Michael E. Levin

I tried mightily, but was unable to stomach this work enough to finish reading it. However, having read 60% of it, including excerpts of all the chapters, I know enough to characterise its themes and quality.

"Why Race Matters" is unmitigated trash, archaic pseudo-science masquerading under the guise of technical - sounding jargon, and bolstered by fake equations and graphs devoid of data. The author trots out the ugliest of stereotypes about "Blacks" vs "Whites," ignoring decades of show more advances in the natural and social sciences, and overwhelming genetic evidence that these categories are social, not biological ones. Only the most ignorant of readers, and cynics seeking support for their own racist views, will find this work to be worthwhile. Its arguments are easily refuted by the fact that the so-called racial categories used by the author have long since been rejected as non-biological. Indeed, in its concepts the work comes right out of the 19th century, a time when hereditarian assumptions had not yet fallen to recognition of the vastly important effects of social and other environmental factors.

Make no mistake -- this is a work of advocacy by one who seeks to roll back social. cultural, and political advances of the past 150 years. If its arguments were true, racial discrimination of all kinds would be entirely justified, including routine police harassment of non-white citizens (after all, we're assured, such individuals have an inherited predisposition towards impulsivity and violence). And if policies that relegate non-whites to unskilled labor and imprisonment are justified, then why draw the line at slavery?

If a reader wants a flavor of the work's implications, they would do well to turn to the author's appendix, which consists of a speech he imagined some future US president would make to the nation on the subject of the racial inferority of black people. No doubt, the author was unable to imagine a time when one such individual would be president of the US. This work is a blueprint for a fascist future, from an author who likes to characterize himself as a victim of political correctness. In reality, he's an ongoing embarassment to the social sciences, within which his work is dismissed as archaic, confused, and deeply biased by racial prejudice. show less