Liam Bright

Ok so question, twitter, is the following the story of biological racial science *per those sympathetic to its present incarnation* - so no need to @ me explaining why its present incarnation is bunk, that's not what I am looking for in this thread....

So way back when (early 18th/late 17th?) people come up w/ empirical theories about sources and consequences of human racial diversity. The details of this - like basically any biological theorising from this era - are no longer plausible, but this is recognisable proto-science.

Gradually this develops into a research programme in 19th century anthropology. Alas a lot of frank nonsense is mixed in, and it fit all too neatly into explanations as to why the people generating the theory are actually the master race who should be in control of all the stuff.

In early 20th century sociologists and anthropologists complain that theory doesn't match facts, and the political projects it was associated with are discredited. European bourgeois no better at being distant masters than anyone else is + a racial genocide in European heartland.

A new project is thus begun - even if the old theory failed, some of the correlations the old theorists were noticing still exist (say, in mortality rates, or education outcomes); how are we to explain them? Sociologists try social constructivist theories with varying success.

But by the late 20th century two things get in the way of this: (1) explaining heritability - a lot of misunderstanding about what heritability is in popular discourse, it doesn't necessitate a biological explanation, but biology does provide one way and something is needed.

(2) genetic clustering tracks intuitive racial categories, awkward for social constructivism. [[+ awkward for modern proponent to admit, but surely factor that biotheories receive persistent funding and support from racists in broader culture even while in scientific wilderness]]

So modern biological theory of race must avoid the hubris (nothing in social science has explanatory power that was ascribed to race) and ties to mass murder, while seeing what can be built upon new basis in modern genetics. Normal science would consist in explaining heritability