Search

Public genomic datasets like the 1000 Genomes project (1KGP), Human Genome Diversity Project (HGDP), and the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study are valuable public resources that facilitate scientific advancements in biology and enhance the scientific and economic impact of federally funded research projects. Regrettably, these datasets have often been developed and studied in ways that propagate outdated racialized and typological thinking, leading to fallacious reasoning among some readers that social and health disparities among the so-called races are due in part to innate biological differences between them. We highlight how this framing has set the stage for the racist exploitation of these datasets in two ways: First, we discuss the use of public biomedical datasets in studies that claim support for innate genetic differences in intelligence and other social outcomes between the groups identified as races. We further highlight recent instances of this which involve unauthorized access, use, and dissemination of public datasets. Second, we discuss the memification, use of simple figures meant for quick dissemination among lay audiences, of population genetic data to argue for a biological basis for purported human racial groups. We close with recommendations for scientists, to preempt the exploitation and misuse of their data, and for funding agencies, to better enforce violations of data use agreements.

Nineteenth-century Victorian travellers in Northeast Asia were consistently captivated by the Ainu people indigenous to the Okhotsk region. In an age characterized by popular adventure fiction in which the trope of discovering a 'lost white tribe' figured prominently, it was perhaps not surprising that the Ainu, who were ethnically distinct from the neighbouring Japanese, would be described as 'white,' 'Caucasian' or 'Aryan' in a large body of travel writing and scientific texts. Why, then, did two of the longest English-language accounts of the Ainu published during this period show no interest in Ainu 'whiteness' and virtually none in questions of racial classification? Published the same year (1893) by two very different men, British-American humanitarian doctor Benjamin Douglas Howard and Italian-British provocateur and artist Henry Savage Landor, these books repeat hackneyed tropes of primitiveness, but remain surprisingly uninterested in explicit questions of race. This is particularly striking in that Landor later included a 'lost white tribe' episode in an account of his travels in the Philippines (1904). This article uses these works to reflect on the social constructedness of racial categorizations even in contexts far removed from their authors' home society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1854, prior to the American Civil War, Gideon Lincecum (1793–1874), an enslaver and physician from Texas, proposed a law advocating for the castration of criminals to prevent additional crimes committed by men, especially Black men, and to inhibit hereditary immorality. Shockingly, Lincecum also viewed his law as a “solution” to the “immorality” of abolitionists who supported freedom for enslaved African Americans. Lincecum inspired physicians and scientists promoting eugenics in the twentieth century who racially targeted Black men as candidates for castration. Lincecum’s castration law magnifies the ugliness of scientific racism and violent perceptions of justice as deriving from the same ideological white supremacy that persisted from before the Civil War into the twentieth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the pervasive social constructivist turn, regardless of some exceptions, discussions of race, racialization and racism continue to focus on the relatively essentialist White/non-White binary. In this article, I move from the White/non-White binary to consider the dynamics and practices of racialization, racism and racial conflicts in Japan where there are no phenotypical distinctions between the dominant and the main racialized minority groups – the Burakumin, the Ainu, the Okinawans, the Zainichi Koreans and the Chinese. The main argument made in this article is that in Japan, class and power inequalities generated by colonialism, the division of labour, adoption and the deployment of the dominant Western 19th-century discourse of 'scientific racism' contributed to 'racial formations', 'racial projects' and the construction of the racialized boundaries that fuelled and continue to compete over material and non-material resources. A historical sociology of the permanent dialectic between class and race in Japan is offered in this article. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the study of Indigenous religions and ethics in the late‐nineteenth and early‐twentieth centuries. Over the past few decades, scholars have grappled with the colonial origins of religious studies. This essay focuses on the history of anthropological scholarship on Indigenous religions and the significance of this work for the growth of the academic study of religious and ethical systems. I first consider scholarship on Indigenous ethical systems produced by theologians and comparative religionists. I next consider how anthropological concepts of cultural relativity offered scholars of religion important tools to broaden and deepen understandings of Indigenous cultures. Finally, I address the limits of these anthropological tools. During this era, scholars increasingly argued that Indigenous cultural traditions were worthy of study; however, the prevailing racialized assumptions contributed to assessments of these ethical systems as inferior to Euro‐American religio‐ethical systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This document summarizes the articles published in Volume 54 of the journal "English Literary Renaissance." The articles cover a wide range of topics related to English literature during the Renaissance period. They explore various aspects of early modern literature and culture, including the use of metaphors in Sidney's poetry, Margaret Russell's letter on grief, food rituals at Chirk Castle, Lucy Hutchinson's writings on warfare, and the study of Renaissance literature through the works of Auerbach and Rancière. Additionally, the essays delve into the intersections of race, literature, and society during this time period, examining topics such as racialization in English translations of Virgil's Aeneid, the scientific racism of Robert Boyle, and the racial rhetoric of transplantation in early modern thought. These articles provide valuable insights into the complexities and nuances of these issues, offering a diverse and culturally sensitive perspective on English literature during the Renaissance. [Extracted from the article]

Across the seventeenth century, thinkers in various contexts attempted to account for differences in human skin color in ways that could accord with developing materialist doctrines. Among the most significant of such attempts is Robert Boyle's Experiments and Considerations Touching Colour (1664), which contains a section specifically focusing on potential causes for black skin. While repeatedly insisting that he is unable to offer a comprehensive theory of color and thus to make any material claims about black skin, Boyle nonetheless comes to serve as an important model for eighteenth- and nineteenth-century iterations of scientific racism insofar as he applies the rhetoric of experimentalism to explaining what he calls an "accidental" phenomenon. In this essay, I work through Boyle's dense and heterogeneous arguments, putting his work in conversation with parodies of experimental writing, and tracing recurring iterations of the idea that black skin may assume a "pristine" state of whiteness at the Resurrection. I argue that Boyle enforces the superiority of whiteness against the ambiguity of his own experimental conclusions through his subtle but deliberate framing of blackness as potentially aberrant, secondary, or temporary. [A.S.] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the historical ties between the digital welfare state and eugenics, highlighting how the use of data infrastructures for classification and governance in the digital era has roots in eugenic data practices and ideas. Through an analysis of three domains of automated decision-making – child welfare, immigration and disability benefits – the article demonstrates how these automated systems perpetuate hierarchical divisions originally shaped by ableist eugenic race science. It underscores the importance of critically engaging with this historical context of data utilisation, emphasising its entanglement with eugenic perspectives on racial, physical and mental superiority, individual and social worth, and the categorisation of data subjects as deserving or undeserving. By engaging with this history, the article provides a deeper understanding of the contemporary digital welfare state, particularly in terms of its discriminatory divisions based on race and disability, which are deeply intertwined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Heidegger in Ruins: Between Philosophy and Ideology" by Richard Wolin is a book that examines the political beliefs of philosopher Martin Heidegger and their influence on far-right movements. The author argues that Heidegger's philosophical work is intertwined with his support for the Nazi Party, and discusses the mistranslations and omissions in his writings that have obscured his antisemitism. The book aims to challenge Heidegger's legacy and promote democratic and pluralistic political frameworks. It also highlights Heidegger's exclusionary concept of "Bodenständigkeit" and his active promotion of Nazi ideology within academia. The author emphasizes the importance of exposing and confronting fascist ideologies to prevent their resurgence. [Extracted from the article]

Heinz et al. (2024) recently criticised habit/compulsion theory of human addiction but nevertheless concluded that 'habit formation plays a significant role in drug addiction'. To challenge this causal claim, the current article develops four further methodological criticisms, that publications supporting the habit/compulsion account of human addiction: (1) under‐report contradictory observations; (2) exaggerate the process purity of positive observations; (3) under‐emphasise the low quality of epidemiological support for a causal hypothesis; (4) recapitulate the social injustice of racial intelligence era by prematurely attributing lower task performance to drug user group membership (endophenotype) without having adequately tested social, psychological, economic and environmental inequalities. Methodological guidelines are recommended to address each concern, which should raise evidence standards, incorporate social justice and improve accuracy of estimating any specific effect of addiction history on task performance. Given that construing drug users as intellectually impaired could promote stigma and reduce their recovery potential, it is recommended that scientific discourse about habit/compulsive endophenotypes underpinning addiction is avoided until these higher evidence standards are met. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the emergence of an early psychiatry around 1800, a number of questions arose on dealing with a group of persons whose "alien", irritating and disruptive behavior was considered to be a phenomenon of being sick. In the context of the growing importance of human rights, the term humanitarianism attained a high relevance as the reference for early psychiatrists. Based on historical sources it is shown that despite a multitude of psychiatric beliefs on humanitarianism the established psychiatric practice was dominated by patriarchal order regimes up to the first decade of the twentieth century, later superimposed by the challenges of somatophysiological and experimental research as well as perceptions of biological racism. The associated new ethical questions were partially addressed within psychiatry but did not prevent an increase in the assessment of the mentally ill as "inferior". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay traces the enduring legacy of the figure of the child leading up to and at the centre of the 1982 Plyler v. Doe decision. I attempt to demonstrate the limits of the discursive deployment of the child figure for racialized subjects. This essay intervenes in education, childhood studies, and immigration literature by reading the child to understand the enduring legacy of Plyler for those who are not the central focus of the court case. I demonstrate how the necessity of matriculating into U.S. schools is implicated in politics of disposability for racialized gendered populations represented in reading the contradictions in immigration reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the recommendation to rename the species Ziphius cavirostris, commonly known as Cuvier's beaked whale, to the goose-beaked whale. The authors argue that the current name perpetuates harm due to Georges Cuvier's involvement in scientific racism and misogyny. They highlight Cuvier's role in creating and disseminating scientific racism, as well as his exploitation of Saartjie Baartman, a Khoisan woman. The authors call for the marine mammal science community to discontinue the use of Cuvier's name and to reconsider all eponymous names of marine mammal species, in order to create a more inclusive and respectful field. [Extracted from the article]

Benjamin Rush's 1773 antislavery pamphlets are often cited as quintessential examples of "environmentalist" understandings of human difference because Rush proclaimed in them that all people were the same outside of accidents of local climate and custom, seemingly rejecting the notion of innate racial differences. However, closely examining the use of climate's relationship to health in Rush's tracts reveals that he mixed environmentalism with more essentialist ideas of race that supposed fixed differences between people of European and African descent. Rush expressed essentialist ideas about differing rates of reproduction and the ability to survive hot climates without theorizing about their cause, and he leveraged these ideas to blame enslavers for the mortality of enslaved people and for the failure to create a self-sustaining enslaved population. Crucially, Rush's statements implying fixed racial differences would be regularly repeated by later abolitionists, making antislavery speeches and publications a conduit for reinforcing and spreading racial comparisons. Rush's pamphlets illustrate that abolitionist writers, not just proslavery ones, contributed to the emergence of medical and scientific racism and indicates that the incompleteness of emancipation had its roots in the language of the freedom struggle itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article "Intersex Medical Photography, Sous Rature (Under Erasure): Haunted Colonial Histories and Decolonial Intersex Futurities" explores the ways in which certain bodies and corporeal features are pathologized and produced as abnormal by eugenic ideologies. The author focuses on South African medicine and its colonial and racist underpinnings, debunking the claim that intersexuality is disproportionately common among Black South Africans. The article highlights the activism of South African intersex individuals in contesting pathologization and advocating for bodily autonomy and self-determination. The author also discusses the unique methodological approach of the book, which intentionally excludes medical photographs of intersex individuals to disrupt the objectifying logics of colonial medicine. Overall, the article offers a decolonial perspective on intersexuality and envisions more just and inclusive futures. [Extracted from the article]

The article discusses the book "Envisioning African Intersex: Challenging Colonial and Racist Legacies in South African Medicine" and highlights two major contributions of the book. The first contribution is the examination of citational chains that reinforce problematic and unethical medical scholarship in intersex diagnosis and treatment. The author focuses on the influential but flawed work of HJ Grace, which perpetuated the myth of higher intersex conditions among Black South Africans. The second contribution is the connection between trans diagnostic protocol and racialized gender, exploring how scientific-sounding theories are used to discredit trans existence. The article also discusses the concept of social death and its relevance to intersex and minoritized trans experiences. [Extracted from the article]

The article "On Decolonial Methods in Envisioning African Intersex" by Amanda Lock Swarr explores the intersection of gender, sexuality, and decoloniality in African studies. The author discusses the need for alternative approaches to research that challenge the dominant white western gaze in scholarship on global South communities. The text examines the colonial ordering of gender and its impact on intersex individuals in Africa, highlighting the importance of decolonizing methodologies and centering the voices and experiences of marginalized communities. The article offers a toolkit for scholars and activists interested in decolonial thinking and working with minoritized communities in the study of gender and sexuality. [Extracted from the article]

"Decolonizing Constructions of Intersexuality Against the European Obsession with Genitals: A Review Essay of Amanda Lock Swarr's Envisioning African Intersex" is a book that examines the experiences of intersex South Africans in the context of colonialism and scientific racism. The author challenges the historical and colonial legacies that have led to the marginalization and discrimination of intersex individuals. The book advocates for a decolonization of medical practices and a shift towards more inclusive approaches. It also highlights the activism and decolonizing practices of intersex South Africans in challenging dominant narratives and power structures. The text emphasizes the importance of visibility, self-expression, and education in creating a more inclusive society for intersex individuals. [Extracted from the article]

The article titled "Dossier: Envisioning African Intersex: Challenging Colonial and Racist Legacies in South African Medicine" by Amanda Lock Swarr discusses the history of South African medicine and its role in perpetuating harmful stereotypes about intersex individuals, particularly among Black African peoples. The author argues that these stereotypes are rooted in colonial and racist ideologies and have been used to justify violence against Black intersex, trans, and gender nonconforming people. The article also explores decolonial methodologies and the need for critical analysis of the intersections between racism, colonialism, and the regulation of sex and gender. The text is a collection of responses to the book "Envisioning African Intersex" by Katrina Karkazis, which examines the intersection of intersex, race, and gender. The contributors analyze various aspects of the book, including its critique of colonial and neocolonial logics in medical practices, its examination of intersex visibility and invisibility, and its call for feminist studies to challenge oppressive systems. The text emphasizes the ongoing struggle for intersex rights and the importance of solidarity and decolonial vision in achieving justice. [Extracted from the article]

Arnold Rich (1893–1968) was an acclaimed pathologist and the first Jewish department chair at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. In his landmark text, The Pathogenesis of Tuberculosis , Rich continued to advance the concept of racial susceptibility to tuberculosis a decade after mainstream medicine recognized that environmental factors fueled the disease. While Rich fits into the historical narrative that embedded categories of race facilitated scientific racism, two characteristics unique to Rich help to explain why he persisted. First were the scientific origins of his theories. While racial theorists sought to prove racial difference through science, Rich used racial difference to prove his outlying theories of tuberculosis immunology. Second was his identity as a prewar Jewish person when America's focus on a racial binary pressured Jewish Americans to assimilate into white culture. Rich's life and research exemplify how examining scientific racism through an individual complicates and expands our understanding of how race is constructed in the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Elizabeth Hamilton (1758–1816) has a strikingly egalitarian account of gender in her novels and philosophical writings, where she professes to be offering an account of human nature in general. This paper examines whether she has a similarly egalitarian account of race, and shows that she does not. Hamilton distinguishes between what she calls 'the Christian nations of Europe' and non-Christian groups; she clearly assigns different character and mental traits to members of different groups; and she ranks these groups hierarchically. Yet whether or not Hamilton's views should be described as 'racist' requires some attention to the historical context in order to avoid presentism. The paper argues that, although Hamilton's hierarchical distinctions are not based on a belief about inherent biological differences between groups of people, they nonetheless do fit conceptions of race that were found earlier in the eighteenth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We are 52 Black scientists. Here, we establish the context of Juneteenth in STEMM and discuss the barriers Black scientists face, the struggles they endure, and the lack of recognition they receive. We review racism's history in science and provide institutional-level solutions to reduce the burdens on Black scientists.

Although the American Psychological Association has taken a strong antiracism stance, scientific racism continues to be published in psychology journals and scholarly books. Recent articles claim that the folk categories of race are genetically meaningful divisions and that evolved genetic differences among races and nations are important for explaining immutable differences in cognitive ability, educational attainment, crime, sexual behavior, and wealth; all claims that are opposed by a strong scientific consensus to the contrary. These claims remain a serious source of harm through the naturalization of inequality and through support for the work of racial extremists. Contemporary "racial hereditarian research" claims to rest on modern genetics and evolutionary biology and to draw on their methods, such as genome-wide association studies. These new arguments fail to meet the evidentiary and ethical standards of these disciplines for the study of human variation. If psychology adopted standards from genetics and evolutionary biology, the current racial hereditarian work would be ineligible for publication. Actions that the American Psychological Association can take to deal with scientific racism are described. Public Significance Statement: Some psychologists claim "new evidence" that genes, not racism, are primarily responsible for racial differences in education, income, and incarceration, a claim that is taken up by those promoting racial inequality and White nationalism. This "new evidence" does not meet established scientific and ethical standards of genetics and evolutionary biology. By adopting the standards of genetics and evolutionary biology, psychologists can help eliminate the harm caused by scientific racism while preserving academic freedom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"The Wonders: Lifting the Curtain on the Freak Show, Circus and Victorian Age" by John Woolf is a well-researched history of the freak show in nineteenth-century Britain and America. The book provides insights into the performers and behind-the-scenes figures of the freak show, as well as the promotion, exhibition spaces, costuming, and styles of performance. While the book offers valuable information on the development of popular entertainment and pop culture, it could benefit from a more thorough engagement with disability studies to challenge ableist perspectives. Overall, "The Wonders" is a valuable resource for scholars of theater and popular entertainment. [Extracted from the article]

The article discusses three books that provide new perspectives on the history and development of race science. "Brown Skins, White Coats" by Projit Bihari Mukharji explores the concept of race beyond visible markers and focuses on seroanthropology. "Medicine, Science, and Making Race in Civil War America" by Leslie A. Schwalm examines how race science became institutionalized during the Civil War. "Masters of Health" by Christopher D. E. Willoughby explores the role of race science in the establishment of formal medical education in the United States. These books shed light on the global construction of race and its impact on social and political structures. [Extracted from the article]

Despite the widespread assumption that online misbehavior affects outcomes related to political extremism, few studies have provided empirical evidence to this effect. To redress this gap, we performed two studies in which we explored the relationship between subversive online activities and susceptibility to persuasion by far-right extremist propaganda. Study 1 (N = 404) demonstrates that when individuals are exposed to far-right "scientific racism" propaganda, subversive online activity is significantly associated with feelings of gratification, attribution of credibility to and intention to support the propaganda's source, as well as decreased resistance (in the form of reactance) to the propaganda. To verify these findings across thematic domains, Study 2 (N = 396) focused on far-right extremist propaganda that advocates "male supremacy." Results in Study 2 replicated those from Study 1. These findings have implications for understanding subversive online activity, vis-à-vis its association with one's susceptibility to persuasion by far-right extremist propaganda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1936, Raymond Dart led the Wits University Expedition to the Kalahari where he used the tools of physical anthropology, including bodily measurements, face masks and comparative anatomy, to promote the ill-fated concept of race typology to understand human evolution. Dart's successor at the Wits School of Anatomical Sciences, Phillip Tobias, and his colleagues continued these anthropological practices in numerous expeditions to the Kalahari and elsewhere in the 1950s, 60s and 70s, including an excavation of the grave of Cornelius Kok II in Campbell, Northern Cape in 1961. This paper reviews these practices and their contribution to scientific racism in South Africa. The paper also explores the impact that Steve Biko's life and death had on medical ethics at Wits University in the 1970s, leading to Wits Medical School's submission to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the decision to hold an Internal Reconciliation Commission (IRC). While the IRC was important, the absence of any review of pre-apartheid and apartheid-era anthropological practices at the Wits School of Anatomical Sciences meant that it was incomplete. This paper concludes by suggesting that there is a need to acknowledge and revisit this painful history of scientific racism to build a greater understanding of history, transparency and ethics for the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Elyse Semerdjian's book, "Remnants: Embodied Archives of the Armenian Genocide," provides a nuanced and intersectional approach to studying the Armenian Genocide. The book explores the themes of gender, sexuality, agency, and resistance within the context of the genocide. Semerdjian draws on a wide range of sources, including memoirs, letters, newspapers, and oral histories, to challenge traditional archival biases and amplify subaltern voices. The book also examines the ways in which the body is used as a site of violence and resistance, and explores the lasting impact of the genocide on Armenian identity and memory. Overall, "Remnants" offers a fresh perspective on the Armenian Genocide and its aftermath, and contributes to ongoing discussions in Armenian Studies and beyond. [Extracted from the article]

"Constellating Home: Trans and Queer Asian American Rhetorics" by V. Jo Hsu explores the concept of homing as a form of storytelling to situate trans and queer Asian Americans within the broader narrative of belonging in the United States. The book examines three trans and queer Asian American archives, including the Dragon Fruit Project, the Visibility Project, and the Queer Ancestors Project, which challenge normative scripts of love, resilience, and ancestry. Hsu argues that these individual stories can be placed within a larger history and narrative of control, exposing the entanglements of yellow peril and the model minority myth. The book offers frameworks for scholars to situate individual narratives within a larger constellation and centers subjects' active meaning-making in their own worlds. [Extracted from the article]

George Steinmetz's book, "The Colonial Origins of Modern Social Thought," provides a comprehensive analysis of the colonial origins of French social thought. The book focuses on the period between the 1930s and mid-1960s, covering the Third Republic, Vichy and Nazi-occupied France, and the Fifth Republic. Steinmetz's research includes examining the writings of sociologists, as well as the development of academic departments and the work of students in metropolitan French and colonial universities. The book highlights the diverse perspectives within French colonial sociology and emphasizes the importance of understanding the colonial legacies in the field of sociology. The author also raises questions about the nature of colonial racism, the politics of publishing and intellectual production in mid-century France, and the definition of colonial sociology. This work contributes to the understanding of the colonial origins of French social thought and encourages further research in this area. [Extracted from the article]

Today, few ancient historians believe that Greek and Roman slavery had anything to do with race or racism. But when histories of ancient slavery were first written in the 1780s, the connection was assumed. This article explores how and why race and racism persisted in Anglophone historiography on ancient slavery into the twentieth century, only disappearing in the 1950s. I argue that it might be time to reopen the book on whether ancient slavery was a racialized institution. Adopting insights from premodern critical race studies (PCRS), I argue that the real differences between ancient and Atlantic-world slaveries should not be seen in terms of discontinuity and rupture. Rather, I see the question through what Margo Hendricks calls a "bidirectional gaze," by which social arrangements of the past few centuries might bear uncanny resemblance to institutions of the ancient past. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We are beginning to accept and address the role that medicine as an institution played in legitimizing scientific racism and creating structural barriers to health equity. There is a call for greater emphasis in medical education on explaining our role in perpetuating health inequities and educating learners on how bias and racism lead to poor health outcomes for historically marginalized communities. Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI; also referred to as EDI) and antiracism are key parts of patient care and medical education as they empower health professionals to be advocates for their patients, leading to better health care outcomes and more culturally and socially humble health care professionals. The Liaison Committee on Medical Education has set forth standards to include structural competency and other equity principles in the medical curriculum, but medical schools are still struggling with how to specifically do so. Here, we highlight a stepwise approach to systematically developing and implementing medical educational curriculum content with a DEI and antiracism lens. This article serves as a blueprint to prepare institution leadership, medical faculty, staff, and learners in how to effectively begin or scale up their current DEI and antiracism curricular efforts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses the political and scientific controversy surrounding a race science project undertaken by the anthropologist Egon Freiherr von Eickstedt under National Socialism. Beginning in 1934, Eickstedt and his team of assistants conducted a series of racial studies on the population of Upper Silesia, a contested borderland in East Prussia. Motivated by a nationalist desire to counter the work of Polish anthropologists in the region, Eickstedt argued that the population of Upper Silesia belonged predominantly to the so-called 'Nordic race' and that the territory was thus fundamentally German. Nazi officials, however, viewed the Silesian studies with alarm, since the results also appeared to show that people in the area were a racial mixture and that the 'Nordic race' made up less than 40 per cent of the population in some locales. They worried that Eickstedt's studies could undermine Germany's territorial claims in the region and threaten national unity. The ensuing controversy presents a case in which the anthropological concept of 'race', rather than serving its usual role in Nazi thinking as the biological underpinning of the Volk (or people), threatened to undermine its coherence. The reaction to Eickstedt's Silesian studies demonstrates a lack of consensus on race within the Nazi system, suggesting that understandings of race in Nazi Germany were neither as coherent nor as uniform as the paradigm of the 'racial state' has assumed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Apartheid South Africa, eugenic notions formed an underlying justification for the superiority of the white race over Africans, through the works of international eugenicists like Galton and Pearson, and locally through prominent South African eugenicist H. B. Fantham. These ideas are expressed and elaborated upon in Emevwo Biakalo's essay 'Categories of Cross-Cultural Cognition and the African Condition'. His work serves particularly to highlight that the mind and cognitive processes of Africans were considered very different from their white counterparts, and thus they would require different approaches to education. I demonstrate here how these views served as part of the underlying justification for Apartheid in South Africa, particularly in Hendrik Frensch Verwoerd's insistence on creating separate and distinct educational systems for different races. This eugenic legacy is still visible in South Africa's radically unequal education system to this day. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The third edition of Aglaé Comte's Histoire naturelle racontée à la jeunesse (1853) includes an understudied introduction on "human races." While it avows the theory of monogenesis, praises abolition and displays compassion for Black peoples, it also affirms white supremacy based on the "civilized" status of white bodies and Western cultures. Comte uses tropes of sentimentalism: sympathy with oppressed persons, appeals to pathos and calls for benevolent action. Using affect studies and Black studies, I demonstrate how Comte teaches a biocultural account of race that perpetuates hierarchies, encourages sympathy instead of structural change and mobilizes paternalistic power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cet article, qui porte sur la nouvelle de Claire de Duras Ourika (1823), émet l'hypothèse que la mélancolie de l'héroïne est tout à la fois un diagnostic lucide que propose l'autrice sur l'impossibilité, pour une jeune fille noire vivant à Paris au début du xixe siècle, d'être reconnue comme un être humain à part entière, et le dévoilement d'une conscience réflexive qui constitue à elle seule une forme de protestation, donc de résistance face au racisme négrophobe dont elle est victime. La plainte d'Ourika révèle une forme d'agentivité, fût-ce dans le désespoir conduisant à une fin tragique. This article, which concerns Claire de Duras's novella Ourika (1823), proposes that the melancholy of the protagonist is both a lucid diagnosis, on behalf of the author, of the impossibility for a Black young woman living in Paris at the beginning of the nineteenth century to have her humanity fully recognised, and the revelation of a reflexive conscience which constitutes her only form of resistance against the negrophobic racism of which she is the victim. Ourika's lament thus reveals a form of agency, despite its desperate tone and tragic end. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public genomic datasets like the 1000 Genomes project (1KGP), Human Genome Diversity Project (HGDP), and the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study are valuable public resources that facilitate scientific advancements in biology and enhance the scientific and economic impact of federally funded research projects. Regrettably, these datasets have often been developed and studied in ways that propagate outdated racialized and typological thinking, leading to fallacious reasoning among some readers that social and health disparities among the so-called races are due in part to innate biological differences between them. We highlight how this framing has set the stage for the racist exploitation of these datasets in two ways: First, we discuss the use of public biomedical datasets in studies that claim support for innate genetic differences in intelligence and other social outcomes between the groups identified as races. We further highlight recent instances of this which involve unauthorized access, use, and dissemination of public datasets. Second, we discuss the memification, use of simple figures meant for quick dissemination among lay audiences, of population genetic data to argue for a biological basis for purported human racial groups. We close with recommendations for scientists, to preempt the exploitation and misuse of their data, and for funding agencies, to better enforce violations of data use agreements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The document titled "Back matter" is from the journal Diplomatica and was published in July 2024. It contains various articles and book reviews related to diplomacy and international relations. The articles cover topics such as the role of artwork in a diplomatic environment, law of the sea dispute settlement, and treaty-making in different historical contexts. The book reviews discuss publications on subjects like African activism, cultural diplomacy in Finland, and US foreign policy. This document provides a range of perspectives and research on diplomatic studies for library patrons conducting research in this field. [Extracted from the article]

Millions of skeletal remains from South Asia were exported in red markets (the underground economy of human tissues/organs) to educational institutions globally for over a century. It is time to recognize the personhood of the people who were systematically made into anatomical objects and acknowledge the scientific racism in creating and continuing to use them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Race in Sweden: Racism and Antiracism in the World's First 'Colourblind' Nation" by Tobias Hübinette, Catrin Lundström, and Peter Wikström is a comprehensive and timely book that explores the development of racial ideologies in Sweden. The authors argue that Sweden, despite its reputation as an antiracist nation, struggles with white hegemony and the stigmatization of race. The book examines the historical context, media texts, and case studies to provide theoretical accounts of Swedish whiteness. It is an essential read for scholars, students, and activists interested in understanding race, racism, and antiracism in Europe and beyond. [Extracted from the article]

W.E.B. Du Bois regarded social reform as a legitimate object for the scientist. This paper argues that he gave a place to nonepistemic values in scientific reasoning and, to counter the effects of scientific racism, he constructed his approach around the belief that scientists must adopt an assumption or scientific hypothesis that African Americans are human. His engagement in scientific research was a way to reform the society in which he lived, which in turn, led him to defend the faithfulness to fact as his conception of scientific objectivity. This essay examines his sophisticated theory of facts, account of the difference between the natural and human sciences, and the unique instantiation of a pragmatist theory of truth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we challenge the idea that the development and the dissemination of scientific knowledge about Roma can be understood as "Eastern" or "Western." Instead, we argue that the classical division between "science" and "pseudoscience" has the potential to fuel scientific racism and political and social exclusion across the globe. We narrate, for the first time, the role of sociobiology in the development of Roma "race science," highlighting the ways in which its networks are developed and maintained. These specific mechanisms underlying the production of knowledge and its social and ideological effects may have further applications, such as the spread of mis- and dis-information. Our intent is to examine the attempts to deconstruct sociobiology and its application to Roma, by focusing on the effect of selective awareness among critics of sociobiology, which inevitably leads to the use of epistemic filters and heightens the risk of producing epistemic injustice. This article was published open access under a CC BY licence: https://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the 1930s, men institutionalized at the Glenwood Institution for the Feebleminded in Iowa conducted archaeological digs at Glenwood's prehistoric earth mounds under the aegis of the Smithsonian and the Works Progress Administration, led in part by Glenwood inmate Lee Swearengin, whose luminous drawings of his life story and his findings are part of a disability history archive only recently unearthed. Swearengin's archaeology both challenged and complied with, both undermined and undergirded, the white, male-centered, nondisabled norms that governed the keeping of Iowan archives of that place called Glenwood. What happens when we stay charged with the double-take produced by the thought of the feeble-minded researcher, and place it within its larger entanglements in settler colonialism and race science? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Among French Jewish intellectuals who rejected Zionism in the early twentieth century was René Worms, a sociologist who used sociological theories as well as "franco-judaïsme," the French-Jewish model of assimilation, to oppose it. In 1920–21, during debates organized by the Société de sociologie de Paris on the future of Palestine and Zionism, Worms used various theories to counter Jewish nationalism. Influenced by biology and race science, he began by denying the existence of a Jewish race, emphasizing the racial heterogeneity of modern Jews. His understanding of the evolution of modern religions toward universalism, influenced by Auguste Comte and Émile Durkheim, also discredited Zionism. Finally, his sociology of nationality, interwoven with Ernest Renan's conception of the nation, precluded any national claim to Judaism. This article examines the arguments Worms made and compare them to those of other speakers in debates between sociologists in Paris. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sylvia Wynter brings to light a structural entanglement between race and religion that is fundamental to identifying racism's logic. This logic is continuous albeit often masked in particular in European race–religion constellations such as antisemitism and islamophobia. Focusing on the Americas, Wynter reveals a structural epistemic continuity between 'religious', rational and scientific racism. Nonetheless, Wynter marks a discontinuity between pre- and post-1492, by distinguishing between the Christian subject and Man, the overrepresentation of the human. In this essay, which focuses on European entanglements of race and religion, a process of dehumanization and its historical and geographic continuities is more discernible. As such, I question Wynter's discontinuity, arguing that the Christian subject was conceived of as the only full conception of the human (although not without debate or inconsistencies), which meant that non-Christians were de-facto and de-jure excluded from the political community and suffered degrees of dehumanization. Within the concept of dehumanization, I focus on the entanglement of race and religion, or more specifically Whiteness and Christianity, as distinct markers of supremacy/difference and show that the Church had, and asserted, the power to produce both lesser and non-humans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The (re-)surfacing of race in forensic practices has received plenty of attention from STS scholars, especially in connection with modern forensic genetic technologies. In this article, I describe the making of facial depictions based on the skulls of unknown deceased individuals. Based on ethnographic research in the field of craniofacial identification and forensic art, I present a material-semiotic analysis of how race comes to matter in the face-making process. The analysis sheds light on how race as a translation device enables oscillation between the individual skull and population data, and allows for slippage between categories that otherwise do not neatly map on to one another. The subsuming logic of race is ingrained – in that it sits at the bases of standard choices and tools – in methods and technologies. However, the skull does not easily let itself be reduced to a racial type. Moreover, the careful efforts of practitioners to articulate the individual characteristics of each skull provide clues for how similarities and differences can be done without the effect of producing race. Such methods value the skull itself as an object of interest, rather than treat it as a vehicle for practicing race science. I argue that efforts to undo the persistence of race in forensic anthropology should focus critical attention on the socio-material configuration of methods and technologies, including data practices and reference standards. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]