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

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.

The academic book, called Geologic Life, was published in 2024. It soon attracted the attention of the conservative higher education publication the College Fix, which said that Yusoff’s writing “suggests even rocks have been corrupted in white supremacists’ schemes”. A minor eruption followed, with articles in many rightwing newspapers including the Daily Mail and Telegraph, featuring quotes such as “geology is no more racist than fish’n’chips”. “The articles were grossly inaccurate and deliberately mischaracterised the book in inflammatory and abusive language,” says Yusoff.

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