Race in Mind: Race, Iq, and Other Racisms

What I liked most about this book is that it allowed me finally to understand the argument that the races we think people are divided into don't really exist. This claim was always puzzling to me, since people obviously vary by skin color and facial features, for example. But Alland explains, about as clearly as possible, how there are many more genetic features of humans and that, if you looked at different ones, you'd get completely different "racial" groupings. This seems like an important lesson. Race in Mind is also pretty even-handed. Alland goes after a professor of black studies whose ideas about "blacks" and "whites" are as scientifically bogus as those of the more typical (i.e., "white") racists. The book has an extended and very interesting discussion about racial differences in IQ test achievement. I came away completely skeptical that these differences have anything to do with genes. I found the historical discussion of early theories about the evolution of races less interesting. On the whole, though, the book is a very readable consideration of questions that often come up in debates about our social problems.

In this clear, concise, and well-written book, Alland provides his readers with a measured, thoughtful and compelling critique of historical and contemporary theories about the supposed genetic basis for group (i.e., racial) differences in social achievement and intelligence. Alland begins by providing the reader with a refreshingly accessible treatment of evolutionary theory, Mendelian genetics, and their relevance to current discussions about the social construction of race. As a professor of cultural anthropology who also has substantive training in physical anthropology, Alland is able to problematize taken-for-granted assumptions that reify and naturalize racial categories with recourse to faulty understandings of natural selection, heritability, and speciation. His convincing explanation of race as "a flawed concept" helps to ground his critique of its usage in biased scientific and pseudo-scientific studies (by the likes of Carlton Coon, Arthur Jensen, Cyril Burt, Leonard Jeffries, J. P. Rushton and others) that purport to 'prove' (i) that there are statistically significant differences in intelligence between racial groups (for Burt, the IQ groupings were class-based) and (ii) that those differences are due to genetic (and not environmental) factors. With a careful reading of these highly publicized studies and their epistemological presuppositions, political biases and methodological flaws, Alland undeniably shows that these attempts at operationalizing, geneticizing and racializing intelligence say more about the political interests of these scientists than anything else. What makes this book so useful (I have advised some of my colleagues to think about including it in their courses on the anthropology of race) is that Alland is able to show the linkages between and among seemingly disparate spheres: afrocentricism, social constructionism, genetics, evolutionary psychology, physical anthropology, linguistic ideology, archeology and fossil-naming, biological determinism, culture of poverty arguments, sociobiology, and even census-categorization. Alland illustrates just how all of these fields/spheres have a role to play in the international drama that is irrational racial thinking. Moreover, Alland takes these scientists and their theories seriously enough to carefully delineate why environmental explanations still offer the most compelling ways to understand group differences in social performance.

_Race in Mind_ is a terrifically well informed and enthusiastically written book, clear and direct in its prose, that explains and debunks the concept of race from within the biological and social sciences. Anthropologist Alexander Alland provides an analysis of the science and history of the concept that will serve beginning students in the social sciences with a solid foundation, and more advanced students with a thoughtful and concise articulation of race and its perils. Alland connects the science, psuedoscience, and history of race to the social facts of racism and racist practices, from slave aution listings to what he terms the "pluses and minuses of multiculturalism." _Race in Mind_ is an excellent and important read.

I am trained in both biological and cultural anthropology. I am a confirmed Darwinian and have even written a book on the biological roots of artistic behavior in humans. Biology must remain an important element in the understanding of our species, but it, like all other domains, is subject to abuse as well as use. The ad hominem belongs to my critic not to me. In my book I do not attack individuals as "self-hating Jews, neo- Nazis, Fascists or would-be racial cleansers." In fact I note that I have personally objected in public forums to attempts at censuring authors who make claims for links between race and IQ. I believe strongly in their rights to express their views. However, I also believe that these arguments should be answered in free debate. What my book does do is provide a scientific analysis and criticism of work that claims a relationship between the biological category of race and the concept of IQ. The book's 2nd and 3rd chapters, Genetics and Evolution, and, Race a Flawed Category, offer a review of current thinking in biology concerning the evolution of variation in the human species to show why the concept of race has dubious validity in human populations. Other chapters critically dissect a series of studies that claim systematic differences in IQ among human racial groups. In the last chapter, I criticize the current state of my discipline in which many departments of anthropoogy have eliminated biological anthropology from degree requirements. This is most unfortunate. In the recent past the strength of anthropology lay in multisided investigations of our species in which biology and culture were seen as playing interlocking and complicated roles.