A professor specialising in “inhuman geography” at a British university has declared the subject of geology as racist, claiming it has been unduly influenced by colonisation.
Kathryn Yusoff, who lectures at the prestigious Queen Mary University of London, condemned geology as a subject was “riven by systematic racism.”
The study of prehistoric life through fossils was also branded as an enabler for racism with the professor referring to the field of palaeontology as “pale-ontology.”
The Daily Mail reports Professor Yusoff stated in her book Geologic Life the extraction of metals such as gold and iron had created hierarchies, pushed materialism, ravaged environments and was the root cause of climate change. The outlet continued:
Claiming that ‘geology continues to function within a white supremacist praxis’, the academic referenced the theft of land, mining and other geological practices as having led to the creation of white supremacy and a resulting ‘geotrauma’.
Professor Yusoff’s new book focuses on geology between the 17th and 19th centuries and puts forward the notion that non-white people have a closer relationship to land than white people.
“Broadly, black, brown, and indigenous subjects… have an intimacy with the earth that is unknown to the structural position of whiteness,” she wrote, according to the Mail report.
Yusoff is described as a professor of “inhuman geography” on the official Queen Mary University website.
Not everyone is as convinced as Yusoff about the inherent racism involved in studying geography.
GB News reports Chris McGovan, chairman of the Campaign for Real Education, dismissed the assertions entirely.
“Geology is no more racist than ‘fish ‘n chips’! It is an entirely neutral term. Those seeking to decolonise the curriculum are, in fact, building their own sinister empire of thought-control and intolerance,” he said.
McGovan added practices like mining are “almost as old as mankind and not race-dependent.”
