Sociobiology reasserted biological racism while evading the racist label

Evidence

Harvard biologist Edward Osborne Wilson, who was trained in the dual-evolution theory, published Sociobiology: The New Synthesis in 1975. Wilson more or less called on American scholars to find “the biological basis of all forms of social behavior in all kinds of organisms, including man.” Though most sociobiologists did not apply sociobiology directly to race, the unproven theory underlying sociobiology itself allowed believers to apply the field’s principles to racial disparities and arrive at racist ideas that blamed Blacks’ social behavior for their plight. It was the first great academic theory in the post-1960s era whose producers tried to avoid the label “racist.” — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 1080

Categorization

• DEFINE: Flag for the reader’s placement exercise: sociobiology is a case where the escape-from-label matters — a theory whose producers reject the label while the theory enables racist inference.
• QUESTION: The reader wants to test the reversal (ideas before policy) against cases where ideas seem prior — sociobiology could be such a test case worth interrogating.
• XREF: Echoes the milgram/law-merchant theme of institutions producing justifications, and the reader’s standing interest in how labels are managed.