Book Review - The Science Of Racism By Keon West

Over the last few years, I’ve read and reviewed a lot of books focused in one way or another on racism. All have been impactful on me in different ways. The autobiographies I have read in particular, have really driven home the damage and effects racism can have on an individual level. I understand why many books on racism take the approach of focusing on people’s experiences as it’s a lot easier to empathise with a single person’s struggle. The books I have read have examined racism through a personal, moral, historical, and political lens but in The Science of Racism by Keon West I found a book which looks at it through a scientific lens. West is a social psychologist and takes a data driven approach exploring what psychological and neurological research shows us about racism. Using studies, data, and statistics (many of them damning inditements on society) West looks at why racism exists, how it manifests, and importantly what approaches have been proven to work when challenging it.

  When you read words like science, data, and research describing a book it’s easy to think it might be filled with jargon or inscrutable to people without a degree in psychology. Thankfully that isn’t the case here as West writes with a clear, engaging style and does a good job bridging the gap between academic research and average everyday people like myself. Racism can be an incredibly thorny and contentious subject, particularly with people who cling to the frankly deluded notion that we are a post racial society like it’s a life raft amid the stormy ocean of objective reality. West takes apart these notions that racism isn’t a problem anymore and does so with an uncompromising adherence to science and data which is as easily digestible as it is informative thanks to his accessible writing. This rigorous, but conversational tone also sprinkles humour throughout as if he’s giving the reader a generous amount of sugar to help the medicine go down.

  While he returns to a few favourite studies (he writes about studies where CV’s are sent for job applications which are identical with only the name changed to suggest different races a lot) the well he draws from and writes about runs very deep. Deep enough that I read the kindle version and the book actually ended at 70% with the remaining 30% being references, footnotes, notes and sources. West is so thorough in his approach that he’s willing to let more than a quarter of the book be a list of his evidence. He even encourages the reader to use these notes to look up the studies he cites for themselves and not just take it from him. It shows the confidence he holds in science that he is willing to let the science speak for itself. While he does include stories of racism he has experienced here and there, he makes it clear his intention is to eschew such an approach. As he puts it several times throughout the book “the plural of anecdote is not data”. The beating heart of this book is a steadfast commitment to, and rock-solid trust in empirical evidence.

  In a society, and world where people seem to be unable to agree on even the basic points about racism, such as what even counts as racist and what is just ‘banter’, this devotion to verifiable data becomes West’s north star. To put it bluntly in recent years especially there has been a concerted effort among many to muddy the waters and reduce what is and isn’t racism. This effort is most visible with the Sewell Report a few years ago. For many, racism has been redefined and made more narrow becoming a problem that only exists between individuals with hateful intent. The argument being you can’t know what’s inside someone’s heart. It effectively turns ‘but I didn’t mean it’ or ‘I was just joking’ into get out of racism free cards. Short of developing telepathy it would be impossible to determine whether or not someone is racist, which seems convenient for the racists. West tears apart the idea that racism is only an individual problem proving systemic racism is indeed a real thing. He defines systemic racism as “the kind of racism that’s built into the rules of a society or organisation, so that it still produces racist effects even if there are no individual racists at all in the system.” It is a definition that I agree with and have struggled to find the right words to articulate in the past. Examples he gives include the Macmillan government’s introduction of a skills-based immigration system, and the introduction more recently of voter ID laws both in the UK. He points at policies and laws that might have stood for decades which despite the appearance of being reasonable, have racist outcomes baked in. As West puts it, “Even if you rubbed a magic lamp, or snapped your fingers, or wriggled your nose, and somehow removed all the racism from the hearts and minds of all people alive today, quite a lot of racism would simply grind forward unabated. It’s built into the system itself. No individual support required.” This is what racism looks like in 2025. Every single person involved in the implementation of these policies and others like them could have ‘no racism or hate in their heart’ but they are still non-racist cogs in a very racist machine.

  In addition to proving the existence of, and providing a definition for systemic racism, West also uses science and logic to dispel myths around so called ‘reverse racism’. He does this by pointing to and detailing studies that have proven that People of Colour like White people more than White people like them. For example, he details studies that show People of Colour have had more favourable views of interracial relationships and marriage than White people for every year there is data available. He also goes into the other part of the equation present when ‘reverse racism’ is brought up: power. He points out that the asymmetrical nature of interactions between White people, and Black people for example have always placed the power and relative privilege firmly in the hands of White people in our society, and that until that imbalance is addressed a Black person expressing hate for a White person in the UK just doesn’t hit the same as a White person expressing hate for a Black person. While it is true that privilege and power are relative things that can vary in individual interactions on a wider societal level the balance of power is very heavily one sided between White people and People of Colour in the UK which West lays out. Especially after reading his book, one would have to be at best wilfully ignorant not to be able to see it.

  When a doctor diagnoses cancer in a patient, they don’t just identify the cancer and call it a day, they also implement a course of treatment to try to get rid of it. West takes a similar approach and looks at what can be done to if not kill it, then at least effectively reduce it. Here he casts a critical eye on what seems to have become the quick and easy go to corporate solution: unconscious bias training. Drawing on randomized controlled trials, he argues that while such training can raise awareness, it often fails to produce long-term improvement and can even provoke backlash among participants who feel accused or shamed. When talking about the evidence of unconscious bias training’s ineffectiveness he does add that choice has a big impact. When people undertake unconscious bias training voluntarily it can have a positive albeit limited effect, but if it is made mandatory that slight positive result vanishes or can get worse. This seems almost obvious when you think about it for a few minutes, in any training or learning environment it’s the people who want to be there who are going to see the most benefit. Instead, he points to increasing intergroup contact, which is a fancy term for interacting with people who are different to you. Simply put, if people from different racial groups interact more, particularly in cooperative environments where they are afforded equal status, racism will decrease and people will be happier around each other. He highlights experiments in contact theory where cooperative tasks between diverse groups have been shown to reduce intergroup hostility more effectively than lectures or workshops. He also advocates for changes to education saying education about race and racism has had positive effects at combatting racism and needs to be increased. Alongside this he calls for improvements to our media pointing out the relative dearth of children’s literature that are about People of Colour. He brings this up specifically because children’s literature and education clearly go hand in hand so it’s not enough to improve one, but both need overhauling if we really want to see positive results reducing racism.

  There is a lot to this book that I haven’t touched upon here, but this review is getting long and I need to bring it to a conclusion at some point, so I’ll leave the rest up for you to discover. Racism is a subject that evokes big feelings in people to put it mildly. Those big feelings can lead to obfuscation and dismissal, not always but particularly among bad actors. With The Science of Racism, West has written a book which cuts through all the noise with a laser focus on facts and science. The reader may not like some of what the studies say, or some of the conclusions West draws but the data is rock solid and can stand up to scrutiny. It’s as if he’s saying to any still sceptical readers who might be out there, hey you want proof? Take a look at this warehouse full of receipts. He dismantles denialist narratives and illuminates the paths toward meaningful change, from data‑transparent institutions to community engagement. I would eagerly recommend this book to everyone, but especially anyone with even the slightest interest in the scientific underpinnings of racism, and actionable strategies for change.

To buy this book for yourself, please click here: https://tinyurl.com/ye2xpjat