Superior

The Return of Race Science

De: Angela Saini

Narrado por: Hannah Melbourn

2019 Best-Of Lists: 10 Best Science Books of the Year (Smithsonian Magazine) · Best Science Books of the Year (NPR's Science Friday) · Best Science and Technology Books from 2019” (Library Journal)

An astute and timely examination of the re-emergence of scientific research into racial differences.

Superior tells the disturbing story of the persistent thread of belief in biological racial differences in the world of science.

After the horrors of the Nazi regime in World War II, the mainstream scientific world turned its back on eugenics and the study of racial difference. But a worldwide network of intellectual racists and segregationists quietly founded journals and funded research, providing the kind of shoddy studies that were ultimately cited in Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray’s 1994 title The Bell Curve, which purported to show differences in intelligence among races.

If the vast majority of scientists and scholars disavowed these ideas and considered race a social construct, it was an idea that still managed to somehow survive in the way scientists thought about human variation and genetics. Dissecting the statements and work of contemporary scientists studying human biodiversity, most of whom claim to be just following the data, Angela Saini shows us how, again and again, even mainstream scientists cling to the idea that race is biologically real. As our understanding of complex traits like intelligence, and the effects of environmental and cultural influences on human beings, from the molecular level on up, grows, the hope of finding simple genetic differences between “races”—to explain differing rates of disease, to explain poverty or test scores, or to justify cultural assumptions—stubbornly persists.

At a time when racialized nationalisms are a resurgent threat throughout the world, Superior is a rigorous, much-needed examination of the insidious and destructive nature of race science—and a powerful reminder that, biologically, we are all far more alike than different.

Superior book

This book points out the folly and danger of "race" in a post human genome age, although my DNA profile says that I'm 75% Nigerian it really only measures those who live there now can we really say that ev we everyone sampled lived there for over three hundred years? Populations move around and what does that really mean? It's not like I can say to a Nigerian "I'm Nigerian ". I 'm too mixed. I probably couldn't recieved an organ transplant from most Nigerians nor would I react the same way to some medicines as and "average" (whatever that means) Nigerian. The key take away to all this should be within group variations is greater than between group variations (think of Kevin Hart vs Shac ) .

great narration, love her accent

fair speed and clear pronunciation, recommend!

the content is not new, though it is worth listening if you never read relevant content.

A nuanced take

This audiobook is first of all performed very well, and even more importantly represents a thorough and nuanced take on the complex and complicated history of race and racism in science.

Excellent exploration of the history and effects

Excellent exploration of the history and effects of Race Sciences. Honestly I believe if your not educated on the history of Race Sciences than you are literally wasting your time discussing matters of social justice. This book is a excellent start.

A good review of the issues

It was a good review of the issues and history of race in science. I was hoping for more science facts.

Excellent critique the new (old) race science

An excellent and very well researched critique of the new race science. The race hucksters are back, they have new names and they have new pseudoscientific angles but it all comes back to the same race science that has been so disproven so many times.

very informative

I wanted to listen to this ever since I heard about it and I'm glad I did. Well researched and very thorough, it goes through history and talks about the flaws in believing that race is biological. Absolutely brilliant

Excellent book!

A very well researched and argued book. Should be required reading in middle and high school, maybe an entire course.

Such an easy listen

A very thoughtful distillation of the thought process behind a false science.
The historical context of early man’s migrations was also very welcome.

Shines a light on the darkness of ignorance...

This book was good, and that's an understatement. I will listen to it again to further my grasp on race relations around the world. In this current climate of societal upheaval, this book casts out information we all can take in on account of our history and in our current lives.