Skin Deep

May 27, 2019
In this extensively researched and clearly articulated work of popular scholarship, journalist Evans (Mapreaders and Multitaskers: Men, Women, Nature, Nurture) provides antiracists with responses to outdated, disproven, but nevertheless still-often-aired racist ideas. Evans dismantles a wide variety of claims, including that adapting to cold climates made Europeans more advanced than their African relatives, that Ashkenazi Jews are smarter than other races, and even that white men can’t jump. The main focus of the book is on various weak claims about race and intelligence: Evans ably demonstrates that the research meant to support race-based claims often confuses correlation with causation and ignores that more genetic difference exists within a given race than between members of different races. He spends a full chapter recounting the history of and rebutting the arguments of Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray’s 1994 book The Bell Curve and pushes back on other popular thinkers who endorse the studies he rejects, including Sam Harris, Andrew Sullivan, and Steven Pinker. This isn’t a page-turner, and it requires the airing of offensive theories in order to contradict them, but, for readers “who instinctively reject racism but who have not known how to fight back when confronted with its claims to scientific authority,” this is an extremely useful resource.

June 21, 2019

Focusing mostly on major controversies, this debut by Evans covers the study of race among 20th-century scientists, especially in regards to intelligence. The book addresses prominent subjects such as Charles Darwin, the Bell Curve, and IQ tests, as well as publications and incidents not widely known beyond the academic community. Often, the author dissects the unethical methodologies used by some race scientists. Much of the historical material is already covered by Stephen Jay Gould in The Mismeasure of Man, and readers familiar with that text will find a great deal of overlap. Evans includes some contemporary analysis of racial science in the present, particularly pertaining to the alt-right and the election of Donald Trump. However, more attention to the impact of race science on society, rather than a critical analysis of its methods, would do more to set this entry apart from Gould's previous work. VERDICT An easy read for casual audiences. Those without much prior knowledge of the development of racial science and where it stands today will find this to be a thorough historical introduction.--Sarah Schroeder, Univ. of Washington Bothell

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