The Washington Post featured Victor Ray in this story about “scientific” racism, a concept that uses scientific techniques or hypotheses to support a belief in racism, racial inferiority, or racial superiority.
The article highlights Ray’s study that shows how racial assumptions lead to problematic policy decisions. The study, through a series of statistical models using survey data collected from more than 2,200 whites in the US, “found that whites generally believe that personality traits and behaviors are influenced more by environmental influences than by genetics. However, these same respondents believed that genetics were slightly more influential over the traits and behaviors of blacks than whites.”
Ray is an assistant professor of sociology.