 Despite their variety, racist cultures tend to portray racial identities and racism as natural in a way that obscures their historical construction. Although the 19th century theories and practices in regard to race have been discredited and largely rejected, the ways in which race is approached today in both the social and natural sciences retain some continuity with these problematic histories, with disturbing effects: “The scientific cloak of racial knowledge, its formal character and seeming universality, imparts authority and legitimation to it” (Goldberg 1993, 149).