Hi, everybody, welcome to “Yo is this racist” a podcast where we will be discussing different racial situations that we encounter. My name is Ricky Feria-Arias and I will be your host for today.
Today we will be discussing the concept of race science. Race science is a concern that science as a vehicle is getting used to advance racist agendas, and it’s really actually something that I never really thought of before reading this article on the conversation.com. The article is centered around a study that was done in with women in South Africa, and it claimed that women in South Africa had lower cognitive functions, which was significantly influenced by education. The reason that this article speaks about this study is because of the use of the word colored, which is a racial classification that came about during the time that the apartheid, which is used to refer to people with a mixed race, the article came from Stellenbosch University in South Africa. And it’s causing a lot of uproar, because it’s an academic study that used the term that really brings a bad connotation. And a lot of articles have been written to criticize the author’s work and take aim at the university’s ethics committee for allowing the study to be conducted. The main point of the article is to really show and remind us that race and racism are still deeply embedded in science. And it’s something that must be exorcised. And I totally agree with with this whole point, and its definitely something that I hadn’t really thought of too much until I read this, like I’ve mentioned before. Now, what they really focus on a lot to try to show us how we can get rid of this in our science, and our scientific process is by decolonizing, our modern Western science. What they mean by that isn’t to destroy Western science as a whole, but to place it in the same plane as other approaches to knowledge and research. Now, this to me is very interesting, because growing up in a family, where a lot of my relatives are doctors and people that have worked in medicine, in this Western scientific realm of scientific approach. I’ve never really thought of that, I’ve never really question what we know, that comes from our science from the Western world, and never really learn anything about other types of science that come from different parts of the world or anything like that. So as soon as I heard this, or read this in this article, it resonated with me right away. And to me, it almost was very eye opening to realize that I’ve just always assumed that what your doctor tells you is 100% correct, and that anyone that’s doing any sort of research that isn’t that, or isn’t what we know as, as typical science in our western world, I’ve never really given it the time. And if this type of approach becomes commonplace, then we would have new knowledge being created, there would be some different knowledge traditions that can produce new thoughts, and really actually changed the world for the better in my opinion. I think that this could lead to us asking different question, looking at things through a different lens and different ways of thinking. And I think it could definitely be for the better. But I do think it would require a willingness to accept that modern science isn’t just one way. And that Western science isn’t the only way of understanding in our world. But it is just one of the ways of understanding in our world, and when the article mentions that it to me, it really hit pretty strongly on something that never really questioned and it’s definitely something that’s a bit of an eye opener for me.
Now, the article goes on to name some specific examples of re science happening in different instances in the past. So one of them that it speaks of is Carlos Linnaeus, who developed the modern system of classifying living things classified Khoisan, which was the first nation of people from Southern Africa as homo monstrosus, which means monstrous or abnormal people and now, this to me immediately stuck out as an example of othering as Hegel would put it in some of the readings that we looked at earlier in the semester, and by giving this classification, I think they are setting up people from Africa as the “other” while setting themselves up as the “one”. And this, I think, also applies to the scientific approach that they speak of in this article by claiming that other scientific approaches that don’t come from our Western scientific world, and saying that those aren’t correct, you’re setting that up as the “other”, all the while setting yourself up as being the one scientific approach from the Western culture seems to be set up as the “one” in our society all the time. And it’s so deeply rooted that I don’t think people really even notice it. So I found this very interesting that it’s a good example of setting up someone as the “one” and then someone else who is the “other”, whether it be with a natural population of people, or scientific approach.
Another example that it gives is, in 1937, scientists in the zoology department at the Stellenbosch University. Now remember, this is the same university that published the scientific study that this article originally speaks of at the beginning of it, right, so
another time that this university has had an issue with this type of racial science. Now, the example from 1937 was scientists in his zoology department at the University use at measurements to confirm the category colored man as a distinctive from white man. Now, the article brings up these examples of this happening in the past but also speaks about a brilliant British science journalist called Angela Saini, who is saying that this race science is on the rise again, internationally. And she argues that it’s been advanced in a more subtle way than it has in the past, by people who are aware of what they’re doing, and doing it in a way that is less obvious. And I can see how doing things like these would be not very obvious as someone who doesn’t really have too much of a science background. I’ve always just read about scientific experiments and studies and never really question them too much. And if I questioned them, I never really questioned them in the sense of is this article being racist? I’ve sometimes maybe question what the article or what the study is really speaking about. But sometimes it can be more subtle than that. Sometimes it seems like it could be kind of masked in a more subtle way, in some of these scientific studies, even if maybe the study isn’t about anything racial related, there could still be some sort of racial connotation, or some sort of racism in there, maybe more at a systemic level.
Now, this next quote, I’m gonna read from the article for me, it was something that hit very strongly with me, and it says: “It’s important to be alive to the dangers of race science, because it can be used to justify racism in broader society.”. Now, this quote, is very true. And I think it’s very applicable to many other aspects in our world of where racism takes place, especially systemic racism. I think, after looking at a lot of different ways of systemic racism throughout the semester, I think that the way that this kind of operates seems to be with these more subtle racisms that happen, and if we’re not alive to those dangers, as the article says, then it justifies racism. And some of the examples that I know I’ve mentioned in my diaries of systemic and justices like some of the housing issues and school issues and different systemic racist approaches that go unnoticed because of the fact that we’re not really aware of that. Now, I’ve never really thought of it being present in our science, or in that whole science and research field. But this article really actually opens my eyes to that it seems like something that is a little bit more deeply rooted, than I had previously imagined.
The author goes on to say that this whole Western science, being the only way of science approach is embedded in eurocentrism. A way of thinking that prioritized Europe in front of the rest of the world. Now, obviously, people from Europe ended up colonizing, and that spread this whole thought process and this whole belief that Western science is the only way of science. And it’s spreading throughout the world that seems like so how do we go about really changing it? That’s really what the article goes on to talk about next, a new approach. Now one of the things that the article mentions, which I thought was very interesting was that a lot of the modern Western science that we have, didn’t develop free from influences of these other cultures. Now, throughout all the different places that were colonized. Western science picked up different ideas and approaches from different indigenous groups, whether it was in North America or in Africa. It mentions examples, such as aspirin being discovered by indigenous people using willow bark, which is a active ingredient on how we make aspirin today. So you see these examples of western science as we know it, picking up influence from other ways of thinking. And this, to me seem like one of the biggest eye opening statements from the whole article, because we’re losing out on potential scientific gains and different approaches that we might not have think of, because we’re looking at it through just one perspective. I think that if we were to start seeing Western science as just one option and be more open to different ways of scientific research and scientific studies, it could really benefit mankind in a way that we’ve never really seen before.
So the article goes on, and closes with the conclusion that there is no denying that modern science and Western science has brought a lot of benefits to our human race. But this doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t be interrogated or shouldn’t be critiqued. It shouldn’t just be held to a standard, that anything that we get from Western science is 100% correct, and anything that goes against that isn’t. Now after reading this whole article, like I said many times here, on the podcast, it really opened my eyes to systemic racism that I hadn’t really thought of before. Like I mentioned earlier, I grew up with a family that had a lot of people in the medical field, and a lot of people that who were contributors to this whole Western science. And you just don’t think about that being something that that’s even a problem, let alone something that’s actually causing racism to be rooted in our in our scientific process. Now, I think that how we go about this would be something that would be hard to change. I think that with all these different examples of systemic and justices, the racism is very deeply rooted within our systems. And I think this is why it makes it so hard to change, because you don’t know anything different. We’ve been raised to not question Western science and Western medicine and our whole lives, haven’t really thought about it. But maybe you take it from the perspective of someone from Africa or someone who wouldn’t really be around or exposed to the Western scientific world. They might honestly even have the opposite view. Maybe they don’t know what Western science and the western medical world is maybe they don’t accept that, who knows. That’s something that that also I think, is interesting to think about, because they might be seeing it the other way around. So I think what you get exposed to, really has such an impact, not just in the instance of race science, but really another systemic injustices that we see in other different fields, or industries of our world.
So to conclude the podcast, is this racism? I strongly believe that it is I think that it’s a systemic racism that’s very hidden and not as obvious as some of the other ones that we know about. But I do believe that this is racism, deeply rooted in our scientific approach. Thank you so much for listening. My name is Ricky Feria-Arias and this is yo is this racist.
https://theconversation.com/how-controversial-racist-research-opens-door-for-a-decolonisation-drive-117870?fbclid=IwAR0oNs1V0gyfUJKoR48gVm4hbMiqBjNf34nZQgFqyWC-bB4BAku4JScjrwI