Bookpile 9: How to argue with a racist
Bookpile is short posts on Fridays about what I’m reading now and what I’m liking about it. This week, How to Argue with a Racist, by Adam Rutherford.
The reason bookpile is a pile is because I'm continually starting to read things and then going off and reading something else. I'm coming to How to Argue with a Racist late, as it originally came out in 2020. I've gotten to it by beginning to re-read another excellent book by Adam Rutherford, Control, which details the history and present of eugenics. What can I say? I like my books light.
How to Argue with a Racist is genetics made comprehensible, mixed with pop cultural references. Rutherford is, in addition to being a geneticist, a science communicator and journalist, so he know how to write things readable. I'm about half-way through so far, and have already been through why his treatment of issues like racial purity, the relatedness of humans, our changing understanding of the spread of our species out of Africa, and why the claims about countries and regions of origin in home-DNA ancestry tests are pretty much bunk.
Rutherford covers not just the complications of how genetics works, but also throws in some of the difficult bits in European history, including the widespread flirtation with "race science" (as it was called) in the colonial era and beyond. He makes it easy, and he makes it fun. But he also makes it possible to feel irate, while providing the tools necessary to make use of that anger. I'm glad I've found it, even though it's taken me a detour to get here.
