‘Race Unmasked’ explores science’s racial past, present
A health historian sees few reasons to believe science is postracial
By Bryan Bello
Race Unmasked: Biology and Race in the 20th Century
Michael Yudell
Columbia Univ. Press, $40
It’s 1921 and the American Museum of Natural History in New York City is packed with visitors eager to learn about the hot science of eugenics. AMNH staff dubs its conference and exhibit “the most important scientific meeting ever held in the museum.” In his new book, Yudell, a historian of public health, argues that the complicated interaction of science and race visible in the eugenics movement is still playing out. “Thinking in the natural sciences has influenced the continued evolution of racist ideology in the United States,” he writes.