Scientific racism: what it is and how it transforms science to legitimize itself July 11, 2020 Racism is a multidimensional phenomenon which results in exclusion and restriction in access to different spheres of public life of a person or a group of people, for reasons based on color or national or ethnic origin.
This is why Morton and his theories are recognized as the beginnings of scientific racism, which consists of use scientific theories to legitimize racist practices of discrimination ; what also includes that the scientific theories and investigations themselves are often crossed by important racial biases; as it happened with the postulates of Samuel G. Morton and other doctors of the time.
In other words, the polygenic theory of races is proof of the two processes that make up scientific racism. On the one hand, it exemplifies how scientific research can be easily exploited to legitimize and reproduce stereotypes and conditions of inequality, discrimination or violence towards minorities, in this case racialized.
And on the other hand, they are an example of how scientific production is not necessarily neutral, but can hide racist biases that, for that reason, make it easily exploitable.
