Abstract
Race science recruits scientific work in the biological, behavioral, and social sciences in the service of legitimating the presupposition that there are biological races which map on to social racial systems. But the biological structure of human populations is not synonymous with particular racial social order. Racial science is not science about biologically discrete populations. Such work serves to stamp social arrangements and outcomes with scientific respectability. In the public’s mind it is consequential that scientists have found correlations between certain kinds of aptitude and certain groups of people; or that they have found a disease with greater frequency amongst people with certain external physical characteristics; or that people from certain social classes endure lives of greater need. I aim to show in this talk that racial science is scientifically bankrupt. I hope to make obvious that despite the gloss of science; such work has no standing. We should refrain from calling this scientific work.
