Rui Diogo does not work for, own shares in, or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has nothing to disclose other than his academic position. Other relevant affiliations.
Systemic racism and sexism have permeated civilization since the dawn of agriculture, when humans began living in one place for long periods of time. Early Western scientists, like Aristotle in ancient Greece, were indoctrinated by the ethnocentrism and misogyny that permeated their societies. More than 2,000 years after Aristotle’s work, British naturalist Charles Darwin also extended the sexist and racist ideas he had heard and read about in his youth to the natural world.
Darwin presented his prejudices as scientific fact, for example in his 1871 book The Descent of Man, in which he described his belief that men were evolutionarily superior to women, that Europeans were superior to non-Europeans, that hierarchies, systemic civilizations were better than small egalitarian societies. Still taught in schools and natural history museums today, he argued that the “ugly ornaments and equally ugly music worshipped by most savages” were not as highly evolved as some animals, such as birds, and would not have been as highly evolved as some animals, such as the New World monkey Pithecia satanas.
The Descent of Man was published during a period of social upheaval on the European continent. In France, the workers’ Paris Commune took to the streets to demand radical social change, including the overthrow of social hierarchy. Darwin’s contention that the enslavement of the poor, non-Europeans, and women was a natural consequence of evolutionary progress was certainly music to the ears of the elites and those in power in scientific circles. Science historian Janet Brown writes that Darwin’s meteoric rise in Victorian society was due in large part to his writings, not his racist and sexist writings.
It is no coincidence that Darwin was given a state funeral in Westminster Abbey, an esteemed symbol of British power and publicly celebrated as a symbol of Britain’s “successful global conquest of nature and civilisation during Victoria’s long reign.”
Despite significant social changes over the past 150 years, sexist and racist rhetoric remains prevalent in science, medicine, and education. As a professor and researcher at Howard University, I am interested in combining my main fields of study—biology and anthropology—to discuss broader social issues. In a study I recently published with my colleague Fatima Jackson and three Howard medical students, we show that racist and sexist language is not a thing of the past: it still exists in scientific articles, textbooks, museums, and educational materials.
An example of the bias that still exists in today’s scientific community is that many accounts of human evolution assume a linear progression from dark-skinned, more “primitive” people to light-skinned, more “advanced” people. Natural history museums, websites, and UNESCO heritage sites illustrate this trend.
Although these descriptions do not correspond to scientific facts, this does not prevent them from continuing to spread. Today, about 11% of the population is “white,” i.e., European. Images showing linear changes in skin color do not accurately reflect the history of human evolution or the general appearance of people today. In addition, there is no scientific evidence for gradual lightening of skin. Lighter skin color developed primarily in a few groups that migrated to areas outside of Africa, at high or low latitudes, such as North America, Europe, and Asia.
Sexist rhetoric still permeates academia. For example, in a 2021 paper about a famous early human fossil found at an archaeological site in the Atapuerca Mountains of Spain, researchers examined the remains’ fangs and found that they actually belonged to a 9- to 11-year-old child. A girl’s fangs. The fossil had previously been thought to belong to a boy because of a 2002 best-selling book by paleoanthropologist José María Bermúdez de Castro, one of the paper’s authors. What’s especially telling is that the study’s authors acknowledged that there was no scientific basis for identifying the fossil as male. The decision “was made by chance,” they wrote.
But this choice is not truly “random.” Accounts of human evolution typically feature only men. In the few cases where women are depicted, they are often portrayed as passive mothers rather than active inventors, cave artists, or food gatherers, despite the anthropological evidence that prehistoric women were exactly that.
Another example of sexist narratives in science is how researchers continue to debate the “puzzling” evolution of the female orgasm. Darwin constructed a narrative of how women evolved to be “shy” and sexually passive, even though he acknowledged that in most mammalian species, females actively choose their mates. As a Victorian, he found it difficult to accept that women could play an active role in mate selection, so he believed that this role was reserved for women early in human evolution. According to Darwin, men later began to sexually select women.
Sexist claims that women are more “shy” and “less sexual,” including the idea that the female orgasm is an evolutionary mystery, are refuted by overwhelming evidence. For example, women actually have multiple orgasms more often than men, and their orgasms are, on average, more complex, more challenging, and more intense. Women are not biologically deprived of sexual desire, yet sexist stereotypes are accepted as scientific fact.
Educational materials, including textbooks and anatomy atlases used by science and medical students, play a critical role in perpetuating preconceived notions. For example, the 2017 edition of Netter’s Atlas of Human Anatomy, commonly used by medical and clinical students, includes nearly 180 illustrations of skin color. Of these, the vast majority were of light-skinned males, with only two showing people with “darker” skin. This perpetuates the idea of depicting white males as the anatomical prototypes of the human species, failing to demonstrate the full anatomical diversity of humans.
Authors of children’s educational materials also replicate this bias in scientific publications, museums, and textbooks. For example, the cover of a 2016 color book called “The Evolution of Creatures” shows human evolution in a linear trend: from “primitive” creatures with darker skin to “civilized” Westerners. The indoctrination is complete when children who use these books become scientists, journalists, museum curators, politicians, authors, or illustrators.
A key characteristic of systemic racism and sexism is that they are unconsciously perpetuated by people who are often unaware that their narratives and decisions are biased. Scientists can combat long-standing racist, sexist, and Western-centric biases by becoming more vigilant and proactive in identifying and correcting these influences in their work. Allowing inaccurate narratives to continue to circulate in science, medicine, education, and the media not only perpetuates these narratives for future generations, but also perpetuates the discrimination, oppression, and atrocities they justified in the past.
Post time: Dec-11-2024