How to Argue With a Racist: History, Science, Race and Reality

by Adam Rutherford

Of all the attempts over the centuries to place humans in distinct races, none succeeds. Genetics refuses to comply with these artificial and superficial categories. Skin colour, while being the most obvious difference between people, is a very bad proxy for the total amount of similarity or difference between individuals and between populations. Racial differences are skin deep.

As Jonathan Swift said in 1721: ‘Reasoning will never make a Man correct an ill Opinion, which by Reasoning he never acquired.’