Discover's Race Issue, 1994

Fourteen years ago, in November 1994, Discover magazine published an entire issue devoted to the current best scientific thinking on race at the time. It was called:

Race: What Is It Good for?
Science looks at flesh and bones, genes and behavior

I was very taken with most of the stories, and put the entire issue into the filing cabinet. From time to time, I check Discover's website to see if they have put this content online, but to date, they have not.

Recently, I decided I would scan the text and run it through OCR software so it can be found on the web. I realize this is a copyright violation, but it's one of those things that no one is reading currently because it's not online. (Yes, you could find it as a bound hard copy in some libraries, if you went looking for it. But these days, doesn't that seem so... difficult?) If they want me to take it down, I will, and if they want my version to post on their site, they're welcome to it.

So here goes. I'll post the articles over the next few days as I get them cleaned up.

(At the urging of reader David Steinlicht -- see his comment below in response to my initial hesitation -- I'm posting the cover of the issue here. I had written that it was so unattractive I didn't think it was worth posting. So imagine my surprise when I scanned it and checked the illustration credit, only to find that the art was done by Anita Kunz, a very talented and well-respected illustrator. Looking through her posted portfolio of cover illustrations, I'm not too surprised that the Discover cover doesn't appear among them. Not every cover gets the art direction it needs.)

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Here's a list of all six articles:

1. Race without Color by Jared Diamond
2. The Geometer of Race by Stephen Jay Gould
3: Terms of Estrangement by James Shreeve
4. End of the Rainbow by Jo Ann C. Gutin
5. The Skin We're in by Christopher Wills
6. Violence, Genes and Prejudice by Juan Williams