It turns out that the heyday of Nazi nonsense (1890 to, frankly, present) was accompanied by a flurry of scholarship by people much better positioned to understand the pointlessness of race science than their extremely indoors academic peers. Today, we look at the life of race scientist Franz Boas, whose primary distinction is that he actually looked at skull measurements and didn't really find anything concrete. We'd love to say that this man heralded the death of racist nonsense, but unfortunately we live 136+ years in the future and we know that this is absolutely not the case. Let's not get sentimental about a man who was only halfway there, but let us revel, listener, in the story of Franz Boas: the man who almost got it. It's chapter 16 of The History of White People!

Chapters:

(00:22:23) The Discussion Zone

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Our book is The History of White People by Nell Irvin Painter. You can get a ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠copy from the publisher here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ or any of the other retailers linked there.

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