Racist racial science would hold sway for another century after Morton. It crescendoed with the eugenics movement in the 20th century. Eugenics only got discredited after the Nazis took it to its logical genocidal conclusion. The genome project found humans have about 20,000 genes in each of our cells.
Scientists weren’t the first to divide humanity along racial – and and racist – lines. But for hundreds of years, racial scientists claimed to provide proof for those racist hierarchies – and some still do.
Resources for this episode:
Fatal Invention, by Dorothy Roberts
The History of White People, by Nell Irvin Painter