Dorothy Roberts: Racial scientists used the index to explain their theories of human hierarchy. She says eugenicists asserted that Celts, Slavs and Mediterranean races had shorter skulls than superior, tutonic, and Nordic types. "From the perspective of today's science, all these theorists were barking up the wrong tree"
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