The Myth of Race

Author: Robert Wald Sussman
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674745302
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 385

Book Description
Biological races do not exist—and never have. This view is shared by all scientists who study variation in human populations. Yet racial prejudice and intolerance based on the myth of race remain deeply ingrained in Western society. In his powerful examination of a persistent, false, and poisonous idea, Robert Sussman explores how race emerged as a social construct from early biblical justifications to the pseudoscientific studies of today. The Myth of Race traces the origins of modern racist ideology to the Spanish Inquisition, revealing how sixteenth-century theories of racial degeneration became a crucial justification for Western imperialism and slavery. In the nineteenth century, these theories fused with Darwinism to produce the highly influential and pernicious eugenics movement. Believing that traits from cranial shape to raw intelligence were immutable, eugenicists developed hierarchies that classified certain races, especially fair-skinned “Aryans,” as superior to others. These ideologues proposed programs of intelligence testing, selective breeding, and human sterilization—policies that fed straight into Nazi genocide. Sussman examines how opponents of eugenics, guided by the German-American anthropologist Franz Boas’s new, scientifically supported concept of culture, exposed fallacies in racist thinking. Although eugenics is now widely discredited, some groups and individuals today claim a new scientific basis for old racist assumptions. Pondering the continuing influence of racist research and thought, despite all evidence to the contrary, Sussman explains why—when it comes to race—too many people still mistake bigotry for science.

The Myth of Race

Author: Robert W. Sussman
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674417313
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 385

Book Description
Although eugenics is now widely discredited, some groups and individuals claim a new scientific basis for old racist assumptions. Pondering the continuing influence of racist research and thought, despite all evidence to the contrary, Robert Sussman explains why—when it comes to race—too many people still mistake bigotry for science.

The Myth of Human Races

Author: Alain F. Corcos
Publisher: Wheatmark, Inc.
ISBN: 1627874178
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 288

Book Description
The idea that there are different human races is false. It is a socially constructed myth that has no grounding in science. Protagonists of race theory have tried to prove that human races exist with flawed research. The Myth of Human Races unravels these flaws and exposes the theory's underlying prejudice of race superiority.

Race, Monogamy, and Other Lies They Told You

Author: Agustín Fuentes
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520285999
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 290

Book Description
There are three major myths of human nature: humans are divided into biological races; humans are naturally aggressive; and men and women are truly different in behavior, desires, and wiring. In an engaging and wide-ranging narrative, Agustín Fuentes counters these pervasive and pernicious myths about human behavior. Tackling misconceptions about what race, aggression, and sex really mean for humans, Fuentes incorporates an accessible understanding of culture, genetics, and evolution, requiring us to dispose of notions of “nature or nurture.” Presenting scientific evidence from diverse fields—including anthropology, biology, and psychology—Fuentes devises a myth-busting toolkit to dismantle persistent fallacies about the validity of biological races, the innateness of aggression and violence, and the nature of monogamy and differences between the sexes. A final chapter plus an appendix provide a set of take-home points on how readers can myth-bust on their own. Accessible, compelling, and original, this book is a rich and nuanced account of how nature, culture, experience, and choice interact to influence human behavior.

The Race Myth

Author: Joseph Graves
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0452286581
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 321

Book Description
“Graves’ integration of science and objective analysis with popular biological assumptions of race makes this an enlightening and provocative work.”—Booklist DOES RACE AS WE KNOW IT REALLY EXIST? Preeminent evolutionary biologist Joseph Graves proves once and for all that it doesn’t. Through accessible and compelling language, he makes the provocative argument that science cannot account for the radical categories used to classify people, and debunks ancient race-related fallacies that are still held as fact, from damaging medical profiles to misconceptions about sports. He explains why defining race according to skin tone or eye shape is woefully inaccurate, and how making assumptions based on these false categories regarding IQ, behavior, or predisposition to disease has devastating effects. Demonstrating that racial distinctions are in fact social inventions, not biological truths, The Race Myth brings much-needed, sound science to one of America’s most emotionally charged debates.

Whitewashing Race

Author: Michael K. Brown
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520385861
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 398

Book Description
In an updated new edition of this classic work, a team of highly respected sociologists, political scientists, economists, criminologists, and legal scholars scrutinize the resilience of racial inequality in twenty-first-century America. Whitewashing Race argues that contemporary racism manifests as discrimination in nearly every realm of American life, and is further perpetuated by failures to address the compounding effects of generations of disinvestment. Police violence, mass incarceration of Black people, employment and housing discrimination, economic deprivation, and gross inequities in health care combine to deeply embed racial inequality in American society and economy. Updated to include the most recent evidence, including contemporary research on the racially disparate effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, this edition of Whitewashing Race analyzes the consequential and ongoing legacy of "disaccumulation" for Black communities and lives. While some progress has been made, the authors argue that real racial justice can be achieved only if we actively attack and undo pervasive structural racism and its legacies.

Everyone is African

Author: Daniel J. Fairbanks
Publisher:
ISBN: 1633880184
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 194

Book Description
"What does science say about race? In this book a ... research geneticist [posits] that traditional notions about distinct racial differences have little scientific foundation. In short, racism is not just morally wrong; it has no basis in fact, [and] the author ... describes in detail the factors that have led to the current scientific consensus about race"--Amazon.com.

The Myth of Equality

Author: Ken Wytsma
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
ISBN: 0830865306
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 243

Book Description
Is privilege real or imagined? Ken Wytsma, founder of the Justice Conference, unpacks what we need to know to be grounded in conversations about today's race-related issues. And he helps us come to a deeper understanding of both the origins of these issues and the reconciling role we are called to play as witnesses of the gospel.

The Myth of the Jewish Race

Author: Raphael Patai
Publisher: Wayne State University Press
ISBN: 9780814319482
Category : Jews
Languages : en
Pages : 472

Book Description
In this carefully researched analysis, Raphael and Jennifer Patai begin by defining race. They then develop the idea of the existence of "races" through history. In rich and fascinating detail, the authors consider the effects of intermarriage, interbreeding, proselytism, slavery, and concubinage on the Jewish population from Biblical times to the present. New material explores the psychological aspects of the Jewish race issue, the Jewish psyche, and the consequences of the 1975 United Nations resolution equating Zionism with racism. A revised and updated scientific section on the measurable genetic, morphological, and behavioral differences between Jews and non-Jews supports the conclusion that the idea of a "Jewish race" is, indeed, a myth.

Myths of Harmony

Author: Marixa Lasso
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Pre
ISBN: 0822973251
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 219

Book Description
This book centers on a foundational moment for Latin American racial constructs. While most contemporary scholarship has focused the explanation for racial tolerance-or its lack-in the colonial period, Marixa Lasso argues that the key to understanding the origins of modern race relations are to be found later, in the Age of Revolution.Lasso rejects the common assumption that subalterns were passive and alienated from Creole-led patriot movements, and instead demonstrates that during Colombia's revolution, free blacks and mulattos (pardos) actively joined and occasionally even led the cause to overthrow the Spanish colonial government. As part of their platform, patriots declared legal racial equality for all citizens, and promulgated an ideology of harmony and fraternity for Colombians of all colors. The fact that blacks were mentioned as equals in the discourse of the revolution and later served in republican government posts was a radical political departure. These factors were instrumental in constructing a powerful myth of racial equality-a myth that would fuel revolutionary activity throughout Latin America.Thus emerged a historical paradox central to Latin American nation-building: the coexistence of the principle of racial equality with actual racism at the very inception of the republic. Ironically, the discourse of equality meant that grievances of racial discrimination were construed as unpatriotic and divisive acts-in its most extreme form, blacks were accused of preparing a race war. Lasso's work brings much-needed attention to the important role of the anticolonial struggles in shaping the nature of contemporary race relations and racial identities in Latin America.