Disparities created demand for scientific racist justifications

Evidence

As the economic and racial disparities grew and middle-class incomes became more unstable in the late 1970s and early 1980s, old segregationist fields—like evolutionary psychology, preaching genetic intellectual hierarchies, and physical anthropology, preaching biological racial distinctions—and new fields, like sociobiology, all seemed to grow in popularity. After all, new racist ideas were needed to rationalize the newly growing disparities. — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 1080

Categorization

• DEFINE: Example of the core inversion in action: material inequality (policy) generates the demand for justifying ideas — the ignorance-to-hate-to-policy flow run backward.
• DEEPTHINKING: This is the crux: scientific fields don’t independently produce racist theory; they are summoned into popularity by newly-widening inequities that need rationalizing. A supply-and-demand model of racist ideas.
• XREF: connects to: Scientific racism framed lack of Western knowledge as grounds for extermination — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 265; Racial discrimination persists inside the status hierarchy of scientific institutions — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1574