for example, by Moderna.
An SLN is generally spherical and consists of a solid lipid core
stabilized by a surfactant. The core lipids can be fatty acids,
acylglycerols, waxes, and mixtures of these surfactants. Biological
membrane lipids, such as phospholipids, sphingomyelins, bile salts (sodium taurocholate), and sterols (cholesterol) are used as stabilizers. Biological lipids having minimum carrier cytotoxicity and the solid state of the lipid permit better controlled drug release due to increased mass transfer resistance.
Structure of NLCs, SLNs, and LNPs
Nanostructured lipid carriers (NLCs) are lipid-based nanoparticles
that contain a mixture of solid and liquid lipids in the central core of
the lipid carrier. NLCs are derived from SLNs by injecting liquid
lipids into the solid core, resulting in a non-uniform internal core. This modification allows for higher drug capacity and more controlled drug delivery.
Synthesis
General process of LNP synthesis using the solvent-emulsification method
Different formulation procedures include high shear homogenization and ultrasound, solvent emulsification/evaporation, or microemulsion. Obtaining size distributions in the range of 30-180 nm is possible using ultrasonication
at the cost of long sonication time. Solvent-emulsification is suitable
in preparing small, homogeneously sized lipid nanoparticles dispersions
with the advantage of avoiding heat.
The obtained LNP formulation can be filled into sterile
containers and subjected to final quality control. However, various
measures to monitor and evaluate product quality are integrated in every
step of LNP manufacturing and include testing of polydispersity, particle size, drug loading efficiency and endotoxin levels.
Applications
Development of solid lipid nanoparticles is one of the emerging fields of lipid nanotechnology with several potential applications in drug delivery, clinical medicine and research,
as well as in other disciplines. Due to their unique size-dependent
properties, lipid nanoparticles can possibly develop new therapeutics.
The ability to incorporate drugs into nanocarriers offers a new
prototype in drug delivery that could hold great promise for attaining bioavailability
enhancement along with controlled and site-specific drug delivery. SLNs
are also considered to be well tolerated in general, due to their
composition from physiologically similar lipids.
The conventional approaches such as use of permeation
enhancers, surface modification, prodrug synthesis, complex formation
and colloidal lipid carrier-based strategies have been developed for the
delivery of drugs to intestinal lymphatics. In addition, polymeric
nanoparticles, self-emulsifying delivery systems, liposomes, microemulsions,
micellar solutions and recently, solid lipid nanoparticles (SLN) have
been exploited as probable possibilities as carriers for oral intestinal
lymphatic delivery.
Drug delivery
Solid lipid nanoparticles can function as the basis for oral and parenteral drug delivery systems. SLNs combine the advantages of lipid emulsion and polymeric nanoparticle systems while overcoming the temporal and in vivo stability issues that troubles the conventional as well as polymeric nanoparticles drug delivery approaches. It has been proposed that SLNs have many advantages over other
colloidal carriers i.e. incorporation of lipophilic and hydrophilic
drugs feasible, no biotoxicity of the carrier, avoidance of organic
solvents, possibility of controlled drug release and drug targeting,
increased drug stability and no problems with respect to large scale
production. Various functions such as molecules for targeting, PEG chains for stealth properties, or thiol groups for adhesion via disulfide bond formation can be immobilized on their surface. A recent study has demonstrated
the use of solid lipid nanoparticles as a platform for oral delivery of
the nutrient mineral iron, by incorporating the hydrophilic molecule ferrous sulfate (FeSO4) in a lipid matrix composed of stearic acid. Carvedilol-loaded solid lipid nanoparticles were prepared using hot-homogenization technique for oral delivery with compritol and poloxamer 188 as the lipid and surfactant, respectively. Another example of drug delivery using SLN would be oral solid SLN
suspended in distilled water, which was synthesized to trap drugs within
the SLN structure. Upon indigestion, the SLNs are exposed to gastric and intestinal acids that dissolve the SLNs and release the drugs into the system.
Many nano-structured systems have been employed for oculardrug delivery.
SLNs have been looked at as a potential drug carrier system since the
1990s. SLNs do not show biotoxicity as they are prepared from
physiological lipids. SLNs are useful in ocular drug delivery as they
can enhance the corneal absorption of drugs and improve the ocular bioavailability of both hydrophilic and lipophilic drugs. SLNs have another advantage of allowing autoclave sterilization, a necessary step towards formulation of ocular preparations.
Advantages of SLNs include the use of physiological lipids (which
decreases the danger of acute and chronic toxicity), the avoidance of
organic solvents, a potential wide application spectrum (dermal, per os, intravenous) and the high pressure homogenization as an established production method. Additionally, improved bioavailability,
protection of sensitive drug molecules from the outer environment (e.g.
water, light), and even controlled release characteristics were claimed
by the incorporation of poorly water-soluble drugs in the solid lipid
matrix. Moreover, SLNs can carry both lipophilic and hydrophilic drugs,
and are more affordable compared to polymeric/surfactant-based carriers.
Nucleic acids
A significant obstacle to using LNPs as a delivery vehicle for nucleic acids is that in nature, lipids and nucleic acids both carry a negative electric charge—meaning they do not easily mix with each other. While working at Syntex in the mid-1980s, Philip Felgner
pioneered the use of artificially-created cationic lipids
(positively-charged lipids) to bind lipids to nucleic acids in order to transfect the latter into cells. However, by the late 1990s, it was known from in vitro experiments that this use of cationic lipids had undesired side effects on cell membranes.
During the late 1990s and 2000s, Pieter Cullis, while at the University of British Columbia, developed ionizable cationic lipids which are "positively charged at an acidic pH but neutral in the blood." Cullis also led the development of a technique involving careful
adjustments to pH during the process of mixing ingredients in order to
create LNPs which could safely pass through the cell membranes of living
organisms. As of 2021, the current understanding of LNPs formulated with such ionizable cationic lipids is that they enter cells through receptor-mediated endocytosis and end up inside endosomes. The acidity inside the endosomes causes LNPs' ionizable cationic lipids
to acquire a positive charge, and this is thought to allow LNPs to
escape from endosomes and release their RNA payloads.
From 2005 into the early 2010s, LNPs were investigated as a drug delivery system for small interfering RNA (siRNA) drugs. In 2009, Cullis co-founded a company called Acuitas Therapeutics to commercialize his LNP research; Acuitas worked on developing LNPs for Alnylam Pharmaceuticals's siRNA drugs. In 2018, the FDA approved Alnylam's siRNA drug Onpattro (patisiran), the first drug to use LNPs as the drug delivery system.
By that point in time, siRNA drug developers like Alnylam were already looking at other options for future drugs like chemical conjugate systems,
but during the 2010s, the earlier research into using LNPs for siRNA
became a foundation for new research into using LNPs for mRNA. Lipids intended for short siRNA strands did not work well for much
longer mRNA strands, which led to extensive research during the
mid-2010s into the creation of novel ionizable cationic lipids
appropriate for mRNA. As of late 2020, several mRNA vaccines for SARS-CoV-2 use LNPs as
their drug delivery system, including both the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine
and the Pfizer–BioNTech COVID-19 vaccines. Moderna uses its own proprietary ionizable cationic lipid called SM-102, while Pfizer and BioNTech licensed an ionizable cationic lipid called ALC-0315 from Acuitas.
Lymphatic absorption mechanism
Elucidation of intestinal lymphatic absorption mechanism from solid lipid nanoparticles using Caco-2 cell line as in vitro model was developed. Several researchers have shown the enhancement of oral bioavailibility of poorly water-soluble drugs when encapsulated in solid lipid nanoparticle. This enhanced bioavailibility is achieved via lymphatic delivery. To elucidate the absorption mechanism, from solid lipid nanoparticle, human excised Caco-2
cell monolayer could be alternative tissue for development of an
in-vitro model to be used as a screening tool before animal studies are
undertaken. The results obtained in this model suggested that the main
absorption mechanism of carvedilol loaded solid lipid nanoparticle could be endocytosis and, more specifically, clathrin-mediated endocytosis.
Scientific racism, sometimes termed biological racism, is the pseudoscientific belief that the human species is divided into biologically distinct taxa called "races", and that empirical evidence exists to support or justify racial discrimination, racial inferiority, or racial superiority. Before the mid-20th century, scientific racism was accepted throughout
the scientific community, but it is no longer considered scientific. The division of humankind into biologically separate groups, along with
the assignment of particular physical and mental characteristics to
these groups through constructing and applying corresponding explanatory models, is referred to as racialism, racial realism, race realism, or race science by those who support these ideas. Modern scientific consensus rejects this view as being irreconcilable with modern genetic research.
Scientific racism was common during the period from the 1600s to the end of World War II,
and was particularly prominent in European and American academic
writings from the mid-19th century through the early-20th century. Since
the second half of the 20th century, scientific racism has been
discredited and criticized as obsolete and actively harmful, yet has
persistently been used to support or validate racist world-views based
upon belief in the existence and significance of racial categories and a
hierarchy of superior and inferior races.
During the 20th century, anthropologist Franz Boas and biologists Julian Huxley and Lancelot Hogben
were among the earliest leading critics of scientific racism.
Skepticism towards the validity of scientific racism grew during the interwar period, and by the end of World War II, scientific racism in theory and action was formally denounced, especially in UNESCO's early antiracist statement, "The Race Question"
(1950): "The biological fact of race and the myth of 'race' should be
distinguished. For all practical social purposes, 'race' is not so much a
biological phenomenon as a social myth. The myth of 'race' has created
an enormous amount of human and social damage. In recent years, it has
taken a heavy toll in human lives, and caused untold suffering". Since that time, developments in human evolutionary genetics and physical anthropology
have led to a new consensus among anthropologists that human races are a
sociopolitical phenomenon rather than a biological one.
The term scientific racism was popularized by Stephen Jay Gould who used it in his 1981 book The Mismeasure of Man to describe the historical role of science in propagating the ideal of white racial superiority. Today, the term is generally used pejoratively when applied to more modern theories, such as those in The Bell Curve (1994). Critics argue that such works postulate racist conclusions, such as a genetic connection between race and intelligence, that are unsupported by available evidence. Publications such as the Mankind Quarterly,
founded explicitly as a "race-conscious" journal, are generally
regarded as platforms of scientific racism because they publish fringe
interpretations of human evolution, intelligence, ethnography, language, mythology, archaeology, and race.
Antecedents
Enlightenment thinkers
During the Age of Enlightenment (an era from the 1650s to the 1780s), concepts of monogenism and polygenism
became popular, though they would only be systematized
epistemologically during the 19th century. Monogenism contends that all
races have a single origin, while polygenism is the idea that each race
has a separate origin. Until the 18th century, the words "race" and
"species" were interchangeable.
François Bernier
François Bernier
(1620–1688) was a French physician and traveller. In 1684, he published
a brief essay dividing humanity into what he called "races",
distinguishing individuals, particularly women, by skin color and a few
other physical traits. The article was published anonymously in the Journal des Savants,
the earliest academic journal published in Europe, and titled "New
Division of the Earth by the Different Species or 'Races' of Man that
Inhabit It".
In the essay, he distinguished four different races:
The first race included populations from Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, India, south-east Asia, and the Americas
The second race consisted of the sub-Saharan Africans
The third race consisted of the east- and northeast Asians
A product of French salon
culture, the essay placed an emphasis on different kinds of female
beauty. Bernier emphasized that his novel classification was based on
his personal experience as a traveler in different parts of the world.
Bernier offered a distinction between essential genetic differences and
accidental ones that depended on environmental factors. He also
suggested that the latter criterion might be relevant to distinguish
sub-types. His biological classification of racial types never sought to go beyond
physical traits, and he also accepted the role of climate and diet in
explaining degrees of human diversity. Bernier had been the first to
extend the concept of "species of man" to racially classify the entirety
of humanity, but he did not establish a cultural hierarchy between the
so-called "races" that he had conceived. On the other hand, he clearly
placed white Europeans as the norm from which other "races" deviated.
The qualities which he attributed to each race were not strictly Eurocentric,
because he thought that peoples of temperate Europe, the Americas, and
India—although culturally very different from one another—belonged to
roughly the same racial group, and he explained the differences between
the civilizations of India (his main area of expertise) and Europe
through climate and institutional history. By contrast, he emphasized
the biological difference between Europeans and Africans, and made very
negative comments towards the Sámi (Lapps) of the coldest climates of
Northern Europe, and about Africans living at the Cape of Good Hope.
For example, Bernier wrote: "The 'Lappons' compose the 4th race. They
are a small and short race with thick legs, wide shoulders, a short
neck, and a face that I don't know how to describe, except that it's
long, truly awful, and seems reminiscent of a bear's face. I've only
ever seen them twice in Danzig, but according to the portraits I've seen, and from what I've heard from a number of people, they're ugly animals". The significance of Bernier's ideology for the emergence of what
Joan-Pau Rubiés called the "modern racial discourse" has been debated,
with Siep Stuurman considering it the beginning of modern racial
thought, while Rubiés believes it is less significant if Bernier's entire view of humanity is taken into account.
An early scientist who studied race was Robert Boyle (1627–1691), an Anglo-Irish natural philosopher, chemist, physicist, and inventor. Boyle believed in what today is called monogenism, that is, that all races, no matter how diverse, came from the same source: Adam and Eve. He studied reported stories of parents' giving birth to differently coloured albinos,
so he concluded that Adam and Eve were originally white, and that
whites could give birth to different coloured races. Theories of Robert Hooke and Isaac Newton about color and light via optical dispersion in physics were also extended by Robert Boyle into discourses of polygenesis, speculating that perhaps these differences were due to "seminal
impressions". However, Boyle's writings mentioned that at his time, for
"European Eyes", beauty was not measured so much in colour, but in
"stature, comely symmetry of the parts of the body, and good features in
the face". Various members of the scientific community rejected his views, and described them as "disturbing" or "amusing".
Richard Bradley
Richard Bradley (1688–1732) was an English naturalist. In his book titled Philosophical Account of the Works of Nature
(1721), Bradley claimed there to be "five sorts of men" based on their
skin colour and other physical characteristics: white Europeans with
beards; white men in America without beards (meaning Native Americans);
men with copper-coloured skin, small eyes, and straight black hair;
Blacks with straight black hair; and Blacks with curly hair. It has been
speculated that Bradley's account inspired Linnaeus' later
categorisation.
The Scottish lawyer Henry Home, Lord Kames (1696–1782) was a polygenist; he believed God had created different races on Earth in separate regions. In his 1734 book Sketches on the History of Man,
Home claimed that the environment, climate, or state of society could
not account for racial differences, so the races must have come from
distinct, separate stocks.
Carl Linnaeus
Homo monstrosus, or Patagonian giants, from Voyage au pole sud et dans l'Océanie (Voyage to the South Pole, and in Oceania), by Jules Dumont d'Urville
Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778), the Swedish physician, botanist, and zoologist, modified the established taxonomic bases of binomial nomenclature for fauna and flora, and also made a classification of humans into different subgroups. In the twelfth edition of Systema Naturae (1767), he labeled five "varieties" of human species.
Each one was described as possessing the following physiognomic characteristics "varying by culture and place":
The Americanus: red, choleric, upright; black, straight,
thick hair; nostrils flared; face freckled; beardless chin; stubborn,
zealous, free; painting themself with red lines; governed by habit.
The Europeanus:
white, sanguine, muscular; with yellowish, long hair; blue eyes;
gentle, acute, inventive; covered with close vestments; governed by
customs.
The Asiaticus: yellow, melancholic, stiff; black hair, dark eyes; austere, haughty, greedy; covered with loose clothing; governed by beliefs.
The Afer or Africanus: black, phlegmatic, relaxed; black, frizzled hair; silky skin, flat nose, tumid lips; females with elongated labia; mammary glands give milk abundantly; sly, lazy, negligent; anoints themself with grease; governed by caprice.
The Monstrosus were mythologic humans which did not appear in the first editions of Systema Naturae. The sub-species included: the "four-footed, mute, hairy" Homo feralis (Feral man); the animal-reared Juvenis lupinus hessensis (Hessian wolf boy); the Juvenis hannoveranus (Hannoverian boy); the Puella campanica (Wild-girl of Champagne); the agile, but faint-hearted Homo monstrosus (Monstrous man); the Patagonian giant; the Dwarf of the Alps; and the monorchidKhoikhoi (Hottentot). In Amoenitates academicae (1763), Linnaeus presented the mythologicHomo anthropomorpha (Anthropomorphic man), or humanoid creatures, such as the troglodyte, the satyr, the hydra, and the phoenix, incorrectly identified as simian creatures.
There are disagreements about the basis for Linnaeus' human taxa. On
the one hand, his harshest critics say the classification was not only
ethnocentric, but seemed to be based upon skin colour. Renato G.
Mazzolini argued that classifications based on skin colour, at its core,
were a white/black polarity, and that Linnaeus' thinking became
paradigmatic for later racist beliefs. On the other hand, Quintyn (2010) points out that some authors believed
that Linnaeus' classification was based upon geographical distribution,
being cartographically-based, and not hierarchical. In the opinion of Kenneth A. R. Kennedy
(1976), Linnaeus certainly considered his own culture as superior, but
his motives for the classification of human varieties were not
race-centered. Paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould
(1994) argued that the taxa was "not in the ranked order favored by
most Europeans in the racist tradition", and that Linnaeus' division was
influenced by the medical theory of humors, which said that a person's temperament may be related to biological fluids. In a 1994 essay, Gould added: "I don't mean to deny that Linnaeus held
conventional beliefs about the superiority of his own European variety
over others... nevertheless, and despite these implications, the overt
geometry of Linnaeus' model is not linear or hierarchical".
In a 2008 essay published by the Linnean Society of London,
Marie-Christine Skuncke interpreted Linnaeus' statements as reflecting a
view that "Europeans' superiority resides in "culture", and that the
decisive factor in Linnaeus' taxa was "culture", not race". Thus, regarding this topic, Skuncke considers Linnaeus' view as merely "eurocentric",
arguing that Linnaeus never called for racist action, and did not use
the word "race", which was only introduced later "by his French
opponent, Buffon". However, the anthropologist Ashley Montagu, in his book Man's Most Dangerous Myth: the Fallacy of Race, points out that Buffon, indeed "the enemy of all rigid classifications", was diametrically opposed to such broad categories, and did not use the
word "race" to describe them. "It was quite clear, after reading
Buffon, that he uses the word in no narrowly defined, but rather in a
general sense", wrote Montagu, pointing out that Buffon did employ the French word la race,
but as a collective term for whatever population he happened to be
discussing at the time; for instance: "The Danish, Swedish, and
Muscovite Laplanders, the inhabitants of Nova-Zembla, the Borandians,
the Samoiedes, the Ostiacks of the old continent, the Greenlanders, and
the savages to the north of the Esquimaux Indians, of the new continent,
appear to be of one common race".
Scholar Stanley A. Rice agrees that Linnaeus' classification was not meant to "imply a hierarchy of humanness or superiority"; however, modern critics regard Linnaeus' classification as obviously stereotyped and erroneous for having included anthropological, non-biological features, such as customs or traditions.
Charles White
Charles White
Charles White (1728–1813), an English physician and surgeon, believed that races occupied different stations in the "Great Chain of Being",
and he tried to scientifically prove that human races had distinct
origins from each other. He speculated that whites and Negroes were two
different species. White was a believer in polygeny, the idea that different races had been created separately. His Account of the Regular Gradation in Man (1799) provided an empirical basis for this idea. White defended the theory of polygeny by rebutting French naturalist Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon's
interfertility argument, which said that only the same species can
interbreed. White pointed to species hybrids, such as foxes, wolves, and jackals,
which were separate groups that were still able to interbreed. For
White, each race was a separate species, divinely created for its own
geographical region.
Buffon and Blumenbach
Johann Friedrich Blumenbach
The French naturalist Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon (1707–1788) and the German anatomist Johann Blumenbach (1752–1840) were proponents of monogenism, the concept that all races have a single origin. Buffon and Blumenbach believed a "degeneration theory" of the origins of racial difference. Both asserted that Adam and Eve were white, and that other races came about by degeneration owing to environmental factors, such as climate, disease, and diet. According to this model, Negroid pigmentation arose because of the heat of the tropical sun; that cold wind caused the tawny colour of the Eskimos; and that the Chinese had fairer skins than the Tartars, because the former kept mostly in towns, and were protected from environmental factors. Environmental factors, poverty, and hybridization could make races
"degenerate", and differentiate them from the original white race by a
process of "raciation". Interestingly, both Buffon and Blumenbach believed that the
degeneration could be reversed if proper environmental control was
taken, and that all contemporary forms of man could revert to the
original white race.
According to Blumenbach, there are five races, all belonging to a single species: Caucasian, Mongolian, Negroid, American, and the Malay race.
Blumenbach stated: "I have allotted the first place to the Caucasian
for the reasons given below, which make me esteem it the primeval one".
Before James Hutton
and the emergence of scientific geology, many believed the Earth was
only 6,000 years old. Buffon had conducted experiments with heated balls
of iron, which he believed were a model for the Earth's core, and
concluded that the Earth was 75,000 years old, but did not extend the
time since Adam and the origin of humanity back more than 8,000 years—not much further than the 6,000 years of the prevailing Ussher chronology subscribed to by most of the monogenists. Opponents of monogenism believed that it would have been difficult for races to change markedly in such a short period of time.
Benjamin Rush
Benjamin Rush (1745–1813), a Founding Father of the United States and a physician, proposed that being black was a hereditary skin disease,
which he called "negroidism", and that it could be cured. Rush believed
non-whites were actually white underneath, but that they were stricken
with a non-contagious form of leprosy,
which darkened their skin color. Rush drew the conclusion that "whites
should not tyrannize over [blacks], for their disease should entitle
them to a double portion of humanity. However, by the same token, whites
should not intermarry with them, for this would tend to infect
posterity with the 'disorder'... attempts must be made to cure the
disease".
Christoph Meiners
Christoph Meiners
Christoph Meiners (1747–1810) was a German polygenist,
and believed that each race had a separate origin. Meiners studied the
physical, mental, and moral characteristics of each race, and built a
race hierarchy based on his findings. Meiners split mankind into two
divisions, which he labelled the "beautiful white race" and the "ugly black race". In his book titled The Outline of History of Mankind,
Meiners argued that a main characteristic of race is either beauty or
ugliness. Meiners thought only the white race to be beautiful, and
considered ugly races to be inferior, immoral, and animal-like. Meiners
wrote about how the dark, ugly peoples were differentiated from the
white, beautiful peoples by their "sad" lack of virtue and their
"terrible vices".
Meiners hypothesized about how the Negro felt less pain than any
other race, and lacked in emotions. Meiners wrote that the Negro had
thick nerves, and thus, was not sensitive like the other races. He went
so far as to say that the Negro possessed "no human, barely any animal,
feeling". Meiners described a story where a Negro was condemned to death
by being burned alive. Halfway through the burning, the Negro asked to
smoke a pipe, and smoked it like nothing was happening while he
continued to be burned alive. Meiners studied the anatomy of the Negro, and came to the conclusion that Negroes were all carnivores,
based upon his observations that Negroes had bigger teeth and jaws than
any other race. Meiners claimed the skull of the Negro was larger, but
the brain of the Negro was smaller than any other race. Meiners
theorized that the Negro was the most unhealthy race on Earth because of
its poor diet, mode of living, and lack of morals.
Meiners studied the diet of the Americans, and said they fed off any kind of "foul offal",
and consumed copious amounts of alcohol. He believed their skulls were
so thick that the blades of Spanish swords shattered on them. Meiners
also claimed the skin of an American is thicker than that of an ox.
Meiners wrote that the noblest race was the Celts.
This was based upon assertions that they were able to conquer various
parts of the world, they were more sensitive to heat and cold, and their
delicacy is shown by the way they are selective about what they eat.
Meiners claimed that Slavs
are an inferior race, "less sensitive and content with eating rough
food". He described stories of Slavs allegedly eating poisonous fungi
without coming to any harm. He claimed that their medical techniques
were also counterproductive; as an example, Meiners described their
practice of warming up sick people in ovens, then making them roll in
the snow.
Later thinkers
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) was an American politician, scientist,and slave owner. His contributions to scientific racism have been noted
by many historians, scientists, and scholars. According to an article
published in the McGill Journal of Medicine: "One of the most
influential pre-Darwinian racial theorists, Jefferson's call for science
to determine the obvious 'inferiority' of African Americans is an
extremely important stage in the evolution of scientific racism". Writing for The New York Times, historian Paul Finkelman
described how as "a scientist, Jefferson nevertheless speculated that
blackness might come 'from the color of the blood,' and concluded that
blacks were 'inferior to the whites in the endowments of body and
mind'". In his "Notes on the State of Virginia", Jefferson described black people as follows:
They seem to require less sleep. A black, after hard
labor through the day, will be induced by the slightest amusements to
sit up till midnight, or later, though knowing he must be out with the
first dawn of the morning. They are at least as brave, and more
adventuresome. But, this may perhaps proceed from a want of forethought,
which prevents their seeing a danger till it be present. When present,
they do not go through it with more coolness or steadiness than the
whites. They are more ardent after their female: but love seems with
them to be more an eager desire, than a tender delicate mixture of
sentiment and sensation. Their griefs are transient. Those numberless
afflictions, which render it doubtful whether heaven has given life to
us in mercy or in wrath, are less felt, and sooner forgotten with them.
In general, their existence appears to participate more of sensation
than reflection... Comparing them by their faculties of memory, reason,
and imagination, it appears to me, that in memory, they are equal to the
whites; in reason, much inferior, as I think one [black] could scarcely
be found capable of tracing and comprehending the investigations of
Euclid; and that in imagination, they are dull, tasteless, and
anomalous... I advance it, therefore, as a suspicion only, that the
blacks, whether originally a distinct race, or made distinct by time and
circumstances, are inferior to the whites in the endowments both of
body and mind.
However, by 1791, Jefferson had to reassess his earlier suspicions of
whether blacks were capable of intelligence when he was presented with a
letter and almanac from Benjamin Banneker,
an educated black mathematician. Delighted to have discovered
scientific proof for the existence of black intelligence, Jefferson
wrote to Banneker:
No body wishes more than I do to see such proofs as you
exhibit, that nature has given to our black brethren, talents equal to
those of the other colors of men, & that the appearance of a want of
them is owing merely to the degraded condition of their existence both
in Africa & America. I can add with truth that no body wishes more
ardently to see a good system commenced for raising the condition both
of their body & mind to what it ought to be, as fast as the
imbecility of their present existence, and other circumstance which
cannot be neglected, will admit.
Samuel Stanhope Smith
Samuel Stanhope Smith (1751–1819) was an American Presbyterian minister and author of the Essay on the Causes of Variety of Complexion and Figure in the Human Species
(1787). Smith claimed that Negro pigmentation was nothing more than a
huge freckle that covered the whole body as a result of an oversupply of
bile, which was caused by tropical climates.
Georges Cuvier
Georges Cuvier
Racial studies by Georges Cuvier (1769–1832), the French naturalist and zoologist, influenced both scientific polygenism and scientific racism. Cuvier believed there were three distinct races: the Caucasian (white), Mongolian
(yellow), and the Ethiopian (black). He rated each for the beauty or
ugliness of the skull and quality of their civilizations. Cuvier wrote
about Caucasians: "The white race, with oval face, straight hair and
nose, to which the civilised people of Europe belong, and which appear
to us the most beautiful of all, is also superior to others by its
genius, courage, and activity".
Regarding Negroes, Cuvier wrote:
The Negro race ... is marked by black complexion, crisped
or woolly hair, compressed cranium, and a flat nose. The projection of
the lower parts of the face, and the thick lips, evidently approximate
it to the monkey tribe: the hordes of which it consists have always
remained in the most complete state of barbarism.
He thought Adam and Eve
were Caucasian, and hence, the original race of mankind. The other two
races arose by survivors escaping in different directions after a major
catastrophe hit the earth approximately 5,000 years ago. Cuvier
theorized that the survivors lived in complete isolation from each
other, and developed separately as a result.
One of Cuvier's pupils, Friedrich Tiedemann,
was among the first to make a scientific contestation of racism.
Tiedemann asserted that based upon his documentation of craniometric and
brain measurements of Europeans and black people from different parts
of the world, that the then-common European belief that Negroes have
smaller brains, and are thus intellectually inferior, was scientifically
unfounded, and based merely on the prejudice of travellers and
explorers.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
The German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer
(1788–1860) attributed civilizational primacy to the white races, who
gained sensitivity and intelligence via the refinement caused by living
in the rigorous Northern climate:
The highest civilization and culture, apart from the ancient Hindus and Egyptians,
are found exclusively among the white races; and even with many dark
peoples, the ruling caste, or race, is fairer in colour than the rest,
and has, therefore, evidently immigrated, for example, the Brahmins, the Inca, and the rulers of the South Sea Islands.
All this is due to the fact that necessity is the mother of invention,
because those tribes that emigrated early to the north, and there
gradually became white, had to develop all their intellectual powers,
and invent and perfect all the arts in their struggle with need, want,
and misery, which, in their many forms, were brought about by the
climate. This they had to do to make up for the parsimony of nature, and out of it all came their high civilization.
Racial theories in physical anthropology (1850–1918)
A late-19th-century illustration by H. Strickland Constable shows an alleged similarity between "Irish Iberian" and "Negro" features in contrast to the higher "Anglo-Teutonic".
The scientific classification established by Carl Linnaeus is requisite to any human racial classification scheme. In the 19th century, unilineal evolution, or classical social evolution, was a conflation of competing sociologic and anthropologic theories proposing that Western European culture was the acme of human socio-cultural evolution. The Christian Bible was interpreted to sanction slavery and from the 1820s to the 1850s was often used in the antebellum Southern United States, by writers such as the Rev. Richard Furman and Thomas R. Cobb, to enforce the idea that Negroes had been created inferior, and thus suited to slavery.
The French aristocrat and writer Arthur de Gobineau (1816–1882), is best known for his book An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races (1853–55) which proposed three human races (black, white and yellow) were natural barriers and claimed that race mixing
would lead to the collapse of culture and civilization. He claimed that
"The white race originally possessed the monopoly of beauty,
intelligence and strength" and that any positive accomplishments or
thinking of blacks and Asians were due to an admixture with whites. His
works were praised by many white supremacist American pro-slavery
thinkers such as Josiah C. Nott and Henry Hotze.
Gobineau believed that the different races originated in
different areas, the white race had originated somewhere in Siberia, the
Asians in the Americas and the blacks in Africa. He believed that the
white race was superior, writing:
I will not wait for the friends of
equality to show me such and such passages in books written by
missionaries or sea captains, who declare some Wolof is a fine
carpenter, some Hottentot a good servant, that a Kaffir dances and plays
the violin, that some Bambara knows arithmetic... Let us leave aside
these puerilities and compare together not men, but groups.
Gobineau later used the term "Aryans" to describe the Germanic peoples (la race germanique).
Gobineau's works were also influential to the Nazi Party, which published his works in German. They played a key role in the master race theory of Nazism.
Carl Vogt
Carl Vogt in 1870
Another polygenist evolutionist was Carl Vogt
(1817–1895) who believed that the Negro race was related to the ape. He
wrote the white race was a separate species to Negroes. In Chapter VII
of his Lectures of Man (1864) he compared the Negro to the white
race whom he described as "two extreme human types". The difference
between them, he claimed are greater than those between two species of
ape; and this proves that Negroes are a separate species from the
whites.
Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin in 1868
Charles Darwin's
views on race have been a topic of much discussion and debate.
According to Jackson and Weidman, Darwin was a moderate in the 19th
century debates about race. "He was not a confirmed racist — he was a
staunch abolitionist, for example — but he did think that there were
distinct races that could be ranked in a hierarchy".
Darwin's influential 1859 book On the Origin of Species did not discuss human origins. The extended wording on the title page, which adds by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, uses the general terminology of biological races as an alternative for "varieties" such as "the several races, for instance, of the cabbage", and does not carry the modern connotation of human races. In The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex
(1871), Darwin examined the question of "Arguments in favour of, and
opposed to, ranking the so-called races of man as distinct species" and
reported no racial distinctions that would indicate that human races are
discrete species.
The historian Richard Hofstadter wrote:
Although Darwinism was not the
primary source of the belligerent ideology and dogmatic racism of the
late nineteenth century, it did become a new instrument in the hands of
the theorists of race and struggle... The Darwinist mood sustained the
belief in Anglo-Saxon racial superiority which obsessed many American
thinkers in the latter half of the nineteenth century. The measure of
world domination already achieved by the 'race' seemed to prove it the
fittest.
According to the historian Gertrude Himmelfarb, "The subtitle of [The Origin of Species]
made a convenient motto for racists: 'The Preservation of Favoured
Races in the Struggle for Life.' Darwin, of course, took 'races' to mean
varieties or species; but it was no violation of his meaning to extend
it to human races.... Darwin himself, in spite of his aversion to
slavery, was not averse to the idea that some races were more fit than
others".
On the other hand, Robert Bannister defended Darwin on the issue
of race, writing that "Upon closer inspection, the case against Darwin
himself quickly unravels. An ardent opponent of slavery, he consistently
opposed the oppression of nonwhites... Although by modern standards The Descent of Man
is frustratingly inconclusive on the critical issues of human equality,
it was a model of moderation and scientific caution in the context of
midcentury racism".
According to Myrna Perez Sheldon, Darwin believed that different
races gained their 'population-level characteristics' via sexual
selection. Previously, race theorists conceptualized race as a 'stable
blood essence' and that these 'essences' mixed when miscegenation
occurred.
Herbert Hope Risley
Herbert Hope Risley
As an exponent of "race science", colonial administrator Herbert Hope Risley (1851–1911) used the ratio of the width of a nose to its height to divide Indian people into Aryan and Dravidian races, as well as seven castes.
Ernst Haeckel
Ernst Haeckel
Ernst Haeckel (1834–1919) supported a doctrine of evolutionary polygenism based on the ideas of the linguist and polygenist August Schleicher, in which several different language groups had arisen separately from speechless prehuman Urmenschen
(German for 'original humans'), which themselves had evolved from
simian ancestors. These separate languages had completed the transition
from animals to man, and, under the influence of each main branch of
languages, humans had evolved as separate species, which could be
subdivided into races. Haeckel divided human beings into ten races, of
which the Caucasian was the highest and the primitives were doomed to
extinction. Haeckel was also an advocate of the out of Asia theory by writing that the origin of humanity was to be found in Asia; he believed that Hindustan
(South Asia) was the actual location where the first humans had
evolved. Haeckel argued that humans were closely related to the primates
of Southeast Asia and rejected Darwin's hypothesis of Africa.
Haeckel also wrote that Negroes have stronger and more freely
movable toes than any other race which is evidence that Negroes are
related to apes because when apes stop climbing in trees they hold on to
the trees with their toes. Haeckel compared Negroes to "four-handed"
apes. Haeckel also believed Negroes were savages and that whites were
the most civilised.
The Dutch scholar Pieter Camper
(1722–89), an early craniometric theoretician, used "craniometry"
(interior skull-volume measurement) to scientifically justify racial
differences. In 1770, he conceived of the facial angle
to measure intelligence among species of men. The facial angle was
formed by drawing two lines: a horizontal line from nostril to ear; and a
vertical line from the upper-jawbone prominence to the forehead
prominence. Camper's craniometry reported that antique statues (the
Greco-Roman ideal) had a 90-degree facial angle, whites an 80-degree
angle, blacks a 70-degree angle, and the orangutan a 58-degree facial angle—thus he established a racist biological hierarchy for mankind, per the Decadent conception of history. Such scientific racist researches were continued by the naturalist Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire (1772–1844) and the anthropologist Paul Broca (1824–1880).
Samuel George Morton
Racialist differences: "a Negro head ... a Caucasian skull ... a Mongol head", Samuel George Morton, 1839
In the 19th century, an early American physical anthropologist, physician and polygenist Samuel George Morton
(1799–1851), collected human skulls from worldwide, and attempted a
logical classification scheme. Influenced by contemporary racialist
theory, Dr Morton said he could judge racial intellectual capacity by
measuring the interior cranial capacity, hence a large skull denoted a large brain, thus high intellectual
capacity. Conversely, a small skull denoted a small brain, thus low
intellectual capacity; superior and inferior established. After
inspecting three mummies from ancient Egyptian catacombs, Morton
concluded that Caucasians and Negroes were already distinct three
thousand years ago. Since interpretations of the bible indicated that Noah's Ark had washed up on Mount Ararat
only a thousand years earlier, Morton claimed that Noah's sons could
not possibly account for every race on earth. According to Morton's
theory of polygenesis, races have been separate since the start.
In Morton's Crania Americana, his claims were based on craniometry
data, that the Caucasians had the biggest brains, averaging 87 cubic
inches, Native Americans were in the middle with an average of 82 cubic
inches and Negroes had the smallest brains with an average of 78 cubic
inches.
In The Mismeasure of Man (1981), the evolutionary biologist and historian of scienceStephen Jay Gould
argued that Samuel Morton had falsified the craniometric data, perhaps
inadvertently over-packing some skulls, to so produce results that would
legitimize the racist presumptions he was attempting to prove. A
subsequent study by the anthropologist
John Michael found Morton's original data to be more accurate than
Gould describes, concluding that "[c]ontrary to Gould's
interpretation... Morton's research was conducted with integrity". Jason Lewis and colleagues reached similar conclusions as Michael in
their reanalysis of Morton's skull collection; however, they depart from
Morton's racist conclusions by adding that "studies have demonstrated
that modern human variation is generally continuous, rather than
discrete or "racial", and that most variation in modern humans is
within, rather than between, populations".
In 1873, Paul Broca, founder of the Anthropological Society of Paris (1859), found the same pattern of measures—that Crania Americana reported—by weighing specimen brains at autopsy.
Other historical studies, proposing a black race–white race,
intelligence–brain size difference, include those by Bean (1906), Mall
(1909), Pearl (1934), and Vint (1934).
Nicolás Palacios
After the War of the Pacific (1879–83) there was a rise of racial and national superiority ideas among the Chilean ruling class. In his 1918 book physician Nicolás Palacios argued for the existence of Chilean race and its superiority when compared to neighboring peoples. He thought Chileans were a mix of two martial races: the indigenous Mapuches and the Visigoths of Spain, who descended ultimately from Götaland in Sweden. Palacios argued on medical grounds against immigration to Chile from southern Europe claiming that Mestizos who are of south European stock lack "cerebral control" and are a social burden.
Samuel Morton's followers, especially Dr Josiah C. Nott (1804–1873) and George Gliddon (1809–1857), extended Dr Morton's ideas in Types of Mankind (1854), claiming that Morton's findings supported the notion of polygenism (mankind has discrete genetic ancestries; the races are evolutionarily unrelated), which is a predecessor of the modern human multiregional origin hypothesis. Moreover, Morton himself had been reluctant to espouse polygenism, because it theologically challenged the Christian creation myth espoused in the Bible.
Later, in The Descent of Man (1871), Charles Darwin proposed the single-origin hypothesis, i.e., monogenism—mankind
has a common genetic ancestry, the races are related, opposing
everything that the polygenism of Nott and Gliddon proposed.
One of the first typologies used to classify various human races was invented by Georges Vacher de Lapouge (1854–1936), a theoretician of eugenics, who published in 1899 L'Aryen et son rôle social ("The Aryan
and his social role"). In this book, he classified humanity into
various, hierarchized races, spanning from the "Aryan white race,
dolichocephalic", to the "brachycephalic", "mediocre and inert" race,
best represented by Southern European, Catholic peasants". Between these, Vacher de Lapouge identified the "Homo europaeus" (Teutonic, Protestant, etc.), the "Homo alpinus" (Auvergnat, Turkish, etc.), and finally the "Homo mediterraneus" (Neapolitan, Andalus,
etc.) Jews were dolichocephalic like the Aryans, according to Lapouge,
but exactly for this reason he considered them to be dangerous; they
were the only group, he thought, threatening to displace the Aryan
aristocracy. Vacher de Lapouge became one of the leading inspirators of Naziantisemitism and Nazi racist ideology.
Vacher de Lapouge's classification was mirrored in William Z. Ripley in The Races of Europe (1899), a book which had a large influence on American white supremacism. Ripley even made a map of Europe according to the alleged cephalic index of its inhabitants. He was an important influence of the American eugenist Madison Grant.
Joseph Deniker
Furthermore, according to John Efron of Indiana University, the late 19th century also witnessed "the scientizing of anti-Jewish prejudice", stigmatizing Jews with male menstruation, pathological hysteria, and nymphomania.At the same time, several Jews, such as Joseph Jacobs or Samuel Weissenberg, also endorsed the same pseudoscientific theories, convinced that the Jews formed a distinct race.Chaim Zhitlovsky also attempted to define Yiddishkayt (Ashkenazi Jewishness) by turning to contemporary racial theory.
Joseph Deniker (1852–1918) was one of William Z. Ripley's
principal opponents; whereas Ripley maintained, as did Vacher de
Lapouge, that the European populace comprised three races, Joseph
Deniker proposed that the European populace comprised ten races (six
primary and four sub-races). Furthermore, he proposed that the concept
of "race" was ambiguous, and in its stead proposed the compound word "ethnic group", which later prominently featured in the works of Julian Huxley and Alfred C. Haddon.
Moreover, Ripley argued that Deniker's "race" idea should be denoted a
"type", because it was less biologically rigid than most racial
classifications.
Ideological applications
Madison Grant, creator of the Nordic race term
Nordicism
Joseph Deniker's contribution to racist theory was La Race nordique (the Nordic race), a generic, racial-stock descriptor, which the American eugenicistMadison Grant
(1865–1937) presented as the white racial engine of world civilization.
Having adopted Ripley's three-race European populace model, but
disliking the Teuton race name, he transliterated la race nordique
into 'the Nordic race', the acme of the concocted racial hierarchy,
based upon his racial classification theory, popular in the 1910s and
1920s.
The State Institute for Racial Biology (Swedish: Statens Institut för Rasbiologi) and its director Herman Lundborg in Sweden were active in racist research. Furthermore, much of early research on Ural-Altaic languages
was coloured by attempts at justifying the view that European peoples
east of Sweden were Asian and thus of an inferior race, justifying
colonialism, eugenics and racial hygiene.The book The Passing of the Great Race
(Or, The Racial Basis of European History) by American eugenicist,
lawyer, and amateur anthropologist Madison Grant was published in 1916.
Though influential, the book was largely ignored when it first appeared,
and it went through several revisions and editions. Nevertheless, the
book was used by people who advocated restricted immigration as
justification for what became known as scientific racism.
Justification of slavery in the United States
Samuel Cartwright, M.D.
In the United States, scientific racism justified Black African slavery to assuage moral opposition to the Atlantic slave trade. In 1972, Alexander Thomas and Samuell Sillen documented how blacks' supposed "primitive mentality"
was used to justify black men as uniquely fitted for bondage. In 1851, in antebellum Louisiana, the physician Samuel A. Cartwright (1793–1863) wrote of slave escape attempts as "drapetomania", a treatable mental illness,
that "with proper medical advice, strictly followed, this troublesome
practice that many Negroes have of running away can be almost entirely
prevented". The term drapetomania (mania of the runaway slave) derives from the Greek δραπέτης (drapetes, 'a runaway [slave]') and μανία (mania, 'madness, frenzy'). Cartwright also described dysaesthesia aethiopica, called "rascality" by overseers. The 1840 United States census
claimed that Northern, free blacks suffered mental illness at higher
rates than did their Southern, enslaved counterparts. Though the census
was later found to have been severely flawed by the American Statistical Association, it became a political weapon against abolitionists. Southern slavers concluded that escaping Negroes were suffering from "mental disorders".
At the time of the American Civil War (1861–1865), the matter of miscegenation prompted studies of ostensible physiological differences between Caucasians and Negroes. Early anthropologists, such as Josiah Clark Nott, George Robins Gliddon, Robert Knox, and Samuel George Morton, aimed to scientifically prove that Negroes were a human species different from the white people; that the rulers of Ancient Egypt
were not African; and that mixed-race offspring (the product of
miscegenation) tended to physical weakness and infertility. After the
Civil War, Southern (Confederacy) physicians wrote textbooks of
scientific racism based upon studies claiming that black freemen
(ex-slaves) were becoming extinct, because they were inadequate to the
demands of being a free man—implying that black people benefited from
enslavement.
In Medical Apartheid, Harriet A. Washington noted the
prevalence of two different views on blacks in the 19th century: the
belief that they were inferior and "riddled with imperfections from head
to toe", and the idea that they did not know true pain and suffering
because of their primitive nervous systems (and that slavery was
therefore justifiable). Washington noted the failure of scientists to
accept the inconsistency between these two viewpoints, writing that:
in the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries, scientific racism was simply science, and it was promulgated
by the very best minds at the most prestigious institutions of the
nation. Other, more logical medical theories stressed the equality of
Africans and laid poor black health at the feet of their abusers, but
these never enjoyed the appeal of the medical philosophy that justified
slavery and, along with it, our nation's profitable way of life.
Even after the end of the Civil War, some scientists continued to
justify the institution of slavery by citing the effect of topography
and climate on racial development. Nathaniel Shaler, a prominent geologist at Harvard University from 1869 to 1906, published the book Man and the Earth
in 1905 describing the physical geography of different continents and
linking these geologic settings to the intelligence and strength of
human races that inhabited these spaces. Shaler argued that North
American climate and geology was ideally suited for the institution of
slavery.
Scientific racism played a role in establishing apartheid in South Africa. In South Africa, white scientists, like Dudly Kidd, who published The essential Kafir
in 1904, sought to "understand the African mind". They believed that
the cultural differences between whites and blacks in South Africa might
be caused by physiological differences in the brain. Rather than
suggesting that Africans were "overgrown children", as early white
explorers had, Kidd believed that Africans were "misgrown with a
vengeance". He described Africans as at once "hopelessly deficient", yet
"very shrewd".
The Carnegie Commission on the Poor White Problem in South Africa
played a key role in establishing apartheid in South Africa. According
to one memorandum sent to Frederick Keppel, then president of the Carnegie Corporation,
there was "little doubt that if the natives were given full economic
opportunity, the more competent among them would soon outstrip the less
competent whites". Keppel's support for the project of creating the report was motivated
by his concern with the maintenance of existing racial boundaries. The preoccupation of the Carnegie Corporation with the so-called poor
white problem in South Africa was at least in part the outcome of
similar misgivings about the state of poor whites in the southern United
States.
The report was five volumes in length. Around the start of the 20th century, white Americans, and whites
elsewhere in the world, felt uneasy because poverty and economic
depression seemed to strike people regardless of race.
Though the ground work for apartheid began earlier, the report
provided support for this central idea of black inferiority. This was
used to justify racial segregation and discrimination in the following decades. The report expressed fear about the loss of white racial pride, and in
particular pointed to the danger that the poor white would not be able
to resist the process of "Africanisation".
Although scientific racism played a role in justifying and supporting institutional racism
in South Africa, it was not as important in South Africa as it has been
in Europe and the United States. This was due in part to the "poor
white problem", which raised serious questions for supremacists about
white racial superiority. Since poor whites were found to be in the same situation as natives in
the African environment, the idea that intrinsic white superiority could
overcome any environment did not seem to hold. As such, scientific
justifications for racism were not as useful in South Africa.
Racial hygiene was historically tied to traditional notions of public health, but with emphasis on heredity—what philosopher and historian Michel Foucault has called state racism. In 1869, Francis Galton
(1822–1911) proposed the first social measures meant to preserve or
enhance biological characteristics, and later coined the term eugenics. Galton, a statistician, introduced correlation and regression analysis and discovered regression toward the mean. He was also the first to study human differences and inheritance of intelligence with statistical methods. He introduced the use of questionnaires and surveys to collect data on population sets, which he needed for genealogical and biographical works and for anthropometric studies. Galton also founded psychometrics, the science of measuring mental faculties, and differential psychology, a branch of psychology concerned with psychological differences between people rather than common traits.
Like scientific racism, eugenics grew popular in the early 20th century, and both ideas influenced Nazi racial policies and Nazi eugenics. In 1901, Galton, Karl Pearson (1857–1936) and Walter F. R. Weldon (1860–1906) founded the Biometrika scientific journal, which promoted biometrics and statistical analysis of heredity. Charles Davenport (1866–1944) was briefly involved in the review. In Race Crossing in Jamaica (1929), he made statistical arguments that biological and cultural degradation followed white and black interbreeding. Davenport was connected to Nazi Germany before and during World War II. In 1939 he wrote a contribution to the festschrift for Otto Reche (1879–1966), who became an important figure within the plan to remove populations considered "inferior" from eastern Germany.
Early intelligence testing and the Immigration Act of 1924
Before the 1920s, social scientists agreed that whites were superior
to blacks, but they needed a way to prove this to back social policy in
favor of whites. They felt the best way to gauge this was through
testing intelligence. By interpreting the tests to show favor to whites
these test makers' research results portrayed all minority groups very
negatively. In 1908, Henry Goddard translated the Binet intelligence test from French and in 1912 began to apply the test to incoming immigrants on Ellis Island. Some claim that in a study of immigrants Goddard reached the conclusion
that 87% of Russians, 83% of Jews, 80% of Hungarians, and 79% of
Italians were feeble-minded and had a mental age less than 12. Some have also claimed that this information was taken as "evidence" by lawmakers and thus it affected social policy for years. Bernard Davis has pointed out that, in the first sentence of his paper,
Goddard wrote that the subjects of the study were not typical members
of their groups but were selected because of their suspected sub-normal
intelligence. Davis has further noted that Goddard argued that the low
IQs of the test subjects were more likely due to environmental rather
than genetic factors, and that Goddard concluded that "we may be
confident that their children will be of average intelligence and if
rightly brought up will be good citizens". In 1996 the American Psychological Association's Board of Scientific
Affairs stated that IQ tests were not discriminatory towards any
ethnic/racial groups.
In his book The Mismeasure of Man, Stephen Jay Gould argued that intelligence testing results played a major role in the passage of the Immigration Act of 1924 that restricted immigration to the United States. However, Mark Snyderman and Richard J. Herrnstein, after studying the Congressional Record
and committee hearings related to the Immigration Act, concluded "the
[intelligence] testing community did not generally view its findings as
favoring restrictive immigration policies like those in the 1924 Act,
and Congress took virtually no notice of intelligence testing".
Juan N. Franco contested the findings of Snyderman and
Herrnstein. Franco stated that even though Snyderman and Herrnstein
reported that the data collected from the results of the intelligence
tests were in no way used to pass The Immigration Act of 1924, the IQ
test results were still taken into consideration by legislators. As
suggestive evidence, Franco pointed to the following fact: Following the
passage of the immigration act, information from the 1890 census was
used to set quotas based on percentages of immigrants coming from
different countries. Based on these data, the legislature restricted the
entrance of immigrants from southern and eastern Europe into the United
States and allowed more immigrants from northern and Western Europe
into the country. The use of the 1900, 1910 or 1920 census data sets
would have resulted in larger numbers of immigrants from southern and
eastern Europe being allowed into the U.S. However, Franco pointed out
that using the 1890 census data allowed congress to exclude southern and
eastern Europeans (who performed worse on IQ tests of the time than did
western and northern Europeans) from the U.S. Franco argued that the
work Snyderman and Herrnstein conducted on this matter neither proved or
disproved that intelligence testing influenced immigration laws.
Sweden
The Swedish State Institute for Racial Biology,
founded in 1922, was the world's first government-funded institute
performing research into racial biology. It was housed in what is now
the Dean's house at Uppsala and was closed down in 1958.
Following the creation of the first society for the promotion of racial hygiene, the German Society for Racial Hygiene in 1905—a Swedish society was founded in 1909 as the Svenska sällskapet för rashygien, the third in the world. By lobbying Swedish parliamentarians and medical institutes the society
managed to pass a decree creating a government-run institute in the
form of the Swedish State Institute for Racial Biology in 1921. By 1922 the institute was built and opened in Uppsala. It was the first such government-funded institute in the world
performing research into "racial biology" and remains highly
controversial to this day. It was the most prominent institution for the study of "racial science" in Sweden. The goal was to cure criminality, alcoholism and psychiatric problems through research in eugenics and racial hygiene. As a result of the institute's work, a law permitting compulsory sterilization of certain groups was enacted in Sweden in 1934. The second president of the institute Gunnar Dahlberg was highly critical of the validity of the science performed at the institute and reshaped the institute toward a focus on genetics. In 1958 it closed down and all remaining research was moved to the Department of Medical Genetics at Uppsala University.
The Nazi Party and its sympathizers published many books on scientific racism, seizing on the eugenicist and antisemitic
ideas with which they were widely associated, although these ideas had
been in circulation since the 19th century. Books such as Rassenkunde des deutschen Volkes ("Racial Science of the German People") by Hans Günther (first published in 1922) and Rasse und Seele ("Race and Soul") by Ludwig Ferdinand Clauß [de] (published under different titles between 1926 and 1934) attempted to scientifically identify differences between the German, Nordic, or Aryan people and other, supposedly inferior, groups. German schools used these books as texts during the Nazi era. In the early 1930s, the Nazis used racialized scientific rhetoric based on social Darwinism to push its restrictive and discriminatory social policies.
During World War II, Nazi racialist beliefs became anathema in the United States, and Boasians such as Ruth Benedict consolidated their institutional power. After the war, discovery of the Holocaust and Nazi abuses of scientific research (such as Josef Mengele's ethical violations and other war crimes revealed at the Nuremberg Trials) led most of the scientific community to repudiate scientific support for racism.
Propaganda for the Nazi eugenics program began with propaganda for eugenic sterilization. Articles in Neues Volk described the appearance of the mentally ill and the importance of preventing such births. Photographs of mentally incapacitated children were juxtaposed with those of healthy children. The film Das Erbe showed conflict in nature in order to legitimize the Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring by sterilization.
Although the child was "the most important treasure of the
people", this did not apply to all children, even German ones, only to
those with no hereditary weaknesses. Nazi Germany's racially based social policies placed the improvement of the Aryan race through eugenics at the center of Nazi ideology. People targeted by this policy included criminals, "degenerates", "dissidents" who opposed the Nazification of Germany, the "feeble minded", Jewish people, homosexuals, the insane, idle and "weak". As they were seen as people who fit the criteria of "life unworthy of life" (German: Lebensunwertes Leben), they should thus not be allowed to procreate and pass on their genes or heritage. Although they were still regarded as "Aryan", Nazi ideology deemed Slavs (i.e., Poles, Russians, Ukrainians, etc.) to be racially inferior to the Germanic master race, suitable for expulsion, enslavement, or even extermination.
In the 20th century, concepts of scientific racism, which sought to
prove the physical and mental inadequacy of groups deemed "inferior",
was relied upon to justify involuntary sterilization programs. Such programs, promoted by eugenicists such as Harry H. Laughlin, were upheld as constitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court in Buck v. Bell (1927). In all, between 60,000 and 90,000 Americans were subjected to involuntary sterilization.
Scientific racism was also used as a justification for the Emergency Quota Act of 1921 and the Immigration Act of 1924
(Johnson–Reed Act), which imposed racial quotas limiting Italian
American immigration to the United States and immigration from other
southern European and eastern European nations. Proponents of these
quotas, who sought to block "undesirable" immigrants, justifying
restrictions by invoking scientific racism.
Lothrop Stoddard published many racialist books on what he saw as the peril of immigration, his most famous being The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy
in 1920. In this book he presented a view of the world situation
pertaining to race focusing concern on the coming population explosion
among the "colored" peoples of the world and the way in which "white
world-supremacy" was being lessened in the wake of World War I and the
collapse of colonialism.
Stoddard's analysis divided world politics and situations into
"white", "yellow", "black", "Amerindian", and "brown" peoples and their
interactions. Stoddard argued race and heredity were the guiding factors
of history and civilization, and that the elimination or absorption of
the "white" race by "colored" races would result in the destruction of
Western civilization. Like Madison Grant, Stoddard divided the white
race into three main divisions: Nordic, Alpine, and Mediterranean. He
considered all three to be of good stock, and far above the quality of
the colored races, but argued that the Nordic was the greatest of the
three and needed to be preserved by way of eugenics. Unlike Grant,
Stoddard was less concerned with which varieties of European people were
superior to others (Nordic theory), but was more concerned with what he
called "bi-racialism", seeing the world as being composed of simply
"colored" and "white" races. In the years after the Great Migration and
World War I, Grant's racial theory would fall out of favor in the U.S.
in favor of a model closer to Stoddard's.
Coon's school of thought was the object of increasing opposition in mainstream anthropology after World War II. Ashley Montagu was particularly vocal in denouncing Coon, especially in his Man's Most Dangerous Myth: The Fallacy of Race.
By the 1960s, Coon's approach had been rendered obsolete in mainstream
anthropology, but his system continued to appear in publications by his
student John Lawrence Angel as late as in the 1970s.
By 1954, 58 years after the Plessy v. Ferguson upholding of
racial segregation in the United States, American popular and scholarly
opinions of scientific racism and its sociologic practice had evolved.
In 1960, the journal Mankind Quarterly was founded, which is commonly described as a venue for scientific racism and white supremacy, and as lacking a legitimate scholarly purpose. The journal was founded in 1960, partly in response to the Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education which desegregated the American public school system.
In April 1966, Alex Haley interviewed American Nazi Party founder George Lincoln Rockwell for Playboy.
Rockwell justified his belief that blacks were inferior to whites by
citing a long 1916 study by G. O. Ferguson which claimed to show that
the intellectual performance of black students was correlated with their
percentage of white ancestry, stating "pure negroes, negroes
three-fourths pure, mulattoes and quadroons have, roughly, 60, 70, 80
and 90 percent, respectively, of white intellectual efficiency". Playboy
later published the interview with an editorial note claiming the study
was a "discredited ... pseudoscientific rationale for racism".
International bodies such as UNESCO
attempted to draft resolutions that would summarize the state of
scientific knowledge about race and issued calls for the resolution of
racial conflicts. In its 1950 "The Race Question", UNESCO did not reject the idea of a biological basis to racial categories, but instead defined a race as: "A race, from the biological standpoint,
may therefore be defined as one of the group of populations
constituting the species Homo sapiens", which were broadly defined as
the Caucasian, Mongoloid, Negroid
races but stated that "It is now generally recognized that intelligence
tests do not in themselves enable us to differentiate safely between
what is due to innate capacity and what is the result of environmental
influences, training and education".
Despite scientific racism being largely dismissed by the
scientific community after World War II, some researchers have continued
to propose theories of racial superiority in the past few decades.These authors themselves, while seeing their work as scientific, may dispute the term racism and may prefer terms such as "race realism" or "racialism". In 2018, British science journalist and author Angela Saini expressed strong concern about the return of these ideas into the mainstream. Saini followed up on this idea with her 2019 book Superior: The Return of Race Science.
One such post-World War II scientific racism researcher is Arthur Jensen. His most prominent work is The g Factor: The Science of Mental Ability
in which he supports the theory that black people are inherently less
intelligent than whites. Jensen argues for differentiation in education
based on race, stating that educators must "take full account of all the facts of [students'] nature". Responses to Jensen criticized his lack of emphasis on environmental factors. Psychologist Sandra Scarr describes Jensen's work as "conjur[ing] up images of blacks doomed to failure by their own inadequacies".
J. Philippe Rushton, president of the Pioneer Fund (Race, Evolution, and Behavior) and a defender of Jensen's The g Factor, also has multiple publications perpetuating scientific racism. Rushton
argues "race differences in brain size likely underlie their
multifarious life history outcomes". Rushton's theories are defended by other scientific racists such as Glayde Whitney. Whitney published works suggesting higher crime rates among people of African descent can be partially attributed to genetics. Whitney draws this conclusion from data showing higher crime rates
among people of African descent across different regions. Other
researchers point out that proponents of a genetic crime-race link are
ignoring confounding social and economic variables, drawing conclusions
from correlations.
Christopher Brand was a proponent of Arthur Jensen's work on racial intelligence differences. Brand's The g Factor: General Intelligence and Its Implications claims black people are intellectually inferior to whites. He argues the best way to combat IQ disparities is to encourage low-IQ women to reproduce with high-IQ men. He faced intense public backlash, with his work being described as a promotion of eugenics. Brand's book was withdrawn by the publisher and he was dismissed from his position at the University of Edinburgh.
Kevin MacDonald, in his Culture of Critique series, used arguments from evolutionary psychology to promote antisemitic theories that Jews as a group have biologically evolved to be highly ethnocentric and hostile to the interests of white people. He asserts Jewish behavior and culture are central causes of antisemitism, and promotes conspiracy theories about alleged Jewish control and influence in government policy and political movements.
Psychologist Richard Lynn has published multiple papers and a book supporting theories of scientific racism. In IQ and the Wealth of Nations, Lynn claims that national GDP is determined largely by national average IQ. He draws this conclusion from the correlation between average IQ and
GDP and argues low intelligence in African nations is the cause of their
low levels of growth. Lynn's theory has been criticized for attributing
causal relationship between correlated statistics.Lynn supports scientific racism more directly in his 2002 paper "Skin
Color and Intelligence in African Americans", where he proposes "the
level of intelligence in African Americans is significantly determined
by the proportion of Caucasian genes". As with IQ and the Wealth of Nations, Lynn's methodology is flawed, and he purports a causal relationship from what is simply correlation.
Nicholas Wade's book (A Troublesome Inheritance)
faced strong backlash from the scientific community, with 142
geneticists and biologists signing a letter describing Wade's work as
"misappropriation of research from our field to support arguments about
differences among human societies".
On June 17, 2020, Elsevier announced it was retracting an article that J. Philippe Rushton and Donald Templer had published in 2012 in the Elsevier journal Personality and Individual Differences. The article falsely claimed that there was scientific evidence that
skin color was related to aggression and sexuality in humans.
The Jena Declaration, published by the German Zoological Society, rejects the idea of human races and distances itself from the racial theories of 20th century scientists. It states that genetic variation between human populations
is smaller than within them, demonstrating that the biological concept
of "races" is invalid. The statement highlights that there are no
specific genes or genetic markers that match with conventional racial categorizations. It also indicates that the idea of "races" is based on racism rather than any scientific factuality.
In the United States, an executive order issued March 27, 2025, by the White House characterized an exhibit on African American art at the Smithsonian Institution as divisive, due in part to its presenting race as not being "a biological reality". Scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr.,
however, had commented a year earlier that although racial categories
are indeed culturally constructed, the degree of genetic diversity of
each individual on the planet actually unifies humanity in that "we are
all mixed".
Clarence Gravlee has written that disparities in the incidence of
such medical conditions as diabetes, stroke, cancer, and low birth
weight should be viewed with a societal lens. He has argued that social inequalities,
not genetic differences between races, are the reason for these
differences. Gravlee has also maintained
that genetic differences between different population groups are based
on climate and geography, not race, and he calls for replacing incorrect
biological explanations of racial disparities with an analysis of the
social conditions that lead to disparate medical outcomes. In his book Is Science Racist,
Jonathan Marks similarly asserts that races exist, though they lack a
natural categorization in the realm of biology. Cultural rules such as
the "one-drop rule"
must be devised to establish categories of race, even if they go
against the natural patterns within our species. According to Marks'
writing, racist ideas propagated by scientists are what make science
racist.
In her book Medical Apartheid Harriet
Washington describes the abuse of Black people in medical research and
experimentation. Black people were tricked into participating in medical
experiments through the use of unclear language on consent forms and a
failure to list the risks and side effects of the treatment. Washington
mentions that, because Black people were denied adequate health care,
they were often desperate for medical help, and medical experimenters
were able to exploit that need. Washington also emphasizes that when
treatments were perfected and refined as a result of those experiments,
Black people almost never benefited from the treatments.
A 2018 statement by the American Society of Human Genetics
(ASHG) expressed alarm at the "resurgence of groups rejecting the value
of genetic diversity and using discredited or distorted genetic
concepts to bolster bogus claims of white supremacy".
The ASHG denounced this as a "misuse of genetics to feed racist
ideologies", and highlighted several factual errors upon which white supremacist
claims have been based. The statement affirms that genetics
"demonstrates that humans cannot be divided into biologically distinct
subcategories" and that it "exposes the concept of racial purity as scientifically meaningless".
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