Dorothy Roberts says belief in race is like a religion. People, many people find very hard to even imagine not existing. They resist even allowing their imaginations to go there because it's such an important part of their worldview and their sense of their own identities.
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