Progress-focused

Adam Rutherford, British geneticist and writer, has a new book, How to Argue with a Racist . I have read it and think it is an educational, interesting and well written book. It comes at a good time because there is now a lot of talk about racism and what to do about it. We often have conversations about race and racism based on our personal experiences, intuitions, norms and values, and common sense. This book adds something valuable in that it explains what the science of genetics and the science of evolution show about races and supposed differences between races. That makes the book very interesting. But I also have two critical thoughts about the book.

Nowadays we hear a lot about racism and how bad it is. Famous football players, in a UEFA campaign, are sending the message to say 'no' to racism. By using the word racism we refer to the underlying concept of race. Races, subspecies, exist throughout biology. We all understand, perhaps not precisely, but roughly what is meant when we talk about human races and racism. I say that we understand roughly what is meant, because we all associate the term race with concepts like the with race, the black race, the Jewish race, and the Asian race. I say that we do not know precisely what is meant, because we do not know exactly, for example, what makes someone a Jew, and whether Chinese people and Indian people belong to the same race. It also gets confusing when we think about the race of president Obama. Does he belong to the 'black' race? That is what is often said ("the first black president' of the United States) but what about the fact that his mother was '...