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Xiaoqing Gao needs Caucasians.

He studies visual memory, how growing up among different races affects how people recognize faces.

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At the University of Toronto, he has a special subject, a white guy in his thirties whose brain is damaged in the link between the hemispheres. He needs controls for a study, guys like him, so the campus ad is specific: “Caucasian, male, left-handed.” $25 an hour to sit in a brain scanner, no claustrophobics.

Awkwardly, men of other races showed up. “We still run them but then we didn’t include their data in the final analysis,” Mr. Gao said.

In an academic environment keenly attuned to racism, this rings in the ears.

Race is an intellectual taboo, and racial explanations for human traits are seen as scientific non-starters. From The Biological Jew (which indulged the racist metaphor of host and parasite) to The Bell Curve (which posited a genetic hierarchy for intelligence and aptitude, from Asians down to blacks, via whites and Latinos), historical racist classifications based on traits like physiology, skin colour, temperament, or intelligence are all more or less extinct or marginalized. Terms like “half-breed” and “mulatto” are as archaic and obsolete as “quadroon” and “octoroon.”