Breathing Race into the Machine

"Breathing Race into the Machine brilliantly tracks the remarkable story—lasting to the present—of how ‘correcting for race’ in measures of lung capacity became unremarkable scientific practice. This eye-opening account demonstrates that precision technologies and statistical techniques that supposedly measure biological differences accurately can mask racial myths and wreak devastating consequences for black people’s health and legal rights. Essential reading for everyone concerned about the impact of race on science and technology."—Dorothy Roberts, University of Pennsylvania, author of Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-create Race in the Twenty-first Century

"Lundy Braun illuminates how the development of a new machine to measure lung capacity could begin with a benign purpose to assess the impact of working conditions in the coal mines in the early 19th century, but would later ‘morph’ into a justification for the putative relationship between difference and hierarchy that has remained intact for nearly two centuries. Braun documents how the social, economic and political fabric of each period is interwoven into the science of measurement—a theme that deftly carries throughout the book, and will establish Breathing Race into the Machine as a landmark contribution to the social studies of science."—Troy Duster, author of Backdoor to Eugenics

"In Breathing Race into the Machine, Lundy Braun powerfully reinvigorates our understanding of how racial formation happens. An incisive, considered study of a seemingly conventional physiology instrument, this book reveals science as a foundational feature of the social construction of race. We create our own difference engines, but Braun’s astute book reminds us that we do not have to remain captive to them."—Alondra Nelson, author of Body and Soul: The Black Panther Party and the Fight against Medical Discrimination

"A fascinating read."—Choice

"Ultimately, Breathing Race into the Machine disrupts ideas about technology’s objectivity to show the pernicious persistence of racial bias."—African American Review

"Great value to those with an interest in the history of science and technology, occupational health and disease, and the construction of whiteness and blackness."—Social History of Medicine

"Intellectually provocative, original, and extensively researched."—American Historical Review

"This book reminds us that tools have a history and that their history matters."—Journal of American History

"Lundy Braun provides her readers with the most meticulously detailed, and I should add sophisticated, historical analysis. . . her account of the career of the technical device of the spirometer offers surprising and valuable insights."—Science as Culture

"Breathing Race into the Machine is theoretically informed, well researched, and well written. Its compelling account contributes to the scholarship of racialization in science and medicine."—ISIS