Angela SainiSuperior: The Return of Race Science

This is one of the most interesting science books I have read. Racism is alive and kicking in the world of science not because scientists or science is intrinsically racist(although it sometimes more than seems that way) but because no matter how much we claim the opposite, as a society, we still are.It is long overdue for our institutions to stop using race as a scapegoat for our unwillingness to address social inequality. But we need to start with our own attitudes and beliefs towards race. This book makes a great case for the urgent need to do this.

This book provides an excellent overview of past and present misconceptions about race. Saini follows the history of the “race” concept: how it began as a tool for justifying slavery and colonialism, how it served, in the following centuries, as a vehicle for abuse, exploitation, and discrimination, and how it has sometimes been used to guide the dark practices of eugenics, forced sterilization, and genocide.Throughout the book, Saini focuses on the conceptual muddles that lie at the heart of the “race” concept. She notes that those who theorize about race have never been able to agree on how many races there are (three? five? hundreds?), or on where to draw the lines between various races (there are wide varieties of genes within each population and vast overlaps of genes among them), or even on how to define the term “race” (for example, medical researchers have never been able to do so). The indeterminacy of the “race” concept invites idiosyncratic interpretations of historical and genetic evidence, and leads to absurdities such as racists who claim that Jesus was a Nordic, and white supremacists who take multiple genetic tests until they find one that supports their claims to racial purity.Into this confusion come “race scientists,” who ignore the scientific consensus about the invalidity of the “race” concept and who pedal thinly disguised ideological research designed not to advance knowledge but to confirm preexisting ideas about racial superiority and inferiority in an attempt to keep these ideas alive. Saini demonstrates that this is not just a national phenomenon and that theories of racial superiority are on the rise all over the world—from America to Western Europe, to Bosnia, to India, and to China. It seems that many people in many cultures want to believe that they are born superior. But the scientific confusion that underlies these movements is not always a result of racism. Sometimes it merely reflects misunderstandings about legitimate but complex scientific research in the social sciences, medicine, and genetics/ Keeping informed about the complicated issues underlying this research, therefore, is a difficult but important task. And Saini’s many interviews with investigators in these disciplines constitute a valuable resource for anyone who hopes to understand what is actually known about human diversity.

This book covers the fact that political forces have for centuries claimed "science" as a means to justify inequality and even cruelty as the Nazi-era eugenics illustrates. She covers the contribution of Charles Darwin to modern racism, such as his damning statements about the Tierra del Fuego people he described as Darwin naively and uncritically accepted verbalstatements made by the Tierra del Fuego Indians (also called the Yagan Indians). For example, Darwin uncritically accepted the Fuegians’ statements that they were cannibals without investigating, and Darwin said he was “certain” about his conclusion. Darwin’s conclusions about the Fuegians also supported the racism already common in Europe: “In their native habitat, the Fuegians seemed to epitomize the Europeans’ image of the brutal and degraded savage. Although Darwin was anti-slavery due to his cultural environment, he “saw gradations between the highest races and the lowest savages” And even wrote that the “‘children of savages’ have a stronger tendency to protrude their lips when they sulk than European children, because, similar to chimps, they are closer to the ‘primordial condition.’” (pages 33-34). As Saini states, Darwin believed “in an evolutionary hierarchy. Men were above women , and white races were above others.” (Page 34)

This book begins with a general history of scientific racism and eugenics and all that sort of stuff, much of which will be familiar to people who have read a lot on the subjects (though with a lot more in-depth look at the journals and funds that kept this sort of racism alive at the fringes during the post-war period when science distanced from it, allowing it to make a comeback in some circles today).The latter parts of the book are where it gets more interesting, looking at the ways--some evil and some well-intentioned, some by twisting science and others through simple ignorance or stubbornness-- scientists, researchers, and other actors keep scientific racism alive.Explaining why we still have people trying to sell "The Bell Curve" thesis to this day, no matter how many times it is shot down by science.The book covers a lot of ground, from white supremacists' attempts to rent and themselves, to racists creating their own underground journal network to peer review each other and get around the larger scientific community, to well-meaning scientists who just can't get around the pitfalls of the race-based worldview.Also there is some coverage of the scientists and researchers standing up against the stubborn racism in our scientific institutions.

Sadly that many people despite knowing the facts continue to promote racial inequality . Superiority is what many strive for .

I really enjoyed this book. It is clear, well-written and very persuasive.Angela Saini takes us back to the origins of modern racism in European imperialism and the slave trade, a time when racism was overt and scientists, eugenicists and social Darwinists were pretty open about their contempt for “inferior” races and racist scientists scoured the world for data to prove the superiority of the white race and the upper classes.As well as the horrors of slavery, this led, of course to genocide, culminating in the Holocaust. After that, racism and eugenics lost their respectability. But racist scientists were still there, on the margins, mining the data for “evidence” to confirm their prejudices.Saini then takes us deep into the data about human genetics, explaining exactly why the racial categories we are all so used to are meaningless when it comes to finding significant differences between groups of people. She then takes the bull by the horns and looks at the question of race and intelligence, examining how valid this “evidence” is (spoiler alert – it isn’t). Finally, she covers race and medicine, and shows that branding drugs as suitable for particular racial groups is a marketing ploy with little or no medical legitimacy.

If you want to quickly understand why race is a social construct please read this

This is a great book. It encapsulates and debunks the fallacious arguments for racial segregation and hierarchization. The author has clearly done her research and has spoken with leading names in the population genetics, anthropology, psychology, and sociology fields. Hope it gets translated soon to Portuguese

Ensayo fundamental para las sociedades del siglo XXI. Todo el mundo debería leerlo.