The Myth of Race: The Troubling Persistence of an Unscientific Idea

by Robert Wald Sussman

It seems that the belief in human races, carrying along with it the prejudice and hatred of “racism,” is so embedded in our culture and has been an integral part of our worldview for so long that many of us assume that it just must be true.

Race is not a part of our biology, but it is definitely a part of our culture. Race and racism are deeply ingrained in our history.

I hope to illuminate why some of us are still living in the Middle Ages in terms of the subject of race. I will also explore why some very early views of race based on ignorance, emotion, hatred, intolerance, and prejudice have been repeated, almost verbatim, through the ages.

Sad reality

I hope to show that racism and bigotry are fueled by deep-seated hatred and intolerance of human variation and are not supported by empirical evidence or modern science.

It was American psychologists who ignored Binet’s warnings and reverted to Galton’s belief that intelligence is inherited in a simple fashion and could be measured by a single score.

One of the imagined immutable, unit characteristics that was a centerpiece of scientific racism was intelligence.

Eugenicists believed that most immigrants who entered the United States after 1890 were genetically undesirable