Throughout time, there have always been attempts to use science to justify killing, pillaging, and genocide. These justifications are generally completely false and based on nothing more than hypothesis. However, people still believed these justifications and, in some cases, they are still used today to discriminate against people. This stems partially from the civil war era and the debate as to whether there really are more than one species of human. The civil war was largely triggered by southern plantation owners who didn’t want to give up their slaves. These slaves were of African descent, and many southerners regarded them as having less rights than white folk. During the civil war, there was a lot of debate about the science behind race …show more content…
That is to say, it went against the belief of many southerners that mankind began with Adam and Eve because if there were more than one species of human, then evolution must be a true concept. This was a problem for many southerners because, ethically, they couldn’t make the argument that people of African descent were of lesser value than anyone else without contradicting their own dearly held beliefs. This instance does not go to prove anything in terms of racism being pseudoscience, but it does show that the ways in which many people argued for racism in the past had absolutely no scientific evidence backing them …show more content…
One example is a study from New York that attempted to use standardized test scores to justify differences in the intelligence of different races, specifically Caucasians, Asians, Hispanics, and African Americans. In this study, standardized test scores were compared between Caucasians, Asians, Hispanics, and African Americans. It found that Caucasians and Asians generally had higher scores on these standardized tests and concluded that this must mean Caucasians and Asians are smarter than Hispanics and African Americans. However, this study neglected to take into account the fact that these people come from different backgrounds. There are multiple factors that could have contributed to the gap in these test scores. One factor that could account for the difference in scores is parental expectation. It is possible that parents of the Caucasian and Asian students may have higher expectations of achievement for their children, which could cause these students to strive for excellence in ways other students wouldn’t. Another factor could be income. Higher income families have the means to better educate their children and therefore, children of higher income families tend to have higher test scores. It is also true that African American and Hispanic people do not make as much money in America on average. This difference in income could have contributed to the difference in standardized