The New, Old Mask of Scientific Racism

How have we come full circle?

There stands a statue in Stockholm, guarding the grounds of Humlegården. A memorial to the Enlightenment and a bastion of science. A monument to racism.

This statue, minted by Fritjof Kjellberg and unveiled in 1885 depicts Carl von Linnè, holding his seminal work, Systema Naturae, and holding a Linnea borealis, the unofficial national flower of Sweden.

The plant, commonly called twinflower as its flowers, small, bell-shaped and pastel pink, occur in pairs. Of course, the name Linnea borealis owes its existence to Linnè. His work Systema Naturae, made binomial nomenclature for biological species (Genus species) common practice and went a long way to simplifying and ordering the formerly chaotic tree of life.

While to many, this is all that Systema Naturae represents, important no doubt to the hallowed halls and sterilised labs of the natural science. But to many others, myself included, Systema Naturae also holds the first classification of the human species, forming the foundation for an ideology that still stigmatises skin pigmentation 250 years later.

• The Americanus: red, choleraic, righteous; black, straight, thick hair; stubborn, zealous, free; painting himself with red lines, and regulated by customs.

• The Europeanus: white, sanguine, browny; with abundant, long hair; blue eyes; gentle, acute, inventive; covered with close vestments; and governed by laws.

• The Asiaticus: yellow, melancholic, stiff; black hair, dark eyes; severe, haughty, greedy; covered with loose clothing; and ruled by opinions.

• The Afer or Africanus: black, phlegmatic, relaxed; black, frizzled hair; silky skin, flat nose, tumid lips; females without shame; mammary glands give milk abundantly; crafty, sly, lazy, cunning, lustful, careless; anoints himself with grease; and governed by caprice.

These are the words of Linnaeus taken from Systema Naturae published in 1767, translated from Latin.

Many have argued that Linnaeus did not apply a hierarchical classification to the above mentioned groups, and thus made no assumptions of superiority, the assumption of superiority is clearly apparent in the language used.

This early classification of humans was based primarily on the observations of naturalists and explorers, but laid the platform for similar, denigrating, classifications of human races by late 18th and 19th century anatomists.

In the 19th century it was another Swede, Anders Retzius, who provided skull size as an indicator of race. This provided the basis for numerous European anatomists to devise perceived larger brain size in Europeans as a mark of greater intellectual and moral capacity. This gave Europeans the ammunition to aggrandise their own superiority and legitimise slavery. This has now commonly referred to as scientific racism, or race science.

Scientific racism went on to provide the basis of 20th century eugenics, the approach to improving humanity though genetic selection.

In Sweden this provided the foundation for the State Institute for Race Biology, the first of its kind, founded in 1922. The institute founded much of ammunition for the state administered, and highly racialised and heteronormative, sterilisation program between 1926 to 1972.

In Nazi Germany eugenics was used as legitimisation for the purification of the ‘Aryan’ race and for the subjugation and elimination of ‘inferior’ races.

In South Africa scientific racism was used to promote the incompatibility of the races to sanction Apartheid. (Even though this short paragraph might sound a bit blasé or even diminishing for it’s shortness, I can feel the bile rising up my throat as I read it.)

Now that we have the historical basis of scientific racism, lets get something straight. To call this science is inaccurate. Science ideally stands by tenets of critique and review, investigation and critique. ‘Scientific racism’ is none of these things. Freidrich Tiedeman, one of the few dissenting voices to the science of racism in the 19th century writes in his 1836 publication, On the Brain of the Negro, compared with that of the European and the Orang-Outang,

‘As the facts which we have advanced plainly prove that there are no well-marked and essential differences between the brain of the Negro and European, we must conclude that no innate difference in the intellectual faculties can be admitted to exist between them. This has been denied by philosophers, naturalists, and travellers, who assert that the Ethiopian race is naturally inferior to the European in intellectual and moral powers. The data upon which such an opinion is based are either erroneous suppositions and false deductions from anatomy or physiology, or superficial observations on the intellectual and moral faculties of the Negroes, made by partial or prejudiced travellers. Very little value can be attached to these researches, when we consider that they have been made for the most part on poor and unfortunate Negroes in the Colonies, who have been torn from their native country and families, and carried into the West Indies , and doomed there to perpetual slavery and hard labour in sugar plantations.’

I could quote the entire text, but I think this effectively outlines that pseudoscientific racism based on three tenets, that non-Europeans are less intelligent, less moral, and less rational that Europeans and was entirely self affirming in its approaches, and thus unscientific in its nature.

Some would say that pseudoscientific racism has recently re-emerged, I would desist from that and argue that pseudo-scientific racism has always lurked in the murky basements at the edge of society, occasionally poking out for some light and fresh air.

After all arguments to the link between race and IQ (intelligence quotient) and that the prevalence of poverty among certain race groups is due to their lack of intelligence have plague society for much of the 20th century.

Recent studies have shown that IQ scores have increased across racial groups through the 20th century, pointing to the impact of increased education levels on IQ results, and casting doubt on the objectivity of IQ as a measure of intelligence.

It is true however that pseudoscientific racism has emerged much more prominently in the mainstream in recent years. Steve Bannon, former White House Chief Strategist (now thankfully returned to a bleak tributary) has been quoted as saying, ‘What if the people getting shot by the cops did something to deserve it? There are, after all, some people who are naturally aggressive and violent.'

Given that this was written in response to #BlackLivesMatter, it harks back to a quote from Linnaeus, ‘governed by caprice.’ Pseudoscientific racism has now also taken a slightly different guise. Whereas formerly pseudoscientific racism focussed on anatomical and psychological ‘study’ to prove racial inferiority, it is now housed in the curious realm of ‘alternative facts.’

Traditional pseudoscientific racism has been thoroughly debunked by scientific research, but this new guise is seemingly immune to scientific investigation, review and critique, and is all the more dangerous for it.

Inflated, conflated and purely fabricated statistics have been used by ‘right wing’ media and politicians to portray minorities, people of colour, and immigrants as vectors of the ills of modern society.

From white media and politicians obsession with farm killings and white genocide in South Africa, to assertions that Middle Eastern and African immigrants in Europe pose a violent threat to society and women in particular.

A brief review of these claims show that abhorrent while farm killings do occur in South Africa, the statistics have been deliberately inflated by applying murder occurrences from all rural areas to the population of commercial farms in South Africa.

A similar conflation can be found in claims pertaining to the rate of sexual crimes in Sweden. While sexual crime rates do show increasing trends starting in 2005 and 2013 respectively, these can be explained by expansions to the definition of rape in both 2005 and 2013, while the comparatively high rates of sexual crimes in Sweden compared to other European nations are due to Sweden recording crimes at the point of complaint to the police, rather than at conviction, as in other states.

‘Alternative facts’ have become a particularly virulent and resilient blight on evidence based governance, and have proved a powerful tool for far right parties in Sweden and across the world looking to garner credibility.

Many of these organisations, in Sweden and across the world, have now moved past the harsh words and Nazi salutes of the past and now seek support through debate, analysis, and tailored suits. In many ways this resembles the racism of the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries, where scientists, under the guise of research and debate sought to entrench white superiority.

And now I'll pull you all back to Sweden, to stand in front of that statue of Carl Linnaeus holding his Linnea borealis. Except now, standing right next to the statue is Jimmie Åkesson, leader of the Sweden Democrats, similarly holding a flower, Hepatica nobilis, blåsippa in Swedish. They both cut dashing figures certainly, but how has it come to be thus? How has Sweden come full circle?