ABOVE: FRANCES LINCOLN
The death of George Floyd is having wide-ranging impacts, not just in the US but around the world. It has affected institutions and parts of society which previously believed themselves immune to, or at least removed from, racism.
In my recent work on biological classification, I have been struck by how frequently science has been misused to reinforce existing prejudice. And alarmingly, although most overt racial science has been consigned to history, an inherent human obsession with biological classification has left a pervasive, ugly legacy: many people still believe some “races” to be more primitive than, or inferior to, others. I explore zoology’s history, warts and all, in my latest book, How Zoologists Organize Things.
Humans seem driven to classify and organize, and the diversity of animal life around us serves as a perfect outlet for that urge. A particularly malign influence arose with the development in ...
