[Music] what is scientific racism the idea that the world can be divided into racial groups with biological moral and intellectual differences is not based on scientific evidence nevertheless some people believe racial groups are biologically distinct and whites are intellectually superior and scientists have used scientific racism to provide support for these false beliefs the use of science or pseudoscience to rationalize racial inequality can be traced back to carolus linnaeus the first scientist to classify human beings into racial categories with distinct moral and intellectual traits scientific racism has evolved over time from Linnaeus's rudimentary classifications to the measurement of brain size using mustard seeds to IQ tests intelligence testing the attempt to quantify intellectual ability has a sordid history an early 20th century scientists henry h goddard gave an intelligence trust to immigrants arriving on ellis island the majority of these immigrants received a low score likely because they were recovering from a long voyage across the Atlantic but eugenicist use Goddard's finding that immigrants scored low on these tests to argue that the United States should limit immigration from certain countries eugenicist believed they could improve the biological fitness of the population through immigration policies as well as sterilization eugenicist were successful in getting immigration laws changed to drastically reduce the migration of people from Africa Asia and Southern and Eastern Europe you Genesis were also responsible for sterilization programs 60,000 people in the United States were sterilized because they scored low on intelligence tests one of the main proponents of eugenics was Madison grant he's the author of the 1916 book the passing of the great race where he argued that Nordics were the master race and that inferior races should be sterilized adolf hitler referred to grant's book as his bible Hitler put grants ideas into practice when he passed the eugenic sterilization law in 1933 this law led to the sterilization of two hundred and twenty five thousand people in Germany in just three years the Nazis then took these ideas several steps further first to euthanasia and then to the gas chambers despite these atrocities ideas of innate intellectual inferiority and superiority have not disappeared in 1994 psychologists Richard Herrnstein and political scientist charles murray published a book called the bell curve which argues that intelligence is hereditary and varies by race ten years later Frank Miele and Vincent Zurich argued in their book race the reality of human differences that races are a biological reality and that there are measurable intellectual differences between racial groups and in 2009 a Harvard doctoral student named Jason rich wine defended a dissertation in which he that Latino immigrants have a substantially lower IQ than whites rich wine further argued we should reduce Latino immigration because of the supposedly hereditary nature of IQ these are the same arguments made by you Genesis in the early 20th century sociologists identify such arguments as examples of pseudoscience beliefs or practices appearing to be scientific but based more on personal biases than on scientific findings today we know there is no scientific basis for dividing humans into genetically distinct racial groups and that the social environment plays a significant role in shaping intelligence nevertheless we can anticipate that scientific racism will continue to be propagated as science has long been used to justify racial inequality as science evolves so does scientific racism [Music] you