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SUNDAY SCIENCE: THE SCIENCE OF RACISM BY KEON WEST REVIEW –
EVIDENCE THAT SPEAKS FOR ITSELF  
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Farrah Jarral
January 15, 2025
The Guardian
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_ Think prejudice is overblown? A social psychologist provides the
receipts in this densely informative but highly readable account _

Social psychologist Keon West.,

 

It was over schnitzel and mash that my friend’s Bavarian
grandparents decided to call me a “black devil”, chuckling all the
while. Breaded chicken has since been my madeleine, taking me back to
racially charged moments I’ve not known quite how to interpret. Is
it really racist if they didn’t mean to be rude? What if they have
dementia? And if racism = prejudice + power, was being called a black
devil while I choked down some potatoes even that big a deal, given
that I felt in no way disempowered in the company of my tiny, elderly
hosts?

In his succinct and bingeable book The Science of Racism, professor of
social psychology Keon West begins by acknowledging that society
doesn’t agree on even the most basic aspects of racism, let alone
its finer points. Indeed, roughly half of Britons don’t believe
minorities face more discrimination
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white people in various areas of life. Yet far from being a set of
hazy, unanswerable philosophical questions, many of the unknowns
about racism are empirically testable, especially if researchers
design clever studies.

West’s book poses a central question: “Is racism still enough of
a feature in our society that it has detectable, significant effects
on how people are treated and what their life outcomes are likely to
be?” To answer this, he delivers a truckload of research –
“specifically testable, verifiable, quantitative evidence published
in peer-reviewed scientific journals” – to show how racial bias
affects everything from kindergarteners’ doll preferences to
getting a job, a date, or decent medical treatment. What he
chooses _not_ to rely on are individual anecdotes about funny-tinged
experiences, like my Schnitzelgate.

Phrases such as 'woke' and 'white privilege' are so misused they have
become toxic mutants of their original, meaningful selves

This facts-over-feelings approach is persuasive. The Science of Racism
is that rare book on a difficult topic that has the potential to
bridge the divide between opposing ideologically entrenched
standpoints. West writes like a person richly seasoned by many
conversations with that 50% of the population – conversations that
I imagine may have opened with the harbinger “I’m not racist,
but”. He knows the tropes and patiently explains why the existence
of Barack Obama, Rishi Sunak or your highly successful ethnic mate who
claims never to have experienced racial discrimination don’t prove
anything. Instead of arguing emotionally, West simply provides the
receipts.

Some of the research he highlights is ingeniously executed. In one
study, teachers were asked to watch footage of a group of preschoolers
and spot challenging behaviour. There were, however, no naughty kids
in the videos. The researchers were actually tracking the teachers’
eye movements. They found that the teachers spent the majority of the
time watching the (perfectly well-behaved) black preschoolers, and in
particular, little black boys. In West’s own research, he took real
crime stories from the news but swapped the perpetrator’s names to
either white, Christian-sounding names or Arab Muslim names to test
participants’ reactions. Despite identical misdemeanours, West found
that “participants rated the criminals’ behaviour as both worse
and more terrorist-y when they thought the criminal was Muslim”.

Conversations about racism are difficult enough without the
definitional blurring and scope-creep that has affected some of the
key terms used to discuss it. Phrases such as “woke” and “white
privilege” have been so misused that they have become toxic mutants
of their original, meaningful selves. West attempts a semantic
clean-up with “systemic racism”. If a genie were to magically
cleanse every last impulse from the hearts of all people in a society,
he suggests “quite a lot of racism would simply grind forward
unabated”. Individual personal prejudice is not required for racist
outcomes to emerge from an unfair set of rules – voter ID
requirements are an example.

The notion of “unconscious bias” also receives some much-needed
scrutiny. It has frequently been misunderstood and used for moral
absolution, a get-out-of-jail-free card that protects “our own
perceptions of innocence”. Some people think that unconscious racial
bias is the dominant form of racism, whereas research has shown that
explicit, conscious racism is very much alive and kicking. A study
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2000 showed that a hefty chunk of white participants across western
Europe held overtly racist views, strongly agreeing that ethnic
minorities in their countries were inferior to white people. In France
this figure was 26% of participants; in the Netherlands 30%; in
Germany 38%, and in the UK a staggering 41%.

But as West puts it, it is “hopelessly naive to split all bias into
the cartoonishly overt or the entirely unconscious”. Until we have
the ability to read minds, there will always be some racist behaviour
that slinks away scot-free under the cloak of plausible deniability.
Proving intent is extremely difficult. Yet, despite the extraordinary
lengths that people go to to hide their racist actions, it is possible
to catch a lot of them out with sufficiently wily research. This part
of The Science of Racism_ _is particularly fun: reading about how
good studies can uncover evidence of racial bias that individuals
directly experiencing it in the real world would never be able to
prove

In the efflorescence of books about racism over the past few years,
there have been some well-meaning but stodgy tomes. West, in contrast,
has a featherlight touch. It is quite a feat to pull off a densely
informative book about a horrible subject that also manages to be
charismatic and funny. His final chapter offers an evidence-based
approach to reducing racism – increased intergroup contact under
four conditions: i) in a cooperative environment; ii) where people are
of equal status; iii) in pursuit of a common goal, and iv) enjoying
the support of authority. If you’re wondering how that might play
out in practice, West provides some tongue-in-cheek examples. If
social harmony is your goal, avoid interracial affairs and
multi-ethnic paintballing; consider interracial marriage and
multi-ethnic Lego-building instead. What’s not to like?

 The Science of Racism by Keon West is published by Picador (£20).
To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy
at guardianbookshop.com
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Delivery charges may apply.

_FARRAH JARRAL is a broadcaster and doctor._

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The Trump Administration Is Targeting Science. The Scientific
Integrity Act Could Help Protect It.
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Kristie Ellickson
Union of Concerned Scientists - The Equation
February 6, 2025

* Science
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* social psychology
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* Racism
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* Book Review
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