In 'Is Science Racist', Marks argues that "science is racist to the extent that its practitioners may be narrowly trained and particularly shielded from the knowledge about race that differs from their folk knowledge or common sense" (2015: 105).

Science as a mode of understanding the world was originally imagined to be a perfectly objective undertaking, the product of rational thought and unfettered Enlightenment logic. The problem is that humans are fundamentally subjective beings; whether or not we're aware of it, our upbringing, cultural values, and ideologies shape our experience of the world around us.

Thus, science is racist when the cultural beings who perform science - that is, us humans - unwittingly and uncritically impose their preconceived notions about the world onto their data.

This argument extends beyond racism. In fact, we might take Marks' essay to be a statement more broadly on the assumedly objective nature of science as a whole.

Marks concludes his essay with the following passage:

"The making of racial knowledge, says a powerful analogy, is like the making of witchcraft (Fields and Fields, 2012). They are both real and obvious and logical and and constantly being made; and yet not facts of nature at all, but agreed-upon facts of a particular age and place, whose activity and response to their activity are real enough to maintain livelihoods, and to ruin or end lives, yet not quite so real as to sustain the rational scrutiny of the modern age " (2015: 128, emphasis mine).

Using this passage as a guide, how do you think Marks would interpret the excerpt you read from Desmond Morris' book, "The Naked Ape" (1967)? What would he have to say about Morris' approach to analyzing human ancestors? What kinds of narratives, 'agreed-upon facts of a particular age and place', might be baked into Morris' writing? Your essay will address these three questions by drawing directly on Marks and Morris as well as your own, original analysis of these texts. Length is again ~500 words.