ABSTRACT
Charles B. Davenport, one of the most respected scientists of the first decades of the twentieth century, argued that laziness was a hereditary trait. Davenport claimed in particular that laziness was a heredity character of Southern Whites. Later epidemiological studies determined that ‘white trash’ laziness was actually the result of heavy infections caused by the nematode necator americanus.1 But, for Davenport and many other biologists of his time, the phenotypic differences displayed by particular populations were proof positive of the existence of human races. They believed that these races differed in readily observable features, such as skin colour and body proportions, and also in those they could not directly observe, such as intellect, morality, character, disease predisposition and
resistance. In 1921, for example, Ernest Zimmerman published a report on differences in the manifestation of syphilis in Blacks and Whites. Such
thinking helped to sanction the now infamous Tuskegee syphilis experiment.2 Modern biologists recoil with horror when asked to revisit this sad episode in the history of science.
