Health institutions and policymakers need to “wake up” to the danger posed by scientific racism and attempts to normalise an ideology that poses a significant threat to minority communities, thinktanks have warned.
The Institute of Race Relations, the Race Equality Foundation and Race on the Agenda say they have been raising their voices about the return of “race science” beliefs as a subject of open public debate over the past few years, with little response from national institutions.
Scientific racism is the belief that inequality comes from biology rather than social causes. It seeks to use research to legitimise the idea that there is such a thing as genetic superiority and is often deployed to push back against efforts to improve diversity and dismantle structural racism. More recently, it has been used by rightwing politicians to argue for hard borders or the mass expulsion of migrants from western countries.
An investigation by the Guardian, working alongside the anti-racism campaign group Hope Not Hate, has discovered that an international network of activists and academics seeking to normalise scientific racism had been operating with secret funding from a multimillionaire US tech entrepreneur, claiming to have obtained data from UK Biobank. The facility stores genetic information from 500,000 volunteers.
The thinktanks and campaign groups say the latest investigations have significantly raised the stakes around the issue, stating that “today’s fringe ideas could be tomorrow’s mainstream”. They have called for immediate action to be taken to hold those responsible to account and to challenge the ideas they are disseminating.
Liz Fekete, the director of the Institute for Race Relations, said: “Black health campaigners, committed researchers and civil liberties and race organisations, have been raising their voices about the return of race science for years, with little indication that those in powerful institutions, particularly health institutions, are listening.
“Now, the Guardian/Hope Not Hate exposé has raised the stakes. It provides a timely wake-up call to health institutions of the threat posed to NHS users from minority backgrounds.”
She added that her organisation was afraid “today’s fringe ideas could be tomorrow’s mainstream. The path to this mainstreaming has already been laid, in culture wars that ridicule any attempt to tackle racism, even as structural, systemic and popular racism increase – particularly [Enoch] Powell-ite ideas against Muslims and migrants. Ideas based on cultural racism, a hierarchy of cultures, with western culture at the apex, have already passed into the mainstream, so why not scientific racism?”
Jabeer Butt, the CEO of the Race Equality Foundation, said: “Race may not have a biological basis, but racism has profound biological impacts, with poorer health being a key consequence.”
Kulvinder Nagre, a research and policy coordinator at Race on the Agenda, said it was appalling that those who support scientific racism theories may have gained access to sensitive data submitted for health and genetics research.
“Race science and eugenics have been increasingly discussed by certain fringe and online communities over the past decade or so, in line with the growing trend in ‘anti-woke’ theories and rightwing, populist discourse.”
The permeation of such ideas into more mainstream culture, he said, could be demonstrated by the controversy surrounding secret eugenics conferences held at UCL and exposed in 2018, as well as the “growth in influence of ideas around the ‘great displacement theory’ in western politics”.
Nagre added: “Whilst eugenics will never again be a respected scientific discipline, we must remain hyper-vigilant to the dangers of destructive racism, hidden behind a thin veneer of scientific legitimacy. Scientific racism has been the ultimate justification, and often the motivation, behind nearly every genocide and attempted genocide that has taken place since the 15th century.”