Bookish Club Read – Superior: The Return of Race Science by Angela Saini

In Superior: The Return of Race Science, Angela Saini presents the history and evolution of race science from the Enlightenment era to contemporary times. She explores the emergence of race as a construct and the evolution of race studies, focusing on several countries around the world. She portrays the fascination with categorizing people, and how the lines between biology, culture, and identity have been and continue to be blurred by people, including scientists and academic researchers. Even liberal, non-racist (White) people fall prey to the lure of biology as an explanation for the difference between groups of people. Race is a powerful identifier in many countries, and caste can stand in as a credible proxy for race, for example in India.

Race Science

Race research never goes well when society is racist.

In the United States, millions of dollars are reserved for the study of the gaps between the races, and scientists respond to the call, focusing on smaller and small populations to find significant differences. While race research may have evolved with the use of different terminology, such as the replacement of the world race with group, geneticists remain fascinated by the differences between people of different castes and races.

Even when science has found no statistical differences in the genome between different races, old racist ideas persist in everyday societies and within academia. There are systems of power built upon the idea of genetic difference between people, and proponents of those systems have historically been some of the biggest benefactors of geneticists. While the most racist research papers may not be mainstream, they find their communities of support and their ideas trickle into the mainstream, finding credibility particularly amongst nationalist and right-wing communities. We’ve seen this happen in multiple countries in the 21st century, in the UK, Italy, Poland, Germany, United States, Russia, and so on.

5 Broad Takeaways from Superior

1. People in power are obsessed with race and may use it as justification for keeping their power.
2. Racism and power dynamics permeate all areas of society including academia.
3. It’s important to be critical of research. Scientific reasoning may be nothing but an illusion.
4. We need to vigilant about the evolution of genetics research and phrenology. Terms may change but the beliefs about the differences in the races are deep-rooted and persistent. Even when racist ideas may sleep, they survive to be resurrected by those who need to maintain their power and dominance in the hierarchy.
5. Cultural differences and opportunities for access is a compelling factor in what is perceived or presented as race differences.

Blind to Racism

While racism plays a big role in the experience of Black and Brown people in the United States, the UK, and other countries, research papers looking at the gap between White people and minorities rarely consider racism as a factor. I keep hearing people say that they are color-blind. Perhaps that’s what it means, that they are unable to see how minorities are treated differently than White people, that they are oblivious to the plight of their neighbors who don’t look like them. Or perhaps the issue is that there is so much segregation within the communities that many people inhabit, that there is little color for them to see.

Why Race Science?

The power of nationalism is that it calls to the part of us that doesn’t want to be ordinary. People like to believe that they are descended from greatness, that they have been genetically endowed with something special, something passed down to them over the generations.

Why are people obsessed with race and ability? What is the end goal? Historically, this obsession has not been to benefit each other. What makes us human? What makes us worthy of care and understanding and value? Why do genes really matter? We see people using it as a way to hurt, to divide, to subjugate. I’m trying to wrap my head around what does it mean.

Why does and why should my biology affect the way you treat me? This seems to be a given in many places and that is the first assumption that I would like to eradicate. Are we all to be weighed and given worth based on our genes? 

Having read this book and Caste, I wonder what White people can afford to not see. When I see something that looks like a microaggression or racism, what do they see? If you’re White, is it harder to identify racism or micro-aggressions, or does it make you uncomfortable? What’s your default response; do you think the racist behavior is justified and not racist at all? I’ve seen and heard White people (some of them former friends)* make every excuse for a behavior except the obvious, racism. Why is that?

*My family has lost friends who stopped talking to us because they thought that we were making up stories about racism in Canada.

Taking Action Against Racism

I think that we need a mindset shift. How do we overturn the assumptions that are the rock on which societies, structures are built? What needs to happen to those structures that have racism and prejudice as building blocks? This question threatens to overwhelm me but I don’t have the privilege of ignoring it completely.

I am not myself immune from racist ideas of beauty, of worth. What prejudices can I challenge in myself and others? What voices and emerging structures can I support and elevate? Where do I need to speak up, stand up? Starting with self is not easy, but it’s the work each of us can do.

Studying Superior: The Return of Race Science

If you’re looking for a chapter by chapter description and review of Superior, Lady Science has a great post. I prepared some questions for myself as I was reading this book, and got to discuss many of them with my bookish club. Here is the list of questions, in case that’s useful to you. I’d like to add more nuanced questions to help us understand the relevance and application to our lives today. I believe that’s an important part of the discussion and it definitely came up in the conversations but isn’t really captured in these questions.

Feel free to use these questions as you read Superior: The Return of Race Science, and if you come up with some more nuanced questions, please share them in the comments!

Book Club Questions

1. What are some of the surprising things that you learned in the book?
2. How do race and social cohesion affect our behavior?
3. Chart the progress of race science over time?
4. What makes up national identity?
5. What are some of the sneaky practices of phrenology and genetic research?
6. How did race studies and genetic science evolve and who are the key players in the field that affect societal structures and practices today?
7. What are some of the sneaky practices of phrenology and genetics research?
8. How has religion been tangled up with race science and phrenology?
9. What are the economic, capitalist, and power dynamics related to race and genetics research?
10. What are some of the dangerous conclusions drawn by researchers of race science?
11. How has racism and how does racism frame history?
12. What is the value of a person and what are the implications of genetic studies for her/his rights and responsibilities?
13. What are the accepted racialized differences in the medical profession?
14. How does research into race differences mask itself?
15. What are some of the ways in which structural racism and societal inequities play out in the medical system?
16. Where do we see the continued impact today of the work of the geneticists of the past?
17. What are the historical uses of geneticism?
18. What sustains research into race differences?
19. How are caste and race related?
20. What interesting questions are raised by Saini?
21. What is the way forward that Saini suggests?
22. How have identity and cultural beliefs impacted your own life in a way that’s exclusionary of people who are not part of your same tribe, however you define it?
23. What’s often missing from research into and discussion of race/population differences?