The Science and Politics of Racial Research

By William H. Tucker

Book Overview

Unlike other critiques of the scientific literature on racial difference, The Science and Politics of Racial Research argues that there has been no scientific purpose or value to the study of innate differences in ability between groups. William Tucker shows how, for more than a century, scientific investigations of supposedly innate differences in ability between races have been used to rationalize social and political inequality as the unavoidable consequence of natural differences. Tucker structures his work chronologically, with each chapter describing how research on genetic difference was used in a particular era to support a particular political agenda. He begins with the use of science to support slavery in the mid-nineteenth century and ends with the effects of Jensenism in the 1970s. Highlights include one chapter describing a little-known but concerted attempt by a group of scientists to overturn the Brown v. Board of Education decision on the basis of expert testimony about racial differences, and another that presents a review of the eugenics movement in the twentieth century. The author also considers how to balance the rights and responsibilities of scientists, concluding that one generally neglected method is to strengthen the rights of research subjects.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0252020995
• ISBN13: 9780252020995
• Release Date: September 1994
• Publisher: University of Illinois Press
• Length: 384 Pages
• Weight: 1.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.5" x 1.0" x 6.5"

Customer Reviews

Excellent resource for eugenics information

I was a student of Dr. Tucker when I purchased this book for a course he taught in 1998. I did not realize then, as I do now, how important it is to understand how the eugenics movement in Germany and the U.S. had a profound effect on the involuntary sterilization of the mentally disabled. I believe the history of the eugenics movement must be reviewed in light of Tipper Gore's recommendations for changes in community mental health care through PACT programs which the National Aliance of Mental Illness (NAMI) is now proposing to state legislators. The PACT model is essentially a biomedical model, with specific social control features, deciding the fate of people with severe mental illnesses. The eugenics movement resulting in the involuntary sterilization of the "feeble minded" for over a half century, is hauntingly resonant of this proposed plan.