Scientific racism was mainstream academic ideology, not a marginal error

Evidence

The prospect of scientifically managing the presently defective human stock was seriously debated in the most enlightened and distinguished circles. Biologists and medical experts were, of course, in the forefront of the debate; but they were joined by famous people from other areas, like the psychologists Cyril Burt and William McDougall, politicians Balfour and Neville Chamberlain, the whole of the infant British sociology, and on various occasions by J. B. S. Haldane, J. M. Keynes, and Harold Laski. Concepts like “rabid and wilted stock” (coined by Wheethams in 1911), “degenerate stock,” “submen,” “low-grade types,” “biologically unfit” became staple figures of intelligent debate, while the tremendously influential Karl Pearson sounded in 1909 the alarm that shook the reading and debating public: “the survival of the unfit is a marked characteristic of modern town life.” — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 406 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Such opinions, in themselves harmless, were advanced by the early anthropologists as starting points of their investigations. A typical instance is the naive hypothesis of Paul Broca, noted French anthropologist of the middle of the last century, who assumed that “the brain has something to do with race and the measured shape of the skull is the best way to get at the contents of the brain” (quoted after Jacques Barzun, op. cit., p. 162). It is obvious that this assertion, without the support of a conception of the nature of man, is simply ridiculous. As for the philologists of the early nineteenth century, whose concept of “Aryanism” has seduced almost every student of racism to count them among the propagandists or even inventors of race-thinking, they are as innocent as innocent can be. When they overstepped the limits of pure research it was because they wanted to include in the same cultural brotherhood as many nations as possible. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 2243 (#contradicts, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Social-science methods smuggled Orientalist racism past academic scrutiny — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 261; Applied racial science was not a retreat from but a continuation of racism — David Theo Goldberg, The Racial State, 18; Racism shaped Western science, not the reverse — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 408 (+10 more)

Broader Connections

• Scientific racism and eugenic management of human stock were respectable mainstream debates #corroborates (0.94) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 406
• Early race science was naive speculation, not deliberate ideology #contradicts (0.92) — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 2243
• Early race scholars were often not deliberate racists #complicates (0.78)