Jos Truitt: Racist Psychology Today article claims black women are objectively less attractive than other women

Racist Psychology Today article claims black women are objectively less attractive than other women
by Jos Truitt
Feministing

Wow. So Psychology Today published an article yesterday titled “Why Are Black Women Less Physically Attractive Than Other Women?” Wow. It disappeared from the website after massive, overwhelming outcry about it being obvious racist pseudo-science bullshit. The fact the article ever went up at all is appalling, though, and unfortunately must be called out. (The article’s been reposted here if you feel the need to read it, which I do not recommend.)

The author, Satoshi Kanazawa, is known for racist junk science. He works in the field of evolutionary psychology, which sadly is full of folks passing of their deduction as objective fact to prove their racist and sexist views. He’s obsessed with attractiveness and linking race and intelligence in work that’s been repeatedly debunked. He’s also said he wished Ann Coulter was president on 9/11 so we could have nuked the entire Middle East. Yeah, wonderful guy.

I feel dirty even dignifying the article with critique, so I’m going to make this as brief as possible. First, we get the notion that there are both “objective” and “subjective” measures of attractiveness. What makes a measure of attractiveness objective is beyond me. But apparently, while women are “objectively” more attractive than men (hmm, maybe “objective”=the views of a straight dude?) black women are “objectively” the exception (so make that =the views of a super racist straight dude). However, black women “subjectively” consider themselves more attractive. So, uh, the views of black women are “subjective,” presumably because they differ from the views of the author, or maybe a majority racist sampling base? OK…

Kanazawa makes sure to bring up that black women have a higher BMI than other women, by which he means they’re fat fat fatties, even though BMI is totally bogus, is not standard across races, and more importantly, fat does not equal ugly unless you’re a fatphobic asshole. Like Kanazawa. Oh, but this isn’t the real reason black women are more unattractive! Neither, apparently, are race differences in intelligence, for which Kanazawa cites his own debunked work about how black people are less intelligent. Because he’s that kind of racist.

To Read the Rest of the Commentary

More on this:

Savage Minds: Why Are Evolutionary Psychologists Less Intelligent Than Other Mammals?