How Eugenics Shaped Statistics

Unlike tearing down monuments to white supremacy in the American South, purging statistics of the ghosts of its eugenicist past is not a straightforward proposition.

Racist attitudes like Galton’s were not uncommon among the British aristocracy at the heights of colonialism, but Galton gave them scientific backing. He had the authority of a world traveler, in the tradition of Victorian naturalists like his half-cousin aboard the Beagle. His assessment of the supposed inferiority of others to white Britons was a... See more