Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-create Race in the Twenty-First Century

“Race is not a biological category that is politically charged. It is a political category that has been disguised as a biological one.”

This quotation captures the central thesis of Fatal Invention. There is nothing biological about race; instead, it is a purely political and social category. Yet the political nature of the category is disguised by several centuries of science asserting that these political, racial categories are biological. Science has leant its legitimacy to race, assisting race in appearing to be intrinsic and natural; the supposed biology of the category hides the category’s political dimensions.

“Paying attention to race as a political system—which is what it really is—is essential to fighting racism.”

If the reality of the political nature of racial categorizations is lost, then the constructed nature of these categories, in service of injustice, is also lost. The fact that humans created racial categories must be recognized so that humans can, in turn, address and change this political system and thus address racism.

“Believing in the uniqueness and superiority of one’s own group may be universal, but it is not equivalent to race.”

While populations across space and time have often considered their own in-group to be superior to other out-groups, these subjective, hierarchical groupings are not tantamount to race. The categorization of race requires that everyone fit into one constructed category and assumes that everyone within this category is fundamentally different from everyone outside this category and that there is only one category for each person.