In this virtual briefing WIRED Editor Greg Williams and award-winning author Angela Saini explored the disturbing return of scientific racism and what it means for society today. Recorded on June 29, 2020.
Saini’s work challenges the stereotypes that have long been part of science – and are still perpetuated by some researchers, including assumptions based on gender and race.
In Superior, Saini combines science, history and politics to debunk the idea that there is a hierarchy based on race wherein some humans are biologically superior to others.
“There are so many countless factors here that we need to individually investigate, one by one, and then we can start to piece together how in any one given person, those factors might intersect,” Saini says. “This isn't just a racial issue. This is about gender. It is about poverty – it's so many different factors that can coalesce in one point.”
“That's not to say, however, that we are all the same, genetically,” she points out. In the virtual briefing, Saini addressed the racism that has long existed in politics and academia, and which persists today, and explains how some of the ideologies driving racist actions has recently (re)gained currency and is being enabled by technology, genetics research and through politics.
She also discussed the speculations around Covid-19 and ethnicities – that were eventually falsified – such as the likelihoods of people with different skin colours contracting the virus.
“I don't think people are born believing these things. I think [...] society feeds these ideas into people from somewhere. And what we have to understand is the mechanism by which they come to believe it,” Saini comments.
Angela Saini is a British science journalist and broadcaster. She presents science programmes on the BBC, and her writing has appeared in New Scientist, The Sunday Times, National Geographic and WIRED. Her latest book, Superior: the Return of Race Science, was a finalist for the LA Times Book Prize and named a book of the year by The Telegraph, Nature and Financial Times.
Superior exposes the re-emergence of dangerous race science based on genetics. Her previous book, Inferior: How Science Got Women Wrong, has been translated into thirteen languages. Angela has a Masters in Engineering from the University of Oxford and was a Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Designed as an extension of WIRED’s long-running live conference portfolio, WIRED virtual briefings are punchy, deliberate and engaging sessions that reflect the same high calibre of speakers and programming featured at a WIRED event. Part of the WIRED Foresight series, curated by WIRED Editor, Greg Williams.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
