Book Club - How to Argue With a Racist

[Fishnut]

Adam Rutherford's new book, How to Argue With a Racist looks at how science has been warped, misrepresented or abused to justify hatred and prejudice and attempts to provide the reader tools to counter this.

I thought it would be a good book to discuss so get your copies and join the discussion

[bjn]

Adam Rutherford's new book, How to Argue With a Racist looks at how science has been warped, misrepresented or abused to justify hatred and prejudice and attempts to provide the reader tools to counter this.

I thought it would be a good book to discuss so get your copies and join the discussion

Just bought it. Now need to read it.

[Bird on a Fire]

He also talked about the book at this year's online version of the Hay Festival (posted by someone on here). I missed it, but apparently the talk is online (link at the bottom of this page) https://www.hayfestival.com/p-16767-ada ... rford.aspx

[Gfamily]

He also talked about the book at this year's online version of the Hay Festival (posted by someone on here). I missed it, but apparently the talk is online (link at the bottom of this page) https://www.hayfestival.com/p-16767-ada ... rford.aspx

A subscription is required to watch on Hay Player - £10 for the year.

Here's him talking about the topic at the Humanists Voltaire lecture
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYf-xNsIb2I

[Fishnut]

What did everyone think of the introduction?

I didn't realise the earliest Homo sapiens fossils were from Morocco, I was still under the impression we were East African in origin so I got to learn something new in the second paragraph which is a good start!

I like that the book is being framed as "a weapon" and is explicit in the fact that as racist ideas are becoming more prevalent again, and that we have a "duty" to counter them and show how they're based on bad or misunderstood science. I don't think I'll be alone here in thinking that we should stand against bad science and good science that is manipulated and misused to support bad ideas. Rutherford notes that some scientists prefer to avoid engaging in discussions of the implications of their research and I understand the logic - you want to try and remain the impartial and apolitical researcher and not get involved in the messier side of how your research impacts society or policy. But that feels quite naive, particularly when it comes to a subject like human genetics where there are so many interest groups trying to prove their own pet theories.

The section looking at racism in British society was interesting, particularly that people have been loathe to describe themselves as racially prejudiced for most of my life despite ample evidence to the contrary. The proxy questions such as asking if people would be happy to have a close relative marry someone of a minority race, were revealing, and also show the importance of survey design.

While politics has been a driver of racism in recent years, the prevalence of commercial genetic testing also seems to play a part. It feels like people are taking these tests to signify far more than they actually do, though arguably if genetic tests didn't exist racists would find some other mechanism to 'prove' their racial superiority. Like the ability to drink milk, which is such a bizarre thing to try and lord over people. (Especially as milk is vile).

I think the most important part of the introduction was the discussion around the definition of race. I liked that Rutherford made it clear that saying that 'race doesn't exist' or 'race is just a social construct' is glib and incorrect. Instead,

Race most certainly does exist because it is a social construct. What we must answer is the question of whether there is a basis to race that is meaningful in terms of fundamental biology and behaviour. Are there essential biological (that is, genetic) differences between populations that account for socially important similarities or divisions within or between those populations?

[JQH]

... though arguably if genetic tests didn't exist racists would find some other mechanism to 'prove' their racial superiority. Like the ability to drink milk, which is such a bizarre thing to try and lord over people. (Especially as milk is vile)...

The counter argument is that context is all; the ability to metabolise milk means (some) whites have an extra source of vitamin D which is useful if you live in a climate with not a lot of sunshine. Useful in North Europe, irrelevent in Africa. Where indeed whites are clearly inferior as their pallid skin lets through too much UV and makes them much more prone to skin cancer.

[jdc]

... though arguably if genetic tests didn't exist racists would find some other mechanism to 'prove' their racial superiority. Like the ability to drink milk, which is such a bizarre thing to try and lord over people. (Especially as milk is vile)...

The counter argument is that context is all; the ability to metabolise milk means (some) whites have an extra source of vitamin D which is useful if you live in a climate with not a lot of sunshine. Useful in North Europe, irrelevent in Africa. Where indeed whites are clearly inferior as their pallid skin lets through too much UV and makes them much more prone to skin cancer.

Getting off track a little but... I was under the impression that milk wasn't a good source of vitamin D. I might be wrong but NHS says "In the UK, cows' milk is generally not a good source of vitamin D because it is not fortified, as it is in some other countries" and I can't see any vitamin D in the sheep's milk nutritional info I've found.

In a hypothetical discussion with a milk-drinking racist I'd stick with simply saying that the ability to drink milk is nothing to be proud of.

[Fishnut]

In a hypothetical discussion with a milk-drinking racist I'd stick with simply saying that the ability to drink milk is nothing to be proud of.

Rutherford also points out that Europeans aren't the only ones with the mutation that enables adults to drink milk without getting sick.

[The proudly milk-drinking racists] are presumably unaware that the same mutations emerged independently and exist at a high frequency in Kazakhs, Ethiopians, Tutsi, Khoisan and many places where dairy farming was a significant part of their agricultural evolution...

[discovolante]

... though arguably if genetic tests didn't exist racists would find some other mechanism to 'prove' their racial superiority. Like the ability to drink milk, which is such a bizarre thing to try and lord over people. (Especially as milk is vile)...

The counter argument is that context is all; the ability to metabolise milk means (some) whites have an extra source of vitamin D which is useful if you live in a climate with not a lot of sunshine. Useful in North Europe, irrelevent in Africa. Where indeed whites are clearly inferior as their pallid skin lets through too much UV and makes them much more prone to skin cancer.

Getting off track a little but... I was under the impression that milk wasn't a good source of vitamin D. I might be wrong but NHS says "In the UK, cows' milk is generally not a good source of vitamin D because it is not fortified, as it is in some other countries" and I can't see any vitamin D in the sheep's milk nutritional info I've found.

In a hypothetical discussion with a milk-drinking racist I'd stick with simply saying that the ability to drink milk is nothing to be proud of.

That's certainly my understanding, based purely on wot I was told when I was diagnosed coeliac. So not very helpful but it was doctors.

[JQH]

... though arguably if genetic tests didn't exist racists would find some other mechanism to 'prove' their racial superiority. Like the ability to drink milk, which is such a bizarre thing to try and lord over people. (Especially as milk is vile)...

The counter argument is that context is all; the ability to metabolise milk means (some) whites have an extra source of vitamin D which is useful if you live in a climate with not a lot of sunshine. Useful in North Europe, irrelevent in Africa. Where indeed whites are clearly inferior as their pallid skin lets through too much UV and makes them much more prone to skin cancer.

Getting off track a little but... I was under the impression that milk wasn't a good source of vitamin D. I might be wrong but NHS says "In the UK, cows' milk is generally not a good source of vitamin D because it is not fortified, as it is in some other countries" and I can't see any vitamin D in the sheep's milk nutritional info I've found.

In a hypothetical discussion with a milk-drinking racist I'd stick with simply saying that the ability to drink milk is nothing to be proud of.

Is it not? Every day's a school day.

[dyqik]

I can't buy the book until February 2021 on Kindle.

[jdc]

In a hypothetical discussion with a milk-drinking racist I'd stick with simply saying that the ability to drink milk is nothing to be proud of.

Rutherford also points out that Europeans aren't the only ones with the mutation that enables adults to drink milk without getting sick.

[The proudly milk-drinking racists] are presumably unaware that the same mutations emerged independently and exist at a high frequency in Kazakhs, Ethiopians, Tutsi, Khoisan and many places where dairy farming was a significant part of their agricultural evolution...

This is a much funnier argument than mine or JQH's; a good advert for the book.

[JQH]

In a hypothetical discussion with a milk-drinking racist I'd stick with simply saying that the ability to drink milk is nothing to be proud of.

Rutherford also points out that Europeans aren't the only ones with the mutation that enables adults to drink milk without getting sick.

[The proudly milk-drinking racists] are presumably unaware that the same mutations emerged independently and exist at a high frequency in Kazakhs, Ethiopians, Tutsi, Khoisan and many places where dairy farming was a significant part of their agricultural evolution...

This is a much funnier argument than mine or JQH's; a good advert for the book.

To be fair, being funnier than me is a fairly low bar.

[Fishnut]

Part 1: Skin in the Game

Summary

This chapter begins with a review of our current understanding of genetics and points out that,

it is never easy, and mostly impossible, to predict the physical manifestation of the gene that encodes it - the phenotype from the genotype.

Rutherford explains even the 'textbook examples' that we give to school kids such as eye and hair colour are far more complicated than we teach (I'm reminded of Terry Pratchett's "lies to children"). He makes the obvious but easily overlooked point that when we talk about eye colour or hair colour, or skin colour, although we use sweeping statements like "brown" they actually come in a huge range of colours and when you think about it for even a few seconds it seems pretty obvious that a lot of genes would be involved. He also notes that Africa has a huge range of skin colours (which makes sense when you consider it's got the greatest genetic diversity of humans of any continent).

Rutherford then starts to get into the history of racism and notes that while there have been large ancient empires, most notably in Europe the Roman Empire, skin colour wasn't a big deal. He notes that,

these were times of extensive slavery and colonial expansion. Religious and ethnic stereotypes and prejudices abounded. But their criteria for subjugation were not the same as ours today, and pigmentation has not always been a primary determinant of character or descent.

And that,

The emergency of a scientific (or more accurately, pseudoscientific) approach to human taxonomy coincided with the growth of European empires... It is far easier to sell the case for occupation and enslavement if you are persuaded that the indigenous people are different, have different origins, and are qualitatively inferior to colonists.

Rutherford goes through a short list of some of the classifications humans have been placed into.

• Karl Linnaeus proposed five sub-species of human: Homo sapiens Afer (Africa), Americanus, Europoeus, and monstrosus (which included mythical and strange humans such as feral people, wolf boys, etc). These categories were described not just on skin colour but "racist value judgements" that resulted in H. sapiens Afer being described as "lazy", Americanus were "zealous and stubborn" and Europoeus were "gentle, inventive and governed by laws".

• Johann Blumenbach, came up with five categories, but different: Caucasian (white Europeans), West Asians and North Africans, Ethiopians (sub-Saharan Africans), Mongolians (East Asians) and Native Americans. He primarily based these classifications on craniometry but did use skin colour and came up with the familiar categories of white, black, yellow, brown and red.

• Johann Gottfried von Herder decided that the categories were specious and were on a continuum.

• George Cuvier thought there were three races: Caucasian, Mongolian and Ethiopian which were ranked in that order from most to least superior.

• Carlton Coon, an influential 20th century anthropologist, thought there were 5 classes: Caucasoid, Mongoloid (East Asia and the Americas), Australoid (Australia), Capoid (southern Africa) and Congoid (from the Congo).

As Rutherford points out,

The continual failure to settle on the number of races is indicative of its folly. No one has ever agreed how many races there are, nor what their essential features might be, aside from the usual sweeping generalisations about skin colour, hair texture and some facial features.

He goes through some of the research used by scientific racists that race is a real and scientifically-based classification, including the ABO system of blood categorisation which was found to form clusters around the world and argued that it proved historical races. This research overlooked (not surprising, as it was published in 1919) the fact that the same ABO blood system is found in gibbons and old world monkeys, so significantly predates the divergence of H. sapiens.

More recently, the genomic revolution has led to more 'evidence' or racial groupings. Rosenberg et al. (2002) found genetic clusters broadly matching geography. This has been used by scientific racists to justify their views. But Rutherford points out that while the data reflects the geographical barriers to reproduction that "hinder interbreeding", these same data also show,

long, clear gradients between all of the clusters, and no unambiguous way to say where one cluster ends and another begins.

He also explains that while the five clusters that the racists latch onto are pretty spurious as they say they match the five groups determined by Blumenbach and Coon. The paper found a number of clusters (I haven't read it, but am assuming they did some form of cluster analysis and if that's the case one form of the analysis lets you tell it how many clusters you want). As Rutherford points out,

There is no a priori reason to settle on five clusters as being the definitive categorisation of humans, and deciding to do so because it corresponds with an earlier yet debunked classification is simply affirming pre-existing biases.

He also makes the important point that all these analyses are analysing genotype, not phenotype and as he repeatedly points out,
it is not at all easy to extrapolate phenotype from genotype.

He illustrates this with a brief discussion on the facial reconstruction based on skulls. He says that the validity of these reconstructions is unclear and there's a lot of uncertainly about whether they resemble the person in life. This surprised me, as did his comment that,

as far as I know, the test of this hasn't been done: a reconstruction of a living person based on a scan of their skull.

While I'm not particularly surprised a reconstruction hasn't been done from a scan, I'm surprised no-one has used at least one of the many bodies donated for scientific research to test how accurate facial reconstructions are. I'd be really interested to know if anyone has any insights into this.

The final section is a discussion of skin pigmentation. Rutherford explains that skin colour varies even at the same latitude so,

Obviously and significantly, other factors are at play, aside from pigmentation in relation to sunlight.

He ends by pointing out that,

there is more diversity in pigmentation in Africa than in the rest of the world

Something that has only been recently become the subject of study. These studies have revealed that the variation, like that of blood types, have been present long before the evolution of H. sapiens and that

The most up-to-date science... makes it clear that DNA is a bewilderingly inscrutable predictor of skin colour.

[Fishnut]

Review

So, that's the chapter summary. Now for my review. If I'm being brutally honest it felt rather underwhelming. I keep coming back to the title of the book - How To Argue With A Racist - and I'm not sure that I feel any more equipped to do so than before reading the chapter. Though I shouldn't be calling it a chapter as it's not, it's a "Part", one of 4. And one of the problems is the length as it felt quite meandering and unfocused. It would have been better to split it into sections (or chapters) such as "historical basis for racism", "evidence against race as a scientific concept" and so on. It would certainly have made things easier to find and quote should one find themselves in an argument with a racist.

Coming back to that central aim of the book - to be a weapon - it so far feels like a fairly blunt one. I'm struggling to find a 'gotcha', and while it could be argued that the book is building a case which will be summarised at the end, I get the feeling that each part is there to essentially stand on its own.

My biggest issue is that two big points don't negate racist arguments. Rutherford takes some time explaining how the latest research shows that human populations can be grouped. While he makes it clear these groupings can number any size, it still seems to be an argument against the idea we're all the same. Rutherford also notes that the genetic groupings are based on geography, which again seems consistent with racist arguments. A third argument - that the last common ancestor of everyone was alive around 1400CE - feels like it could actually bolster the arguments of racists as it shows that it was the interbreeding that resulted from the Age of Exploration and subsequent colonisation that has led to such shallow conjoining of family trees.

The arguments that are most damaging to the racist claim that there are different races and they can be categorised based on science, felt quite undersold. Only with some serious contemplation has the importance of the blood type and skin pigmentation genetics been made clear to me. Both these have histories far older than H. sapiens and founder effects (which weren't even mentioned) can easily explain why these would create clusters around the globe in apparently meaningful ways.

All in all it's felt rather like a list of evidence that the reader is left to do with as they wish, rather than a thesis that is providing a central argument. On the plus it is very easy read, I got through the Part in only a couple of sittings whereas non-fiction usually takes me longer. On the negative this feels like evidence of the lightness and superficiality of the content. It may well be that I'm not giving it the attention it requires to fully comprehend and I'm open to that argument, though I'd counter by saying that if anything, as I'm writing about it, I'm giving it more attention and re-reading it more than if I were just a casual reader.

So, to conclude, it was an interesting chapter with intriguing anecdotes (I didn't know the Talmud allowed exceptions for circumcisions for boys who had relatives who'd died of blood loss during their circumcisions - an attempt to protect haemophiliacs before they knew what it was) but it felt lacking in the ammunition it promised to contain.

[bjn]

I've only just started reading it, a few days before I can pitch in.

[Opti]

You don't argue with racists. You fettle a lump of 4x2 so you have a good grip*.

*Says a veteran of the Blair Peach thing, and Grunwick, and ... , and , ...

[JQH]

You don't argue with racists. You fettle a lump of 4x2 so you have a good grip*.

*Says a veteran of the Blair Peach thing, and Grunwick, and ... , and , ...

Or as I was told: the best argument to use against fascists is to juxtapose the concepts of [their heads] and [pavement].

[Squeak]

On fishnut's suggestion, I've been listening to the audiobook version of this on my bikerides this week and I have to agree on it being a bit lightweight. It was fun and interesting but with a bit of structure, the ideas could have been turned into explicit arguments that you can use. As someone who almost went mad with classification theories during my PhD, I may have a bit of a bee in my bonnet about the problems with clustering and classification algorithms. That means that I really, really wanted him to sharpen that section. For every classification algorithm you apply, you have to choose either how many clusters you want to look for or how far down the tree you want to stop splitting. There are tools you can use to assess the fuzziness of each cluster but it is still a subjective process. Further, I'm trying to think of an example of where a classification algorithm has been used that gained statistical power for the resulting groups as you increase the sample size. (It's easy to split n=30 into nice neat groups on lots of axes with low degrees of fuzziness. If you then apply that classification to a new sample, your fuzziness measurements will go up. Every time you add new samples, you'll get blurrier boundaries and less confidence in your classes. In contrast, most statistical methods gain power as you increase the sample size. I would have liked him to turn that into an explicit argument against the idea of races but I do acknowledge that my perspective is a fair way along the road to "clustering algorithms are solutions in search of problems".

More generally, I was uncomfortably comfortable with all the ideas about the validity of race in this book. There were a few specific examples that I'd forgotten the details on but nothing very new. Is that because I'm already vaguely scientifically literate and woke and I've been reading sensible sources for a while or because it just reinforces my orthodoxy?

[jimbob]

He illustrates this with a brief discussion on the facial reconstruction based on skulls. He says that the validity of these reconstructions is unclear and there's a lot of uncertainly about whether they resemble the person in life. This surprised me, as did his comment that,

as far as I know, the test of this hasn't been done: a reconstruction of a living person based on a scan of their skull.

While I'm not particularly surprised a reconstruction hasn't been done from a scan, I'm surprised no-one has used at least one of the many bodies donated for scientific research to test how accurate facial reconstructions are. I'd be really interested to know if anyone has any insights into this.

That explains why I have never got a decent answer about how accurate facial reconstruction is. After all, Michelangelo managed to make a very realistic looking face out of marble.

[Bird on a Fire]

I had mixed feelings about this book when I first saw it announced, because I generally like Rutherford and his writing but the idea behind the book itself confused me a little. Note that I haven't read any of it, so this might well all be addressed on page 1 in which case I apologise.

For one, I think there's a growing acceptance that the world isn't divided neatly into racists to be argued with, and non-racists to do the arguing. Racism is a cognitive trap that arises naturally from ubiquitous heuristics of human thought, and affects us all to a certain degree.

The fact that races are at best fuzzily defined, because racialization is a response to socioeconomic conditions, is kind of the point. I'm not aware that anybody becomes racist because they sit down with a clear head, unbiased, attempt to divide humanity into sub-populations for some reason, and then compare those groups in terms of various traits of interest. People become racist because of ideas in their social milieu that the blacks are taking their jobs, the Muslims are grooming kids or the Jews control the media.

Some of those people (and it seems to me a small number of them) may seek to back up their racism with pseudo-scientific stuff about IQ and phrenology, but even in those cases I'm not sure that proving somebody wrong about whether 'black people' form a coherent monophyletic group would change anything - they know which people they mean, who they fear, resent or hate.

As far as I can tell, the evidence suggests that people generally become less racist when they're exposed to people of other races as equals. Presumably that's because they then recognise, in some sense, that the socioeconomic problems they've (falsely) identified as originating with the outgroup are in fact common across racial boundaries and have their origin elsewhere (typically in class relations: for example, decisions about who 'steals' whose jobs are made by employers, not workers).

[Bird on a Fire]

As an aside, if anyone is interested in another history of racism in British society, Natives by Akala is excellent. He has a thorough command of the data but illustrates it with his own experiences from growing up as a black guy in London, and brings in everything from the history of British Imperialism and slavery to the integration of Caribbean immigrants and the formation of a black British identity.

[Fishnut]

I had mixed feelings about this book when I first saw it announced, because I generally like Rutherford and his writing but the idea behind the book itself confused me a little. Note that I haven't read any of it, so this might well all be addressed on page 1 in which case I apologise.

For one, I think there's a growing acceptance that the world isn't divided neatly into racists to be argued with, and non-racists to do the arguing. Racism is a cognitive trap that arises naturally from ubiquitous heuristics of human thought, and affects us all to a certain degree.

The fact that races are at best fuzzily defined, because racialization is a response to socioeconomic conditions, is kind of the point. I'm not aware that anybody becomes racist because they sit down with a clear head, unbiased, attempt to divide humanity into sub-populations for some reason, and then compare those groups in terms of various traits of interest. People become racist because of ideas in their social milieu that the blacks are taking their jobs, the Muslims are grooming kids or the Jews control the media.

Some of those people (and it seems to me a small number of them) may seek to back up their racism with pseudo-scientific stuff about IQ and phrenology, but even in those cases I'm not sure that proving somebody wrong about whether 'black people' form a coherent monophyletic group would change anything - they know which people they mean, who they fear, resent or hate.

As far as I can tell, the evidence suggests that people generally become less racist when they're exposed to people of other races as equals. Presumably that's because they then recognise, in some sense, that the socioeconomic problems they've (falsely) identified as originating with the outgroup are in fact common across racial boundaries and have their origin elsewhere (typically in class relations: for example, decisions about who 'steals' whose jobs are made by employers, not workers).

Your concerns were not addressed on page 1 so no apologies required!

You make some really good points, both about the nature of racism and the way racists support their beliefs. And, at least in the first part, they aren't addressed. I fear the book falls foul of that old adage that you can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into. It's all very well to say you're going to argue with a racist but they aren't really going to care about the evolutionary ABO blood groups. As you say, that's not why they are racists so it's hardly going to change their mind.

I've resisted mentioning it because I'm trying my best to evaluate the book on its own merits rather than against other books, but I keep finding myself comparing it to Angela Saini's Superior which came out last year and covers similar ground to Rutherford's book. I found it a hugely informative and eye-opening book which takes a broad view of racism, discussing the sociology and politics as well as the science. While it didn't necessarily arm the reader with 'weapons' to counter racists, I felt it provided a very thorough grounding in the roots of racism and how it is maintained today, equipping the reader with an understanding of what is shaping the views of racists.

[Fishnut]

As an aside, if anyone is interested in another history of racism in British society, Natives by Akala is excellent. He has a thorough command of the data but illustrates it with his own experiences from growing up as a black guy in London, and brings in everything from the history of British Imperialism and slavery to the integration of Caribbean immigrants and the formation of a black British identity.

Sounds excellent. That's another book on my reading list.

As an aside, does anyone have reading lists that get shorter? If so, how do you achieve such miracles?

[JQH]

...

As an aside, does anyone have reading lists that get shorter? If so, how do you achieve such miracles?

No.

I too would be interested in the answer to this.