Examining the latest research on how intelligence develops and laying out new discoveries in genetics, palaeontology, archaeology, and anthropology to unearth the truth about our shared past, Skin Deep demolishes the pernicious myth that our race is our destiny and instead reveals what really makes us who we are.
Give it up for Gavin Evans’s thorough and timely teardown of racial myths ... triumphant ... A hefty notes section is broken down by chapter for easy reference, listing the hundreds of sources used in the careful crafting of the text, and the final chapters provide both a warning and a call to action as race science is poised to make a comeback in these polarizing times. The best defense against misinformation is knowledge, and Skin Deep is an invaluable tool to add to your arsenal.
Much of the historical material is already covered by Stephen Jay Gould in The Mismeasure of Man, and readers familiar with that text will find a great deal of overlap. Evans includes some contemporary analysis of racial science in the present, particularly pertaining to the alt-right and the election of Donald Trump. However, more attention to the impact of race science on society, rather than a critical analysis of its methods, would do more to set this entry apart from Gould’s previous work ... An easy read for casual audiences. Those without much prior knowledge of the development of racial science and where it stands today will find this to be a thorough historical introduction.
In this extensively researched and clearly articulated work of popular scholarship, journalist Evans provides antiracists with responses to outdated, disproven, but nevertheless still-often-aired racist ideas ... This isn’t a page-turner, and it requires the airing of offensive theories in order to contradict them, but, for readers 'who instinctively reject racism but who have not known how to fight back when confronted with its claims to scientific authority,' this is an extremely useful resource.
