Fan-tast-tic.

I’ve never taken a course in statistics and so I am very bad at spotting errors in statistical reasoning. Author Angela Saini is excellent at pointing out logical fallacies, shoddy research, pseudoscience, and poor statistical analysis. In this book, Saini tracks the contemporary descendents of nazi-era race research and shows how it is subtly and blatently alive in Western scientific institutions today. It is scary, friends.

The fact is that surface level appearances (skin, eyes, hair) are defined differently around the world, and those genes make up a small fraction of a person’s total DNA anyways (think “tip of the iceburg”). We have waaay more DNA going on than what we can see with the eye. So statistically speaking, an Indian living in London is just as likely to have the majority of her DNA in common with her white neighbor as she is to have with a random person from India. That blew my mind, to be honest. Our DNA as a species is far more mixed than it is separated.

Race as a cultural construct, a reference to people of different social cultures, is still important for our world today. But as a biological definer? That has been proven in study after study to be useless grasping at straws. So why do even well-intentioned educated people continue to try? Saini believes that we all want to know that we are special, that we belong somewhere, and well, that we are superior.