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Of the many obstacles to racial justice in America, none has received more recent attention than the one that lurks in our subconscious. As social movements and policing scandals have shown how far from being "postracial" we are, the concept of implicit bias has taken center stage in national conversation about race. Millions of Americans have taken online tests purporting to show the deep, invisible roots of their prejudice. When a recent Oxford study claimed to have found a drug that reduced implicit bias, it was only the starkest example of a pervasive trend. But what do we risk when we seek the simplicity of a technological diagnosis-and solution-for racism? What do we miss when we locate racism in our biology and our brains rather than in our history and our social practices? In Race on the Brain, Jonathan Kahn argues that implicit bias has grown into a master narrative of race relations-one with profound if unintended negative consequences for law, science, and society. He emphasizes its limitations, arguing that while useful as a tool to understand particular types of behavior, it is only one among the various tools available to policymakers. An uncritical embrace of implicit bias, to the exclusion of power relations and structural racism, undermines civic responsibility for addressing the problem by turning it over to experts. Technological interventions, including many tests for implicit bias, are premised on a color-blind ideal and run the risk of erasing history, denying present reality, and obscuring accountability

Of the many obstacles to racial justice in America, none has received more recent attention than the one that lurks in our subconscious. As social movements and policing scandals have shown how far from being "postracial" we are, the concept of implicit bias has taken center stage in the national conversation about race. Millions of Americans have taken online tests purporting to show the deep, invisible roots of their own prejudice. A recent Oxford study that claims to have found a drug that reduces implicit bias is only the starkest example of a pervasive trend. But what do we risk when we seek the simplicity of a technological diagnosis—and solution—for racism? What do we miss when we locate racism in our biology and our brains rather than in our history and our social practices?In Race on the Brain, Jonathan Kahn argues that implicit bias has grown into a master narrative of race relations—one with profound, if unintended, negative consequences for law, science, and society. He emphasizes its limitations, arguing that while useful as a tool to understand particular types of behavior, it is only one among several tools available to policy makers. An uncritical embrace of implicit bias, to the exclusion of power relations and structural racism, undermines wider civic responsibility for addressing the problem by turning it over to experts. Technological interventions, including many tests for implicit bias, are premised on a color-blind ideal and run the risk of erasing history, denying present reality, and obscuring accountability. Kahn recognizes the significance of implicit social cognition but cautions against seeing it as a panacea for addressing America's longstanding racial problems. A bracing corrective to what has become a common-sense understanding of the power of prejudice, Race on the Brain challenges us all to engage more thoughtfully and more democratically in the difficult task of promoting racial justice

This article focuses on the United States to consider how recent developments in neuroscience, specifically in the ability of researchers to measure directly certain types of brain activity through technologies such as functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI), might be used so as to render states of mind, such as sincerity, measurable as "objective facts" on a par with other observable phenomena for the purposes of resolving specific legal cases. The primary focus will be on sincerity itself, particularly in relation to religious beliefs that are claimed as a basis for exemption for compliance with an existing statutory regime of general applicability. Part One examines how the issue of sincerity has manifested in disputes concerning conscientious objections to participating in the military draft. Part Two reviews the science of fMRI and consider issues raised by the use of fMRI scans as evidence in legal cases. Part Three addresses these issues specifically as they might bear on considerations raised in the conscientious objector cases discussed in Part One. It considers the challenges of applying fMRI technology to these sorts of cases. Part Four considers the recent case of Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., where the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a closed corporation's claim under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act to be exempt from complying with a provision of the Affordable Care Act concerning the provision of medical insurance to employees that covered certain forms of contraception because it substantially burdened the religious beliefs of its owners – effectively attributing their beliefs to the corporation. The Court explicitly did not consider the sincerity of claims in this case, but this paper will explore how the adoption of fMRI technology could potentially change this approach.