The science establishment. I'm I being overly cruel if I cite Stephen Jay Gould as a source?
The rationalizations for slavery were remarkable. A set of intellectuals arose in the South before 1860 that not only defended slavery, but argued its moral superiority on the grounds of its service to the slaves, to the disadvantage of the enslaving Whites! Stephen Jay Gould's The Mismeasure of Man, ... is a superb account of how U.S. science at the highest levels constructed and maintained a "scientific" case for racism over many decades by mainly innocent and not consciously contrived scientific charlataury. The ability to put aside cultural blinders is rare. And it appears that what money and power demand, science and technology will provide, however outrageous the end.