Rocks and racism? How geologists created and perpetuated a narrative of prejudice

The Lisbon earthquake and tidal wave of 1755: the event proved instrumental in promoting geology as a way of explaining the Earth and its history. Photograph: North Wind Picture Archives/Alamy

Kathryn Yusoff sparked a culture war with her latest book, suggesting slavery and white supremacy informed the work of geology’s founding fathers. Here, she and other experts suggest that attitudes have changed little since

It was at the London Library at St James’s Square, surrounded by the shiny offices of geological extraction companies including BP and Rio Tinto, that Kathryn Yusoff discovered a deep link between geology and racism. It was 2017, and the professor of inhuman geography from Queen Mary University of London was doing research for a book about the history of geology. Little did she know that her niche, archival discoveries, which led to a 600-page tome on race and geoscience seven years later, would put her on the very faultline of a culture war.

Read more on the original article : https://www.theguardian.com/science/2025/mar/16/rocks-and-racism-how-geologists-created-and-perpetuated-a-narrative-of-prejudice