Fatal Invention

This non-fictional book explains how people misunderstand the concept of race and how people used to put themselves in groups. I like how the author, Dorothy Roberts, uses history to prove her point of people using the term "race" wrong to make themselves look superior than others. For example, she talks about slavery and how it wasn't based on race before the colonial times but based on enemies of other lands. People during the colonial times started to misinterpret race and used it in slavery. Roberts also gives a modern example of race being used incorrectly. She explains how the census has many problems, such as people not knowing what race they are because the races don't fit with what they are. People of hispanic descent, for example, have problems with labeling themselves a race in the census, so they either put a race that is close to their background, or they don't put any race at all. Overall, the problem of changing the definition of race brings many problems that are still being carried by us today, and Dorothy Roberts provides example from the past that help prove this point.