Significance magazine“The key to understanding the meaning of race is understanding power,” writes Angela D. Saini. Her new book, Superior, explores the roots of “race science” in the modern world. Though it mines human pre-history, it hinges around the major ideological warfare of the 20th century – a time when racial experiments within science were enthusiastically supported in Nazi Germany in its pursuit of policies of “racial hygiene”.
These policies were inspired by the eugenics movement of the 19th and early 20th century, which included statisticians such as Sir Frances Galton, as well as scientists and thinkers from other disciplines, who were convinced that humanity could be improved through selective breeding.
