Definition
Racial science is a mechanism to segregate humankind or separate them into uneven races. Developed during the 19 th and early 20 th centuries to explain the biological existence of races. However, this notion was abolished to include a new perspective of scientific racism that sought to justify slavery, racial segregation, and white supremacy.
How Scientific Research Supported Social Bias
Social Bias was enhanced and propagated by medical students in their bid to evaluate and understand the prevalence of certain illnesses. In their learning environment, about seven percent of Philadelphia learners incorporated racial studies in their theses. In their efforts, they discussed their body types and their links to the prevailing environment (Willoughby, 2017, 331). Also, the emergence of therapeutic approaches of “medical regionalism and the doctrine of specificity” that aligned blacks from others to characterize them with hot and miasmal climatic conditions (Willoughby, 2017, 337). For example, the formulations of Nott and Dickson that the black bodies are conducive for slavery was widely acknowledged by most medical learners in Philadelphia and Charleston (Willoughby, 2017, 342). These scientific findings were instrumental in creating social Bias among individuals.
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Three Elements of Scientific Racism Observed In the Study of Eugenics to this Point
The principal element of eugenics is Pelvimetry and the Porfiriato in Mexico that was a positivism approach to variate and create hierarchies to the existing population (O’Brien, 2013, 22). In this case, this was meant to activate social sidelining and political disenfranchisement of the non-European sect (O’Brien, 2013, 22). Also, the development of the Porfirian medical establishment explained that the indigenous Mexican women had inferior reproductive anatomy. On this point, the medics concluded that the size of the pelvic cavity determines a woman’s ability to procreate. Lastly, the other research articulated that hereditary weakness inhibits modern progress (O’Brien, 2013, 22). All these were studies meant to exclude a specific section of individuals from others to demonstrate their inferiority.
References
O’Brien, E. (2013). Pelvimetry and the persistance of racial science in obstetrics. Endeavour , 37 (1), 21-28.
Willoughby, C. D. (2017). “His native, hot country”: Racial science and environment in antebellum American medical thought. Journal of the history of medicine and allied sciences , 72 (3), 328-351.
