Executive Director, National Urban League Institute for Opportunity and Equality
William E. Spriggs
War Against the Weak becomes a must-read because it shows the depth and pervasiveness of racist ideology. Ironically, as the book points out, America's eugenics movement helped spawn the human genome project—which now reveals that "race" is a social construct with absolutely no biological basis. Yet, as the book clearly shows, America's presumably well-educated elite can easily be convinced of the biological basis of race and succumb to a pseudo-scientific justification for America's social ordering. But, as Mr.Black shows, the consequences can expose an evil so base, it can rot a world. He carefully documents the links of the American eugenics movement to the horror of the crimes of Nazi Germany. This aspect will undoubtedly unnerve some readers, who would like to think the eugenics movement was benign. Yet Mr. Black's careful scholarship will have to make them reconsider the innocence of the acceptance of any simple racist notions by elites.