Why mainstream research will not end scientific racism in psychology

Abstract

Mainstream research on racial essentialization may be valuable in the fight against racism, as Held (2020) suggested. I argue that the production of scientific racism in the literature of psychology is unlikely to be affected by such research. Assertions by psychologists of Black people’s average inferiority in brain size, intelligence, and morality have persisted for over 100 years despite repeated, careful critiques. Recent presentations of these old and discredited claims have sidestepped the fundamental criticism that they rest on essentialized racial categories. The survival of scientific racism in mainstream psychology journals should be understood as a community project with its own Weltanschauung of “racial progress.”