Race on the Brain

Laura E. Gómez, author of Manifest Destinies: The Making of the Mexican American Race:
Race on the Brain makes a critical intervention at a time when implicit bias has become a dominant racial frame (witness its presence in the 2016 presidential debates). Without denying its limited value, Kahn persuasively argues that policy makers' and legal scholars' embrace of implicit bias ignores history, social context, and power—the very things that make racism so intractable today.

Osagie K. Obasogie, author of Blinded by Sight: Seeing Race Through the Eyes of the Blind:
Race on the Brain offers a provocative examination of contemporary discussions of race, racism, and law. Kahn carefully assesses the scientific framework of implicit bias, highlighting its laudable intent and aspirations while revealing hidden challenges. This is a thoughtful and timely contribution that will surely enrich ongoing conversations on race and human cognition and their socio-legal significance.

Alondra Nelson, author of The Social Life of DNA: Race, Reparations, and Reconciliation After the Genome:
As powerful as implicit bias tests may be for uncovering prejudice, Kahn skillfully reveals that there are no quick fixes for the problem of deeply entrenched racism. Analytically brilliant and sobering, Race on the Brain asks us to think harder about the structures underlying racial inequality and to be cautious of technological panaceas that promise easy solutions to the intractable work of ensuring social justice.

Troy Duster, author of Backdoor to Eugenics, University of California, Berkeley:
Well-reasoned and meticulously documented, this book sounds the loudest warning yet that the current seduction to considering racism as implicit bias can dangerously undermine long-fought attempts to better understand the structural sources of racial inequality. Little irony is lost in suggesting that twenty-first century neuroscience has enabled a reincarnation of the early twentieth-century conception of race in America, a view that an analysis of discrimination can be reduced to individuals’ personal bias.