3.1. Impediment 1: genetic determinism

Attribution of group differences to genetics provides simple, easy-to-understand explanations that sound credible to a general public that is regularly fed a diet of ‘gene-for-X’ explanations in the media (Condit, Reference Condit2007; Moore et al., Reference Moore, Kampourakis and Gericke2025). This ‘gene for’ language is commonly misunderstood to imply genetic determinism (e.g. Bates et al., Reference Bates, Templeton, Achter, Harris and Condit2003; Condit & Parrott, Reference Condit and Parrott2004; Nelkin & Lindee, Reference Nelkin and Lindee2004), namely the belief that phenotypic traits are exclusively, or predominantly, caused by genotypes. Although many scientists and journalists may be prone to overhyping scientific findings, this tendency can be particularly problematic in the field of genetics, where a genetic association is rarely qualified as just one of many possible causal factors and is often framed as a ‘breakthrough’ that will lead to a new cure or treatment (Condit, Reference Condit2007). Where scientists discover significant gene–environment interactions, it is the genes that are usually highlighted, with less emphasis placed on the role of the environment (Dar-Nimrod & Heine, Reference Dar-Nimrod and Heine2011). Similarly, when genome-wide association studies (GWAS) are published, the headline commonly states that ‘genes affecting trait Y have been discovered’, with little prominence given to the often-small amount of trait variance explained by DNA variants. News articles frequently misrepresent heritability estimates in humans as a measure of the relative importance of genes in causing a trait, as opposed to referring to variation in a trait, and in this way the public is given the impression that genes are the sole or major cause of many human conditions (Moore et al., Reference Moore, Kampourakis and Gericke2025). Belief in genetic determinism, and essentialist reasoning, has been reported to be common in many countries and cultures (Dar-Nimrod & Heine, Reference Dar-Nimrod and Heine2011; Gericke et al., Reference Gericke, El-Hani, Sbeglia, Nehm and Evangelista2022; Keller, Reference Keller2005) and recognized as ‘a societal problem because it has the potential to foster intolerant attitudes’ (Gericke et al., Reference Gericke, Carver, Castéra, Evangelista, Marre and El-Hani2017, p. 1223; Reference Gericke, El-Hani, Sbeglia, Nehm and Evangelista2022).

Unfortunately, a basic education in genetics may not always help students to understand the complex interplay between genes and environments that produce human traits, nor does it encourage them to regard populations as aggregates of genetically varying individuals who differ in a continuous manner in a variety of quantitative characters (Donovan, Reference Donovan2022; Jamieson & Radick, Reference Jamieson and Radick2017; Schmid et al., Reference Schmid, Lee, Weindling, Syed, Agyemang, Donovan, Radick and Smith2022; Stern & Kampourakis, Reference Stern and Kampourakis2017; Stern et al., Reference Stern, Kampourakis and Müller2023). On the contrary, studies have found that the teaching of simple model systems widely used to introduce students to Mendelian genetics (e.g. ‘blue’ versus ‘brown’ eyes), which are often portrayed in terms of direct genotype-to-phenotype mappings, can inadvertently encourage both genetic determinism and genetic essentialism (defined as thinking in terms of genetic ‘types’) (Donovan, Reference Donovan2017; Donovan et al., Reference Donovan, Weindling, Amemiya, Salazar, Lee, Syed, Stuhlsatz and Snowden2024a; Jamieson & Radick, Reference Jamieson and Radick2017; Morin-Chassé, Reference Morin-Chassé2014; Schmid et al., Reference Schmid, Lee, Weindling, Syed, Agyemang, Donovan, Radick and Smith2022). This finding has led to the concern that undergraduate biology curricula are not aligned with current genomic knowledge, because the tests and assessments used by genetics instructors rarely assess concepts integral to multifactorial inheritance (Schmid et al., Reference Schmid, Lee, Weindling, Syed, Agyemang, Donovan, Radick and Smith2022). Encouragingly, where genes are no longer presented to students as ‘what inheritance is all about’ with everything else relegated to negligible supporting roles, and when students are instead taught the importance of multifactorial causation and environmental contingency, evidence suggests that a genetics education can ‘inoculate’ students against genetic determinism (Donovan et al., Reference Donovan, Semmens, Keck, Brimhall, Busch, Weindling, Duncan, Stuhlsatz, Bracey, Bloom, Kowalski and Salazar2019a, Reference Donovan, Weindling, Salazar, Duncan, Stuhlsatz and Keck2021; Dougherty, Reference Dougherty2009; Jamieson & Radick, Reference Jamieson and Radick2017; Radick, Reference Radick2016). Unfortunately, resistance to introducing these progressive teaching methods remains.

The wider issue here is that, for effective ‘inoculation’, students need, at some level, to understand the complexities of human development (Dougherty, Reference Dougherty2009; Govindaraju & Goldstein, Reference Govindaraju and Goldstein2025; Moore et al., Reference Moore, Kampourakis and Gericke2025; Schmid et al., Reference Schmid, Lee, Weindling, Syed, Agyemang, Donovan, Radick and Smith2022). Few human phenotypes are explained by single genes, and most are not only polygenic but shaped by a wide variety of other environmental and developmental factors (Barresi & Gilbert, Reference Barresi and Gilbert2023; Gilbert & Epel, Reference Gilbert and Epel2015). The convenient shorthand of thinking of genes as having dedicated functions gives a false impression, as virtually all human genes have multiple functions and are expressed in multiple tissues. Although the simple ‘genotype-to-phenotype mapping’ may be an appealing metaphor, in reality there are many intervening steps in the path from DNA sequences to phenotypic characters, and any such ‘mapping’ is highly nonlinear and contingent on the individual’s internal and external environment (Bateson & Martin, Reference Bateson and Martin1999; Lala et al., Reference Lala, Uller, Feiner, Feldman and Gilbert2024; Moore et al., Reference Moore, Kampourakis and Gericke2025). A challenge to presenting a complex, but more accurate, description of the development of traits is that simplified accounts are often easier to understand. Simple heuristics allow complex scenarios to be interpreted and decisions to be made based on limited information about how the world seems to work (Gigerenzer & Brighton, Reference Gigerenzer, Brighton, Gigerenzer, Hertwig and Pachur2011). As a result, this apparent simplicity can lead to stereotyping and an over-reliance on essentialist thinking, which can inadvertently promote racism and other forms of discrimination, including sexism (see Box 1).

Nonetheless, compelling recommendations, which we endorse, have been made for modernizing, complexifying, or ‘inverting’ (to focus on more representative complex cases first) biology curricula to enhance scientific understanding and reduce inappropriate essentialist and deterministic inference (e.g. Donovan et al., Reference Donovan, Semmens, Keck, Brimhall, Busch, Weindling, Duncan, Stuhlsatz, Bracey, Bloom, Kowalski and Salazar2019a, Reference Donovan, Weindling, Salazar, Duncan, Stuhlsatz and Keck2021; Dougherty, Reference Dougherty2009; Jamieson & Radick, Reference Jamieson and Radick2017; Radick, Reference Radick2016; Schmid et al., Reference Schmid, Lee, Weindling, Syed, Agyemang, Donovan, Radick and Smith2022).

Solution: At high school and university levels, students should be introduced to the complexities of human development. Scientists should add nuance to explanations for the development of human traits by explaining gene–environment interactions and the complexity underlying causation.

3.2. Impediment 2: overly simplistic conceptions of biological inheritance

A related concern is an overly simplistic conception of heredity that attributes the inheritance of traits, and differences in traits, to genes and genetic variation. In stark contrast to this simplistic understanding, recent years have witnessed an explosion of scientific interest in, and experimental evidence for, diverse forms of extra-genetic inheritance that contribute to parent–offspring similarity (Bonduriansky & Day, Reference Bonduriansky and Day2018; Cavalli-Sforza & Feldman, Reference Cavalli-Sforza and Feldman1981; Lala et al., Reference Lala, Uller, Feiner, Feldman and Gilbert2024). A wide array of resources is now known to be passed across the generations and to influence the phenotype, including epigenetic marks, symbionts, hormones, nutrients, antibodies, prions, cultural knowledge, ecological legacies, and more. There is no question that this multifaceted inheritance applies to humans. Human biological inheritance has epigenetic, somatic, cultural, and ecological components, which can cause variation between groups and perpetuate them across generations (Ivey Henry et al., Reference Ivey Henry, Spence Beaulieu, Bradford and Graves2023; Lala & Feldman, Reference Lala and Feldman2024; Lala et al., Reference Lala, Uller, Feiner, Feldman and Gilbert2024). Yet for human traits such as disease risk, which may concentrate in families, there is a persistent tendency to assume that genetic inheritance is the main causal factor. Genes certainly contribute to explaining some of the visible phenotypes that are frequently referred to in racial classifications (e.g. skin pigmentation) (Jablonski, Reference Jablonski2021; Quillen et al., Reference Quillen, Norton, Parra, Lona-Durazo, Ang, Illiescu, Pearson, Shriver, Lasisi, Gokcumen, Starr, Lin, Martin and Jablonski2019). However, most traits that are assumed to differ between racialized groups have a much more complicated aetiology.

Simplistic conceptions of inheritance fail to consider a broad range of inheritance processes (Lala & Feldman, Reference Lala and Feldman2024). ‘Epigenetic inheritance’ includes the transmission across generations of molecular markers that affect whether specific genes are expressed (e.g. via the attachment of histone proteins to cellular DNA; Anastasiadi et al., Reference Anastasiadi, Venney, Bernatchez and Wellenreuther2021). Although the conclusive controlled experiments that confirm epigenetic inheritance in other species are unethical, our own substantial circumstantial evidence suggests that epigenetic inheritance contributes to the inheritance of disease, stress, body weight and other traits in humans (Heard & Martienssen, Reference Heard and Martienssen2014; Horsthemke, Reference Horsthemke2018; Jablonka & Lamb, Reference Jablonka and Lamb2014). Human babies also inherit some of their mother’s symbiotic bacteria during childbirth and in breast milk, as well as many other nutrients and resources (‘somatic inheritance’). Children inherit prejudices, beliefs, attitudes, and aspirations from parents and relatives (‘cultural inheritance’). They are also born into the environments of their parents, inheriting birth locations that vary in their quality of housing, childcare, schooling, pollutants, and other factors (‘ecological inheritance’). Epigenetic, somatic, cultural, and ecological inheritances affect a wide variety of human phenotypes, and all of these factors contribute to (often reliably inherited) phenotypic variation between racialized groups (Lala & Feldman, Reference Lala and Feldman2024).

An example of how simplified accounts of inheritance can lead to support for racism is provided by the debates around ‘race’ and scholastic achievement. Although numerous data sets have documented differences in the average levels of scholastic achievement between racialized groups in countries such as the USA (e.g. Kao & Thompson, Reference Kao and Thompson2003; Silverman et al., Reference Silverman, Rosario, Wormington, Tibbetts, Hulleman and Destin2023), the persistence of these differences over time is not due to genetic transmission, as no such genetic differences have been found (Guevara et al., Reference Guevara, Gopalan, Massey, Adegboyega, Zhou, Solis, Anaya, Churchill, Feldblum and Lawler2023). In this case, the racial variation arises because humans have constructed ‘inequitable niches’ that persist over time through the legacies of inherited wealth and power, inherited norms and institutions, and inherited environments that vary in their amenities and opportunities (Ivey Henry et al., Reference Ivey Henry, Spence Beaulieu, Bradford and Graves2023; Lala & Feldman, Reference Lala and Feldman2024). Variation in scholastic performance is primarily the product of different life experiences, including racism and discrimination within schools and other social settings (Turetsky et al., Reference Turetsky, Sinclair, Starck and Shelton2021; Warikoo & Carter, Reference Warikoo and Carter2009). Similar critiques apply to simplistic accounts of variation in disease incidence or sporting achievements among racialized groups (Graves & Goodman, Reference Graves and Goodman2022; Ivey Henry et al., Reference Ivey Henry, Spence Beaulieu, Bradford and Graves2023). Detailed studies of extragenetic inheritance are necessary to understand how variation between racialized groups can emerge and persist over generations.

Some studies have attempted to downplay the importance of environmental influences on social status by suggesting that cultural variables are themselves genetically determined (e.g. Clark, Reference Clark2023; for a rebuttal of this study, see Benning et al., Reference Benning, Carlson, Smith, Shaw and Harpak2024). This work claims that cultural variation is driven by genetic differences in parental ‘quality’, with genetically superior parents producing higher-quality offspring both through the genetic inheritance of intelligence and through their superior genes creating better nurturing environments. However, that social status persists across generations and has not decreased over time, despite efforts to improve social mobility, does not mean that genetic inheritance explains persistence of social status. The ‘genetification’ of culture has a sinister side. If all facets of an individual’s life were determined by genetics, rather than social experience and other extra-genetically transmitted factors, then inequities in power and wealth could be regarded as natural and inevitable (Saini, Reference Saini2019). However, this interpretation entails a model of causation that the evolutionary human sciences have long rejected. For instance, a major conclusion of contemporary gene–culture coevolution research is that the interactions between genes and culture are bidirectional, and that the causes of cultural variation cannot be reduced to genetics (Brown et al., Reference Brown, Dickins, Sear and Laland2011; Henrich, Reference Henrich2016).

Solution: At high school and university levels, students would benefit from being introduced to the complexities of biological and other types of inheritance and to the difficulties involved in inference of causation of human traits.

3.3. Impediment 3: belief in the naturalistic fallacy and associated naturalization of non-biological variation among racialized groups

The naturalistic fallacy is the assumption that what is ‘natural’ is ‘good’. In the context of the evolutionary human sciences, the fallacy usually pertains to the claim that features of human behaviour or cognition that are thought to have evolved (e.g. male aggression) are desirable or inevitable. Although this assumption has been widely criticized (e.g. Curry, Reference Curry2006; Wilson et al., Reference Wilson, Dietrich and Clark2003), it remains prevalent among the general public (Nelkin & Lindee, Reference Nelkin and Lindee2004) and in some academic literature, including the human sciences (Curry, Reference Curry2006; Wilson et al., Reference Wilson, Dietrich and Clark2003), where evolution is perceived to naturalize contemporary political and economic relations between racialized groups, thus reinforcing genetic determinism.

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the popularity of eugenics and social Darwinism led to the belief that the superior power and wealth of Western nations compared to the rest of the world reflected in-built differences in the psychology and abilities of different ‘races’ (Brown et al., Reference Brown, Dickins, Sear and Laland2011; Kevles, Reference Kevles1985; Levine, Reference Levine, Bashford and Levine2010). Likewise, the growth of Western nations as industrialized global powers has often been attributed to the intrinsic (biological and cultural) merits of these nations (Ashraf & Galor, Reference Ashraf and Galor2013; MacMaster, Reference MacMaster2001), rather than to colonialism and the transatlantic slave trade (Inikori, Reference Inikori2020). Even today, differences in wealth, power and success among racialized groups are frequently linked to the possession of more-or-less ‘effective’ cultural values and institutions, rather than to historical causes and their resultant contemporary structures. For instance, differences between African and European Americans are misattributed to ‘shortcomings’ of the former, deemed to reflect inborn or natural inferiorities, rather than to the legacies of slavery, racism, and discrimination (Kendi, Reference Kendi2019). The converse stereotype that Asian Americans prosper due to cultural values of hard work and education is also problematic, as it also encompasses essentialist assumptions about intrinsic difference.

Scholars of the evolutionary human sciences have a particular responsibility when reporting their research to avoid reinforcing hierarchical views of behaviour or culture. Evolutionary research often makes inferences from measured, or assumed, variation in the estimated ‘fitness’ of individual- or group-level traits. Although this approach should not entail attaching intrinsic value judgements to more-or-less ‘fit’ characteristics, where such traits concern human behaviour, cognition, or culture, there is a particular danger that ‘fit’ traits (i.e. those that are readily propagating) will be assumed to be ‘good’ (i.e. intrinsically meritorious). Unhealthy eating or drug use are traits that exemplify this important distinction. In the cultural evolution literature, it is easy to slip into regarding increased technological complexity as ‘inherently superior’ or ‘more evolved’, feeding a dangerous progressive narrative of human evolution. Similarly, care should be taken when interpreting data from contemporary small-scale societies to avoid inappropriately equating these populations with ‘ancestral’ states (Paige & French, Reference Paige and French2020). Palaeoanthropology has employed many progress narratives to reinforce racist and colonialist hierarchies (Athreya & Ackermann, Reference Athreya, Ackermann, Porr and Matthews2019). Such narratives might lend credence to simplistic accounts based on genetic determinism. For these reasons, it is imperative that evolutionary explanations for human behaviour, even those emphasizing cultural evolution, stress that evolution does not attribute value judgements to evolved characters, and that cultural variation between groups is not caused by underlying genetic differences.

Solution: Evolutionary researchers should be more explicit in eschewing the naturalistic fallacy and stressing that variation among racialized groups in behavioural and cultural traits is not caused by genetic differences.

3.4. Impediment 4: a failure of relevant scientific disciplines to take responsibility for teaching the science of race and racism

According to the UNESCO statement on ‘race’ (1952, p. 5), ‘Race hatred and conflict thrive on scientifically false ideas and are nourished by ignorance. In order to show up these errors of fact and reasoning… we must turn to the means and methods of education, science and culture.’ Higher levels of education are associated with lower levels of racial prejudice (Jayaratne et al., Reference Jayaratne, Ybarra, Sheldon, Brown, Feldbaum, Pfeffer and Petty2006), which implies that education, particularly biological education, may be a key ‘weapon’ against racism. As mentioned above, an education in genetics does not preclude emergence of belief in genetic determinism; however, there is evidence that a suitable (i.e. ‘holistic genetics’) education has a high probability of reducing belief in genetic essentialism and thus reducing racial prejudice (Donovan, Reference Donovan2022; Stern & Kampourakis, Reference Stern and Kampourakis2017).

The forging of the modern evolutionary synthesis in the twentieth century established a Darwinian perspective on evolution grounded in theoretical population genetics, and many of its architects were not just scientists but public intellectuals who were conscious of the social implications of the synthesis (Farber, Reference Farber2011). The Holocaust triggered a rejection of eugenics within the sciences, and, by the 1960s, textbooks taught that racial categories held little to no biological meaning (Farber, Reference Farber2011). Some leading evolutionary biologists, including Theodosius Dobzhansky and Ernst Mayr, were overtly critical of aspects of scientific racism, such as that race mixing would inevitably have detrimental effects (although that did not prevent Dobzhansky from believing that races are biologically real). At the same time, anthropologists exposed the myth of racial categories and the relativity of cultural values (Farber, Reference Farber2011). Likewise, the rise of behaviourism in psychology moved the field away from explaining differences between people by recourse to human ‘instincts’ to studying how learning and the environment affect individuals’ behaviour and cognition (Brown et al., Reference Brown, Dickins, Sear and Laland2011). However, the last 50 years has witnessed changes in the teaching of this topic.

Today, although the issues surrounding ‘race’ and racism continue to be taught by anthropologists, psychologists, and social scientists (e.g. Bird et al., Reference Bird, Jackson and Winston2024; Goodman, Reference Goodman2017; Zuberi et al., Reference Zuberi, Patterson and Stewart2015), biologists appear to have largely eschewed this topic. Several researchers have suggested that contemporary undergraduate biology courses do not adequately equip students to understand the complexities of human biology or guard against essentialist thinking (Donovan et al., Reference Donovan, Semmens, Keck, Brimhall, Busch, Weindling, Duncan, Stuhlsatz, Bracey, Bloom, Kowalski and Salazar2019a, Reference Donovan, Weindling, Salazar, Duncan, Stuhlsatz and Keck2021; Dougherty, Reference Dougherty2009; Hennessey and Freeman, Reference Hennessey and Freeman2024; Moore et al., Reference Moore, Kampourakis and Gericke2025; Schmid et al., Reference Schmid, Lee, Weindling, Syed, Agyemang, Donovan, Radick and Smith2022), although Donovan (Reference Donovan2015, p. 1092) detects ‘little evidence that contemporary biology textbooks challenge stereotypical racial beliefs that are based in biological thinking’. Indeed, our strong impression is that, in both North America and Europe, ‘race’ and racism rarely even feature in biology curricula (see also Guevara et al., Reference Guevara, Gopalan, Massey, Adegboyega, Zhou, Solis, Anaya, Churchill, Feldblum and Lawler2023). This deficiency has created a vacuum wherein well-funded white supremacist groups are propagating pseudoscientific arguments, necessitating the intervention of qualified scientists to expose their dangerous fallacies (Panofsky et al., Reference Panofsky, Dasgupta and Iturriaga2021).

As racism is a major societal issue, there are strong grounds for advocating that ‘race’ and racism should be part of science curricula at both school and university level. A robust education, and particularly a more holistic view of genetics, could ‘arm’ students against developing prejudicial views, give students the ability to see through racist pseudoscience, and teach them how to react when encountering it (Donovan et al., Reference Donovan, Semmens, Keck, Brimhall, Busch, Weindling, Duncan, Stuhlsatz, Bracey, Bloom, Kowalski and Salazar2019a; Jamieson & Radick, Reference Jamieson and Radick2017). Currently, students are rarely taught that genetic essentialism has been widely discredited (Dar-Nimrod & Heine, Reference Dar-Nimrod and Heine2011; Donovan, Reference Donovan2015; Moore et al., Reference Moore, Kampourakis and Gericke2025). They may only encounter the intersection of ‘race’ and genetics within science curricula in the context of racial variation in the prevalence of some genetic diseases (Donovan, Reference Donovan2015, Reference Donovan2022; Morning, Reference Morning2011), which, unfortunately, may serve to increase belief in genetic essentialism (Donovan, Reference Donovan2017). Indeed, there have been calls to eradicate the misleading reference to ‘race’ from medical school curricula (e.g. Degife et al., Reference Degife, Ijeli, Muhammad, Nobles and Reisman2021), as well as calls to incorporate the topic of racism and to integrate anti-racist principles into psychology, biology and anthropology curricula (e.g. Cronin et al., Reference Cronin, Alonzo, Adamczak, Baker, Beltran, Borker, Favilla, Gatins, Goetz, Hack, Harenčár, Howard, Kustra, Maguina, Martinez-Estevez, Mehta, Parker, Reid, Roberts and Harenčár2021; Gupta & Stoolman, Reference Gupta and Stoolman2022; O’Connor & Robbins, Reference O’Connor and Robbins2024). In addition to teaching how human genetic data are inconsistent with the existence of racial divisions, this education could acknowledge the role of scientists themselves in the development of racist thought and the limitations of the historically Eurocentric viewpoint.

Solution: The relevant knowledge that exposes racist claims to be false needs to be incorporated into science curricula, and interdisciplinary approaches to teaching about ‘race’ and racism encouraged.

3.5. Impediment 5: the self-promotion of academic fields, and apologism towards racist founders and leaders

Reticence to teach science that exposes biological ‘race’ as a myth may arise from scientists’ embarrassment about the histories of their fields. For instance, Steven Jay Gould (2000, p. 513) described evolutionary biology’s suppression of the history of its association with racism and eugenics as ‘a conspiracy of silence’. In fact, many leading scholars of biology, psychology, anthropology, demography, and statistics devised and promoted racist classifications and advocated for eugenics (Farber, Reference Farber2011; Kevles, Reference Kevles1985; Redvaldsen, Reference Redvaldsen2024; Sear, Reference Sear2021). Prominent Western scientists played a key role in reifying the idea of biological ‘race’, which in turn fostered unfair and prejudicial systems (Guevara et al., Reference Guevara, Gopalan, Massey, Adegboyega, Zhou, Solis, Anaya, Churchill, Feldblum and Lawler2023). From the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries, many eminent scholars, including Carl Linnaeus, George Cuvier, Samuel George Morton, Francis Galton, Thomas Huxley, and Carlton Coon, provided biological justifications for racial hierarchies that placed White people at the top (Farber, Reference Farber2011; Painter, Reference Painter2010; Sussman, Reference Sussman2014). The histories of anthropology, biology, psychology, demography, and statistics are all tarnished with racism (G. Richards, Reference Richards2012), including the propagation of eugenics by those who designed groundbreaking statistical tests still used today (Kevles, Reference Kevles1985; O’Connor & Robbins, Reference O’Connor and Robbins2024; Redvaldsen, Reference Redvaldsen2024; Sear, Reference Sear2021). Faulty interpretation of science also led to the eugenics movement and to restrictions on immigration, marriage, and parenthood in many countries, culminating in the genocides of Nazi Germany (Fredrickson, Reference Fredrickson2002/Reference Fredrickson2015). As described above, scientific racism continues to this day (Sear, Reference Sear2022, Reference Sear2023; Lala & Feldman, Reference Lala and Feldman2024).

A serious problem here is the failure of scholars to openly acknowledge their disciplines’ histories of scientific racism for fear of putting students off their fields. This concern is not entirely ill-founded; students in the social sciences have been deterred from studying evolution because of its historical association with racism and eugenics (Brown et al., Reference Brown, Dickins, Sear and Laland2011). However, the greater danger is that, by sweeping any ‘ugly’ past of their field under the rug, scholars may alienate students from minoritized and disadvantaged backgrounds. This effect is likely to become stronger as students become more aware of the history of their field, and it may inadvertently give the message that racist historical episodes are regarded by contemporary scientists as unimportant. Acknowledging that ‘race’ and racism are deep structural problems within academia is a key recommendation made by experts on institutional racism (Arday & Mirza, Reference Arday and Mirza2018; Sian, Reference Sian2019).

Academics sometimes respond defensively to the accusation that their field’s founders or leaders were racist using excuses and denial, which, at an institutional level, is a trait analogous to ‘white fragility’ (DiAngelo, Reference DiAngelo2018). Both Charles Darwin and Ronald Fisher have recently been subject to this apologism. For instance, when anthropologist Agustín Fuentes (Reference Fuentes2021, p. 769) marked the 150th anniversary of publication of Darwin’s The Descent of Man by characterizing Darwin’s writing as ‘a racist and sexist view of humanity’, it provoked strong negative reactions from several prominent biologists (e.g. Kutschera, Reference Kutschera2021; Whiten et al., Reference Whiten, Bodmer, Charlesworth, Charlesworth, Coyne, de Waal, Gavrilets, Lieberman, Mace, Migliano, Pawlowski and Richerson2021). Likewise, when, in 2020, the leading academic society for evolutionary biology, the Society for the Study of Evolution (SSE) (2020) renamed its ‘R. A. Fisher Prize’, acknowledging that the British evolutionary biologist Ronald Fisher’s ‘racist views and promotion of eugenics … were relentless, harmful and unsupported by scientific evidence’, 10 past presidents and vice presidents of the Society apparently signed a letter objecting to this assessment (Coyne, Reference Coyne2021). Diogo et al. (Reference Diogo, Adesomo, Farmer, Kim and Jackson2023) warned against the deification of the founders of the evolutionary sciences and the idolization of individuals who held, and/or actively promoted, prejudiced views. Academics must find a way to acknowledge, and build on, the valuable scientific contributions of key scientists while reflecting openly and honestly on the highly damaging impact of these scientists’ words, actions, and prejudices.

Historians have interpreted Darwin’s criticism of slavery, his advocacy of a monogenic (single origin) rather than polygenic (multiple origin) view of human ancestry, and his awareness of the impact that a Western education could have on the personal development of individuals from other societies as evidence that Darwin was a progressive thinker in the British Victorian age (Desmond & Moore, Reference Desmond and Moore2011; R. J. Richards, Reference Richards1989). Although this may be true, in The Descent of Man (Chapter VII) and elsewhere, Darwin still explicitly partitioned humanity into distinct ‘races’, equating these with subspecies, maintaining that the White ‘race’ was superior to other ‘races’ and regularly distinguishing ‘higher races’ (or ‘modern civilized nations’) from ‘lower races’ (‘lowest savages, ‘Barbarians’), with the latter deemed to possess smaller brains and lower intellect (e.g. Darwin, Reference Darwin1871/Reference Darwin1981, pp. 216, 227–228, 234, 237–239, 247; also documented in Peterson, Reference Peterson and Kampourakis2024, sable 22.1; Markel, Reference Markel2024, pp. 257–259). Noting that philosophers distinguish between two components of racism – antipathy and inferiorization – historian Erik Peterson (Reference Peterson and Kampourakis2024) documents extensive evidence of the latter in Darwin’s belief that ‘savages’ were intellectually and morally inferior and destined to be supplanted by ‘civilized men’. This position incontrovertibly meets contemporary academic definitions of scientific racism and places Darwin among the most influential propagators of racist views. Peterson (Reference Peterson and Kampourakis2024, p. 260) describes how, following The Descent of Man, ‘scientific texts adopted Darwinian language to justify racist assumptions with astonishing rapidity’. It is not helpful to claim that ‘Darwin was neither a racist nor a sexist’ (Kutschera, Reference Kutschera2021) on the grounds that he was broad-minded or progressive in some regards. Nor should founders of academic fields avoid criticism if their racist views were the norm during their own lifetimes or if the proliferation of such views might have taken place even without their specific involvement. As Peterson (Reference Peterson and Kampourakis2024, p. 259) points out, to suggest that Darwin was a just ‘a man of his time’ implies that there were, at the time, no prominent dissenting voices but ‘there were such voices, and Darwin knew about them’.

Apologists often equate racism with simply holding prejudicial views (while refuting that their ‘hero’ held such prejudices), a definition at odds with contemporary scholarship but alarmingly consistent with the definition embraced by White supremacists, who also often deny being racist. Reliance on this white-supremacist definition is what underlies the mistaken but frequent inference that historical figures can be cleared of racism because they held a close or respectful association with a person of colour (e.g. Darwin’s friendship with Orundellico from Tierra del Fuego), which is evocative of the ‘I’m not racist – some of my best friends are Black’ trope (DiAngelo, Reference DiAngelo2018). Some academics can be sufficiently determined to find their heroes ‘not racist’ that they are willing to redefine racism, and reinterpret history (Peterson, Reference Peterson and Kampourakis2024), to support their claims. Evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne (Reference Coyne2021) attributed the SSE’s renaming of the Fisher Prize to ‘wokeness’, asserting that Fisher ‘promoted eugenics, though not of the racist variety but the classist variety’, and implying that we should overlook any past transgressions because ‘none of his recommendations was ever made into policy’. In fact, Fisher’s scientific racism, when judged by standard academic definitions, is perfectly clear from his own writings. For example, when he declined to sign the UNESCO statement on ‘race’, Fisher (1952, cited in Bodmer et al., Reference Bodmer, Bailey, Charlesworth, Eyre-Walker, Farewell, Mead and Senn2021) wrote, ‘available scientific knowledge provides a firm basis for believing that the groups of mankind differ in their innate capacity for intellectual and emotional development seeing that such groups do differ undoubtedly in a very large number of their genes’, an assertion that does not have, and has never had, scientific support (Lewontin, Reference Lewontin and Dobzhansky1972; Rosenberg et al., Reference Rosenberg, Pritchard, Weber, Cann, Kidd, Zhivotovsky and Feldman2002, Reference Rosenberg, Mahajan, Ramachandran, Zhao, Pritchard and Feldman2005).

Apologism is surely connected with attempts to limit the reputational damage to the field, sometimes explicitly so. Concerning Fuentes’ review (Fuentes, Reference Fuentes2021) of Darwin’s Descent of Man, Andrew Whiten and colleagues (2021) wrote, ‘We fear that Fuentes’ vituperative exposition will encourage a spectrum of anti-evolution voices and damage prospects for an expanded, more gender and ethnically diverse new generation of evolutionary scientists.’ Academic authorities on racism, anti-racist actions, and inclusive teaching initiatives regard these fears as misguided (Advance HE Anti-racist Curriculum Project Guide, 2020; DiAngelo, Reference DiAngelo2018; Reid, Reference Reid2021). Apologism is perfectly transparent to a constituency of politically aware students and can alienate students of colour from entering or remaining within the focal field. Initiatives to decolonize curricula have advocated moving away from a culture of denial and exclusion towards acknowledgement and contextualization of historical transgressions (e.g. Shahjahan et al., Reference Shahjahan, Estera, Surla and Edwards2022). Open appraisal of such behaviour, while giving voice to alternative perspectives, including those of the minoritized, marginalized, or excluded, is a central pillar of anti-racism, inclusive teaching, and curriculum decolonization.

Solution: The historical background to academic fields, including racist histories, should be openly acknowledged and appropriately contextualized.