It ultimately fails to deliver on its core arguments

Heh. A book review from Superior: The Return of Race Science—A Review by Bo Winegard and Noah Carl. Pleasantly acerbic.

Angela Saini’s new book, Superior, is a cautionary tale about the historical legacy, and putative return, of what she calls “race science.” As far as we can determine, there are four main theses running through the book:

‘Race’ is not a meaningful biological category

Genes can only contribute to population differences on certain “superficial” traits

Studying whether genes might contribute to population differences on non-superficial traits is tantamount to “scientific racism”

Almost everyone interested in whether genes might contribute to population differences on these other traits is a “scientific racist”

To be blunt, we disagree with all four of Saini’s main theses, as we shall explain in this article. (Note that since the book is quite poorly structured, and in some places contradictory, it is not always easy to discern what Saini is or is not asserting. Nonetheless, we believe that the four propositions above comprise a fair summary of her main arguments.)

Our article begins by briefly reviewing the strengths of Saini’s book. It then provides a detailed discussion of the book’s weaknesses. We divide our discussion of the book’s weaknesses into two subsections: scientific misunderstandings and logical fallacies. Overall, while Superior is timely and covers a multitude of interesting topics, it ultimately fails to deliver on its core arguments and is likely to leave the general reader confused, as well as misinformed.

I find it immensely frustrating and ironic that postmodernist progressives are so frequently so anti-science. Anti-science in the sense that they will always choose to ignore empirical evidence if it conflicts with their normative beliefs.

I think this is a particular jeopardy for postmodernist progressives because they are so obsessed with group identities. As they wish to define everyone based on primarily their racial identity, it becomes imperative that all races be identical. They paradoxically want to acknowledge racial groupings are different (hence the race identity obsession) but they also need for them to be the same (in order to achieve fairness.) If empirical evidence is different from the philosophical norm desired, then it is ignored or derided as untrue.

Classical Liberals do not share this burden. It is not that they are racist but because they are not racist. The Classical Liberal focuses, appropriately on the individual. There may or may not be differences in group averages that are more or less significant. But it doesn't matter to the Classical Liberal because the locus of their attention is on the individual. The individual cannot have a group average. It does not matter whether John's group has an average IQ of 90 or 110. It only matters, if it does matter, whether John has an IQ or 90 or 110.

By focusing on individuals, Classical Liberals remain open to empirical evidence. Postmodernist progressive liberals are locked into the peculiar position of insisting that race matters for identity but there is also no difference at all between any of the races. That incoherence forces them to deny any empirical evidence inconsistent with their ideological position. They become the anti-science movement.