Scientific research has struggled with concepts of race for centuries, often proposing misleading or erroneous explanations of racial differences. But a worldwide network of unrepentant eugenicists quietly founded journals and funded research, providing the kind of shoddy studies that were ultimately cited in Richard Hernstein's and Charles Murray's 1994 title, The Bell Curve, which purported to show differences in intelligence among races.

Superior tells the disturbing story of the persistent thread of belief in biological racial differences in the world of science.Īfter the horrors of the Nazi regime in WWII, the mainstream scientific world turned its back on eugenics and the study of racial difference.

“Mainstream scientists, geneticists and medical researchers still invoke race and use these categories in their work, even though we have been told for 70 years that they have no biological meaning, that they have only social meaning,” Saini says. Her work involved poring through technical papers, reports and books, and interviewing numerous scientists across various fields, sometimes asking uncomfortable questions about their research. In her thoroughly researched book, Saini, a London-based science journalist, provides clear explanations of racist concepts while diving into the history of race science, from archaeology and anthropology to biology and genetics. And as Angela Saini convincingly argues in her new book, Superior: The Return of Race Science, published May 21 by Beacon Press, the “problem of the color line” still survives today in 21st-century science. The post-war era saw scientists on the right-wing fringe find ways to cloak their racist views in more palatable language and concepts. It would take the Holocaust to show the world the logical endpoint of such horrific ideology, discrediting much race-based science and forcing eugenics’ most hardline adherents into the shadows. It was the century when the scientifically backed enterprise of eugenics-improving the genetic quality of white, European races by removing people deemed inferior-gained massive popularity, with advocates on both sides of the Atlantic. Du Bois once wrote, “The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line.” His words were borne out, in part, by science. But such views of scientific neutrality are naive, as study findings, inevitably, are influenced by the biases of the people conducting the work. Scientists, including those who study race, like to see themselves as objectively exploring the world, above the political fray.

The real war on science