Scientific racism

(from Race: The Power of an Illusion: The Story We Tell)
- Jefferson truly believed that science was the only way to explain the difference between blacks and whites.
- Finkelman said that Jefferson “sets American science on the path of trying to figure out what it is scientifically that makes blacks inferior to whites. And of course, if that’s the question the scientist asks, then that’s the question that the scientist will answer.”
- “In the next century, as the nation expanded, so would ideas about human difference. Science and slavery would help focus the nation’s attention on the nature of black people.”