On the nature of difference
When the American runner Jesse Owens outdistanced the competition on his way to winning four gold medals at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, Nazi leader Adolph Hitler’s response was to suggest a possible link between Owens’ performance and the fact he was African-American. This led the anthropologist W. Montague Cobb to publish the 1936 article “Race and Runners,” which was intended to dispel the idea that Owens’ winning performance was somehow related to race. Through numerous measures and physical tests, Cobb found no distinct evidence that would attribute Owens’ abilities to his race. Cobb’s study, along with many other examinations and investigations of differences in human physiology — such as noses, hair, sweat glands, ears, and feet, and reactions to many diseases — are examined in “The Nature of Difference: Sciences of Race in the United States from Jefferson to Genomics” by Harvard College Dean Evelynn M. Hammonds. The book examines the many...