science behind these conclusions was faulty, it was used to justify discrimination against Black people. For example, in the Supreme Court Case Dred Scott v. Sanford, the court ruled that Dred Scott had no legal standing to petition for his freedom because Black people were not viewed as citizens. Some people not only argued that Black people should be slaves because they were inferior, but that the institution of slavery served to "civilize them." Even when slavery was made illegal in 1865, racist ideologies fueled by this "science" created practices like segregation and sharecropping ensuring that Black people remained socially subordinate to their white counterparts. These policies were bolstered by the increasing prevalence of Social Darwinism, which asserted that people were bound to the same natural laws as other species; in other words, "survival of the fittest" meant that whichever race came out on top must be superior. White people had carefully constructed a society in which nonwhite people were subordinate, but they used this principle to contend that their social and economic status came from the natural order.

In the 20th century, this disturbing belief became the foundation of a practice called eugenics. White people wanted to manipulate genetics to "weed out" the inferior qualities of nonwhite people (specifically Black people) and create a truly superior race. (These were the same ideals that Hitler used to justify the genocide of Jews and other groups during the Holocaust). To enforce this belief, many poor Black women, as well as some poor or disabled white women, were forced to have their tubes tied so that they could not have children. Charles Davenport, the leader of the eugenics movement in the United States, conducted a longitudinal study on Black students at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. The study mostly consisted of taking yearly measurements of physical characteristics like weight, height, and face shape. (Source: Excerpt: The Banality of Eugenics). Like Samuel Morton's skull size studies in the 19th century, this study was used to argue that there were concrete biological distinctions between Black and White people, with those of White people being superior. In addition to fueling the unethical practice of forced sterilization, these beliefs were used to reinforce the segregation and discrimination that persisted well into the 20th century and still linger in American society today.