Calculating Race

Reviews / Votes

The book presents very detailed and logically coherent evidence to correct the oversight about the historical understanding of the relationship between risk assessment and race. * Alfred Nunoo Arthur, Journal of Economics, Race, and Policy * A readable, succinct historical primer useful for anyone interested in understanding how debates over the relationship between risk and race have played out over the past century, including useful links to contemporary conversations over fairness in machine learning. * D Hirschman, Social Forces * This book would be a useful addition to undergraduate seminars, particularly for the accessible way in which Wiggins contextualizes scholarly discussions while keeping a close eye on archives as sources of new understanding. * Technology and Culture * Wiggins's research contributes a lot to ongoing investigations into how federal mortgages policies exacerbated racial inequalities ... Wiggins's archival digging indicates the very real possibility that the infamous federal redlining practices may have come out of the banking and life insurance industries. * Reviews in American History * Calculating Race offers a thoughtful exploration of the way that algorithms shaped and controlled the lives of Americans in unequal ways long before our time ... Wiggins's important book should be read by any historian focused on racism and inequality in recent American history. * Brent M S Campney, Journal of American History * This book adds an interesting and useful perspective for actuaries ... This book helps us to understand the historical relationship between statistical risk assessment and race in the life insurance and mortgage industries. * Chris Dolman, Edward (Jed) Frees and Fei Huang, Annals of Actuarial Science * Calculating Race reveals that actuarial science has always been foundational to the concept of race and the preservation of racism in America. Wiggins brilliantly traces the history linking purportedly objective risk calculations with racial subordination-from insuring enslaved Africans as property to life insurance policy rates, criminological formulas, and federal mortgage risk assessments, presaging today's computerized predictive algorithms that build in racial bias. A powerful account of how constructing black people as a risk has long obscured the racism that puts them at risk and the need to distribute risk equitably instead. * Dorothy Roberts, Author of Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-create Race in the 21st Century * Benjamin Wiggins's Calculating Race reminds us of the long and uncomfortable history of algorithmic discrimination in insurance, criminology, and housing. Wiggins links past and present to offer new insights into how ostensibly objective mathematical tools may expand rather than reduce racial bias. This study will be of interest across the social sciences as well as to technical specialists grappling with the challenge of creating more fair and just computer based decision tools. * Jennifer S. Light, Director of the Program in Science, Technology, and Society, MIT * Scholars sometimes treat forms of capital steeped in speculation, actuarial calculations, and algorithms as recent phenomena-as characteristic of what they call "late capitalism." Benjamin Wiggins instead persuasively demonstrates that these approaches have long been used across a range of social institutions and projects: from life insurance to real estate to incarceration. Calculating Race is a massive contribution to studies of capital, race, inequality, and the history of science, as well as a fascinating story backed by illuminating, original analysis and powerful theoretical insights. * Michael Ralph, Professor and Chair of Afro-American Studies, Howard University * ...this book would be a useful addition to undergraduate seminars... * Michael F. McGovern, Technology and Culture *