Un articolo uscito sul Guardian a firma Adam Rutheford, docente di genetica presso l’UCL e autore di “How to Argue With a Racist“, si occupa del revival della “scienza della razza” o “razzismo scientifico” o eugenetica, un “campo di ricerca” considerato estinto oppure comunemente derubricato a pseudoscienza, ma che sta riemergendo, grazie al supporto di esperti “ribelli” e ricchi finanziatori, provenienti in particolare dal settore tecnologico.

…as shown in a new investigation by the Guardian and partners, based on undercover filming by the charity Hope Not Hate, these views are creeping back into the mainstream, fuelled by the concerted efforts of international networks of activists – and American tech money. What we are witnessing is a coordinated renaissance in eugenics and race science.

Nuovi aggiornamenti sono stati recentemente pubblicati dal Guardian a proposito del gruppo di “scienziati della razza” Human Diversity Foundation che, secondo alcune fonti, potrebbe essere entrato in possesso dei dati della UK Biobank (per il momento, la UK Biobank smentisce che il gruppo sia in possesso dei dati anonimizzati, ma ipotizza che siano solo a conoscenza delle statistiche a disposizione del pubblico).

L’eugenetica venne formalizzata nel XIX secolo da Francis Galton:

Eugenics was formalised as a scientific discipline in the 19th century by the Victorian polymath Francis Galton, who dedicated his life to promoting the idea that certain populations could and should be improved via selective breeding of humans. So entrenched were his convictions that he believed it should be pursued as a “jehad”, a holy war against customs and prejudices that “impair the physical and moral qualities of our race”

Galton fu fonte di ispirazione per molti e l’eugenetica ha avuto nel corso del tempo sostenitori sia a sinistra che a destra.

Beatrice and Sydney Webb were advocates, as was Winston Churchill, who drafted compulsory sterilisation legislation that thankfully never made it through parliament. New progressive movements such as the Suffragists and advocates for birth control such as Marie Stopes were also keen eugenicists. Their views on the innate superiority of white people, though abhorrent to us now, were typical of the time.

I discepoli di Galton portarono queste teorie anche negli Stati Uniti:

The hive of scientists in America responsible for the spread of eugenics even provided inspiration for the Third Reich, which drew direct intellectual, legal and financial support for their policies of mass sterilisation, persecution and murder. There was even direct collaboration. Nazi and US eugenicists combined to found the Pioneer Fund in 1937 – a pot of cash that was formed to support eugenics, and “the problems of race betterment”.

La genetica contemporanea ha accuratamente smascherato la scienza della razza, come efficacemente riassunto nell’abstract dell’articolo scientifico “Race and genetics versus ‘race’ in genetics“:

Social scientists have long understood race to be a social category invented to justify slavery and evolutionary biologists know the socially constructed racial categories do not align with our biological understanding of genetic variation. The completion of the Human Genome Project in 2003 confirmed humans are 99.9% identical at the DNA level and there is no genetic basis for race.

Il tema era stato trattato anche qualche anno fa in un altro lungo e completo articolo del Guardian, a firma Gavin Evans, che discuteva la rinascita della “scienza della razza”, una teoria ampiamente smentita che torna in auge per giustificare il razzismo e le disuguaglianze sociali.

One of the strangest ironies of our time is that a body of thoroughly debunked “science” is being revived by people who claim to be defending truth against a rising tide of ignorance. The idea that certain races are inherently more intelligent than others is being trumpeted by a small group of anthropologists, IQ researchers, psychologists and pundits who portray themselves as noble dissidents, standing up for inconvenient facts. Through a surprising mix of fringe and mainstream media sources, these ideas are reaching a new audience, which regards them as proof of the superiority of certain races.

…

Many of the keenest promoters of race science today are stars of the “alt-right”, who like to use pseudoscience to lend intellectual justification to ethno-nationalist politics. If you believe that poor people are poor because they are inherently less intelligent, then it is easy to leap to the conclusion that liberal remedies, such as affirmative action or foreign aid, are doomed to fail.

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In fact, when it comes to potential differences in intelligence between groups, one of the remarkable dimensions of the human genome is how little genetic variation there is.

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No one has successfully isolated any genes “for” intelligence at all, and claims in this direction have turned to dust when subjected to peer review.