Dean Armitage preparing for surgery
A very common horror trope is the trope of losing control. This has been done through a variety of things including mind control, curses, ghost or demon possessions. In Get Out the trope is there to create social commentary.
The Armitages employ racist science to excuse their taking control of black people’s bodies.They hunt down and trap black people because of their fetishization of the black body. They and their white clientele believe that while black bodies might be superior, it is because black people are animalistic in nature. That means that they are less than human with animal like brains. To them, that is enough of a justification for their actions. They are removing the “inferior” black brain, leaving just enough for the person to still be conscious in everything they experience, and replacing it with the “superior” white brain, basically enslaving those black people. This enslavement is the real source of horror, the real life example of loss of control that back people are afraid of becoming true once more. The Armitages would agree that slavery was horrendous and claim that they are not racists, being oblivious to how their actions are recreating a new scientific slavery and their choosing black people for their perceived advantages is racist.
The Armitages use science as an excuse to be racists. They believe that race is genetic is because of science saying that we evolved from lesser animals to be the dominant top animal now. The Armitages think that white people are the top animal and black people the bottom animal, so white people have a right in re-enslaving them and using the “resources” black people have to offer, namely their bodies. They are not racist: it’s just science. The painter uses similar “colorblind” racist science by claiming that he does not care for Chris’ skin, only his skills, and employing the brain surgery which promises to undue the issue of race by making black people the puppets of white people who will make them act “white” like they are supposed to act. They all forget, however, that race does not come from genetics but it actually comes from racism. Race comes from practice and exploitation of group-differentiated vulnerability and premature death.
Inspiration taken by Dorothy Roberts and Denise de Silva. Roberts best discusses this phenomenon of racist science in “The Politics of Race and Science: Conservative Colorblindness and the Limits of Liberal Critique.” De Silva best discusses the concept of othering and fetishizing the black body in “No-bodies: Law, raciality and violence.”