Rather than start by asking how 19th- and 20th-century statistics about race became racist, we might first ask how such statistics became science. Part of the challenge is to see race science not as an aberrational departure but as bona fide science—not in terms of being true or insightful about the nature of reality but in the more prosaic sense of being a real product of scientific inquiry. Racist statistics traveled through official channels of scientific knowledge production. It was the work of men (indeed, almost exclusively men) of specialized technical training. It was debated among experts, subject to critical peer review, and published by professional organizations in public scholarly venues. Its evidence and theories were variously challenged, discarded, resurrected, revised, and refined. Passing through this gauntlet of modern scientific scrutiny, its basic premises remained largely intact decade after decade. Taking this robust persistence seriously means grappling with the success of race science as science. Its means contending with its real epistemic merits despite its irrational basis.
To this end, Muhammad’s Condemnation of Blackness focuses on a specific figure from the early years of American statistics: M. V. Ball. A prison doctor, Ball publicly sparred with Hoffman over statistical analyses of racial disparities. Muhammad unearths archival evidence of how Hoffman, a representative of the statistics establishment, prevailed over Ball (who serves as a surrogate for the more progressive quantitative social science of today). Their exchange speaks to the historical and philosophical question of how Hoffman’s racist statistics successfully became “science” while Ball’s nonracist statistics failed to do so. How is it that Ball, who would eventually emerge on the right side of history, was in his own time on the wrong side of science? How did Hoffman, by contrast, gain scientific credibility despite being in fundamental error? From here, we are led to ask: What if being scientifically right does not entail being morally right? What would this mean for the modern conviction that quantitative analyses of racial disparities are an important tool in a broader project of liberation? What would it mean for the relationship between social justice and social science more broadly?