Michael Yudell. Race Unmasked

Michael Yudell’s Race Unmasked: Biology and Race in the Twentieth Century examines the twentieth-century history of the hereditary biological race concept. According to Yudell, the idea was invented by early-twentieth-century eugenicists, reformulated by anti-racist population geneticists at mid-century, and manipulated by racists throughout. In spite of growing recognition that race was not a useful or particularly meaningful biological category in the late twentieth century, Yudell, whose disciplinary home is public health, concludes the book by showing how the race concept has continued to shape the work of twenty-first-century researchers. Although scientists and scientific popularizers are the main players, Yudell also takes a number of detours to examine the anti-racist writings of W. E. B. Du Bois, Jacques Barzun and others, whose social science–based critiques of the race concept provide a useful foil against which to measure what are often portrayed as stubborn or naïve attempts by natural scientists to preserve race in biology.

Discipline · Environmental ethics · Eugenics · Political science · Population · Race (biology) · Racism · Social science · Sociology · Demography · Diverse Historical and Scientific Studies · Gender Studies · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · History of Science and Medicine · Law · Philosophy