Superior: The Return of Race Science

by Angela Saini

What does modern scientific evidence really tell us about human variation, and what do our differences mean? I read the genetic and medical literature, I investigated the history of the scientific ideas, I interviewed some of the leading researchers in their fields. What became clear was that biology can’t answer this question, at least not fully. The key to understanding the meaning of race is understanding power. When you see how power has shaped the idea of race and continues to shape it, how it affects even the scientific facts, everything finally begins to make sense.

Through objects like this you can understand how power balances shift throughout history. They reveal a less simple version of the past, of who we are. And it’s one that demands humility, warning us that power is fleeting. More importantly, they show that knowledge is not just an honest account of what we know, but has to be seen as something manipulated by those who happen to hold power when it is written.

‘Scientists are socialised human beings who live within society, and their ideas are social constructions,’

the time, despite the mainstream popularity of eugenics, some did notice the slippery slope. This is one reason why, despite all the support it attracted from politicians and intellectuals and how popular it became in other countries, eugenics never managed to gain a firm toehold in Britain and was not implemented by the government. British psychiatrist Henry Maudsley argued that privilege and upbringing could surely more accurately explain why some people were successful and others weren’t. He noted that many remarkable people had unremarkable relatives. Another vocal critic was biologist Alfred Russel Wallace, who had come from humble beginnings to become an important and well-loved researcher, credited with formulating evolutionary theory at the same time as Darwin. ‘The world does not want the eugenicist to set it straight,’ he warned. ‘Give the people good conditions, improve their environment, and all will tend towards the highest type. Eugenics is simply the meddlesome interference of an arrogant, scientific priestcraft.’

But it’s important to remember that history might well have gone another way. Das pulls out another object from the archive. It’s a narrow tin box, resembling a cigarette case but twice as long. It was brought to London by Karl Pearson, but had been designed by Eugen Fischer, a German scientist who had been director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics. The box still bears Fischer’s name. Inside is a neat row of thirty locks of artificial hair, ranging in colour from blonde (numbers 19 and 20) and light brunette in the centre, to bright red hair at one end and black Afro hair (number 30) at the other. At first glance it looks innocuous, like a colour chart you might find at the hairdresser’s. But the disturbing story behind it is betrayed by the order in which the hair samples are placed. The most desirable colours and textures have been placed in the middle and the least acceptable at the margins. This simple little gauge tells a story of pure horror. ‘Fischer used this device in Namibia in 1908 to establish the relative whiteness of mixed-race people,’ reveals Das. In what is now remembered as the first genocide of the twentieth century, in the four years preceding 1908, Germany killed tens of thousands of Namibians as they rebelled against colonial rule. According to some estimates, up to 3,000 skulls belonging to those of the Herero ethnic group were sent back to Berlin to be studied by race scientists. ‘Namibia was the first pla...

Most categories are nonsense, although some may be useful. “Race” is useless, pernicious nonsense.’