Progress in Neuroscience Seminar Series (PINS) "Violence, the Brain, and the Taboo of Race"

Oliver Rollins, PhD, Assistant Professor of Sociology, University of Louisville While race, and especially its mistaken interpretation as a biological reality, has played a key role in the production of biological understandings of violence, recent research on violence using neuroimaging technologies reveals a conspicuous absence of race. Despite these efforts to move away from race, today’s neuroscience of violence is (still) haunted by what I call the “taboo of race.” In this talk, I argue that the function of the taboo of race, as a “color-blind” reading of racial difference, has prevented these neuroscientists from accurately capturing the dynamic effects of racism, and especially how the social effects of racial discrimination help demarcate which behaviors and persons are recognized and treated as criminal or antisocial. As a result, the taboo of race can unintentionally nourish illogical links among race, biology, and crime, and help bolster already problematic surveillance and law enforcement tactics against racially marginalized communities through the guise of public health and safety Rollins, Oliver. 2021. “Towards an antiracist (neuro)science.” Nature: Human Behaviour. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-021-01075-y Rollins, Oliver. (forthcoming). Conviction: The Making and Unmaking of the Violent Brain. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Available, July 13, 2021 https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=28770 Roberts, Dorothy and Oliver Rollins. 2020. “Why Sociology Matters to Race and Biosocial Science.” Annual Review of Sociology 46:195-214.