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A review by bookish_sabrina
Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-create Race in the Twenty-First Century by Dorothy Roberts
challenging
informative
3.25
This is an extremely informative and challenging read. I think my major misstep with it was choosing to listen to it on audio. I felt like I was being hit with a tidal wave of information, and was trying to absorb as much as I could as I listened, but I know some of it washed over me. This is the kind of book I wish I had read with pen in hand, really engaging with the test. Instead, I listened to it on audio. I found the narration to be choppy, with a strange emphasis on certain words, or odd pauses in sentences. It was somewhat jarring.
I do appreciate what I was able to get out of this book, which is essentially an argument that race is a political category, subject to change at any time, with no biological precedent. The view of race as an unchangeable category is naive and harmful, leading to disproportionate medical treatment and dangerous assumptions based on the color of someone's skin. It also provides ammunition for why companies like 23 and Me are extremely dangerous and not based in real science. You cannot find out what your race is through a cheek swab, and that data is something that those companies will likely make accessible to law enforcement and government agencies. I learned a lot from this book and will not forget what I learned from it anytime soon. I also think it would be worth revisiting in print.
I do appreciate what I was able to get out of this book, which is essentially an argument that race is a political category, subject to change at any time, with no biological precedent. The view of race as an unchangeable category is naive and harmful, leading to disproportionate medical treatment and dangerous assumptions based on the color of someone's skin. It also provides ammunition for why companies like 23 and Me are extremely dangerous and not based in real science. You cannot find out what your race is through a cheek swab, and that data is something that those companies will likely make accessible to law enforcement and government agencies. I learned a lot from this book and will not forget what I learned from it anytime soon. I also think it would be worth revisiting in print.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Racism and Medical trauma