“Civilisation is going to pieces … if we don’t look out the white race will be – will be utterly submerged. It’s all scientific stuff; it’s been proved.” Sentiments like this will be familiar to those who lurk in the less wholesome corners of the internet, where racism and other bigotries flourish. As a geneticist who specialises in racism and eugenics, I lurk so that you don’t have to.Oh Adam, truly, you exemplify the saying 'Not all heroes wear capes'! In your own mind, that is.
What we are witnessing is a coordinated renaissance in eugenics and race science. One of these new race scientists, Emil Kirkegaard, leads a group that claims to have access to the sensitive health information of half a million British volunteers. Kirkegaard wrote on his blog in July that “Africans are prone to violence everywhere”.
And you find that remarkable, Adam? Do you live in a cave?
It can feel strange to discuss something as anachronistic and outdated as race science. Most right-minded people occupy a world in which the idea of genetic superiority between races is disproven and disturbing.
'Most right minded people' = 'everyone who agrees with me' I suppose?
Does that mean race is a biologically meaningful definition? It does not. Race as we currently use it is a socially constructed idea, but one with biologically meaningful consequences, such as in healthcare where many disease outcomes are significantly worse for racial minorities.The impact of disease correlates significantly with socioeconomic factors, primarily poverty, and in our society racial minorities are mostly in lower social strata. Black and brown people endure worse medical outcomes not because they are black or brown, but because of this fact.
Tim Worstall easily refutes this nonsense.
In The Great Gatsby, Tom Buchanan ends his racist rant with a call to arms, one that echoes in our present: “It’s up to us who are the dominant race to watch out or these other races will have control of things.” Just as it was then, the current renaissance of eugenics and race science is nothing more than bigotry dressed up as biology.
Take a look around you, Adam. And note which races are doing things with impunity and recalculate your balance of power.