With
Superior, Saini draws upon her own childhood in a white neighbourhood of London. The
racial discrimination she faced at the time pushed her towards a style of journalism that seeks to highlight injustice. Her renewed interest in the
genetics of race was stirred by the exploitation by the
white supremacy movement of research that seems to point to genetically distinct racial groupings. Saini first recounts the history of
scientific racism, from its origins of systematic classification of humans according to physical appearance and alleged racially-based personality traits, an approach adopted by a list of scientists that includes
Linnaeus,
Darwin and
Huxley. She goes on to the acceptance of these theories by 20th-century
anthropology and
biology, and to their integration into political doctrines under the
Nazi regime. She traces the way racial categories have changed over a fairly short period of time, revealing them as social constructs. Saini argues that despite deliberate efforts to discredit this approach in the post-war period, the
pseudo-scientific claim that some varieties of
Homo sapiens are inherently superior (or more evolved) than others has not only survived, but is making a comeback. Having served the ideologies of the
slave trade, race-based immigration and
the Holocaust in the past, scientific racism is today enlisted in the cause of white supremacy. While acknowledging that today's scientists who look for expressions of the concept of race in biology are not the equivalent of their 19th-century peers, Saini questions whether this line of inquiry can produce any useful findings. She argues a focus on race or ethnicity in public health and medicine can blind researchers to environmental causes that have already been proven to affect health outcomes, such as
socioeconomic conditions. By rehashing the idea that the concept of race corresponds to actual genetic differences, they also feed the re-emergence of the white nationalist movement. ==Critical reception==