Skin Deep: Dispelling the Science of Race

In academic journals and on internet message boards, certain scientists and thinkers are laying siege to one of the great taboos. Could it be, they ask, that racism has a rational basis in science?

Prominent journalists and writers have now joined in as cheerleaders for race-based theories, as have others with sounder credentials, including Nobel Prize winner James Watson who believes that black people are intrinsically less intelligent than white people.

If true, it would provide an intellectual foundation for so many of the attitudes that characterise the right wing, justifying inequality and discrimination. But it’s not true, and it has to be challenged. Skin Deep tackles these ideas head-on, laying out the latest discoveries in genetics, palaeontology, archaeology and anthropology to show what really makes us who we are, and to challenge the pernicious idea that our race is our destiny.