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

by Adam Rutherford

When all you’ve ever known is privilege, equality feels like oppression.

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

‘Necessary but not sufficient’ is a phrase that geneticists like to use

current dominance of Kenyans and Ethiopians in long-distance running, and descendants of the enslaved in the Americas in sprinting, is because they have cultures and icons of total supremacy.

The fixation on individual genes in the analysis of athletic success says inherent biology, not effort, is the mediator of success. Our cultural biases clearly say ‘black brawn and white brains’.

It seems absurd to say it, but the pivotal element in being able to swim is learning to swim, rather than contesting some imaginary biological sinking factor.

return for their pursuit of greatness, we owe elite athletes more deserving praise than auspicious ancestry.

All human behaviour is a heady mix of genes and culture, of biology and history.

Genetics and the evolutionary history of humans do not support the traditional or colloquial concepts of race.

Race is a social construct.

The academic and political activist Angela Davis said that ‘in a racist society it is not enough to be non-racist, we must be anti-racist.’