Superior: Delving Into The Murky Science Of Racism

With the world now confronting issues of race, and more specifically, Black Lives Matter, we felt it right to bring on an award winning science journalist, author and broadcaster and the first ever guest we've had that is not an entrepreneur of a wildly successful company. 

Angela Saini may not have the battle scars, nor learned the painful lessons that you, our audience, have become accustomed to hearing on Secret Leaders, but what she has to say might be even more pertinent for you.

We felt it was time to bring in an expert speaker on the topic of racism, so that we and other leaders can think about racism more deeply. 

“When we're arguing with racists, these aren't just intellectual arguments we're having, these are about belief. White supremacy is not just a kind of scientific belief, as it is for some scientific racists out there. It's like a religion. It's a fundamental faith in the idea that some groups of people are naturally better than other groups of people.”

Angela was destined to be an engineer until a chance encounter as an intern on the London Underground set her on her current path - as a journalist who covers science. 

“We might think of it [race] as a biological quantity. But the race categories we use are social categories, not genetic categories. They're not born out in genetics. They were defined very arbitrarily, around the Enlightenment period and onwards by Western philosophers and naturalists in very vague ways.”

Which is why science around racism can get confusing, resulting in scientific misinformation.

So if you’re wondering what you can do to bring about change in your company, real change, not just an expression of solidarity, this is one insightful episode you don’t want to miss. 

“When you're thinking about bias and prejudice, before you start pointing the finger at others, and we know that there are plenty of fingers that could be pointed, just start with yourself, try and recognise the bias within yourself.”

We chat about:

• Why science is a murky world
• The grandmother hypothesis
• Debunking COVID related racial myths 
• Why you shouldn’t argue with racists on Twitter
• Recognising the bias within yourself

Links:

• Superior: The Return of Race Science
• Inferior: The true power of women and the science that shows it

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