{"id":5233,"date":"2010-02-14T05:10:35","date_gmt":"2010-02-14T05:10:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=5233"},"modified":"2010-02-14T05:38:16","modified_gmt":"2010-02-14T05:38:16","slug":"page-one-no-biological-basis-for-race-scientists-say-distinctions-prove-to-be-skin-deep","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=5233","title":{"rendered":"PAGE ONE — No Biological Basis For Race, Scientists Say \/ Distinctions prove to be skin deep"},"content":{"rendered":"

PAGE ONE — No Biological Basis For Race, Scientists Say \/ Distinctions prove to be skin deep<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

San Fransisco Gate Chronicle
\n1998-02-23<\/p>\n

Charles Petit<\/strong>, Chronicle Science Writer<\/p>\n

This is one of a series of articles in “About Race,” a year-long public journalism project in which The Chronicle, KRON-TV, BayTV and KQED-FM are examining various aspects of race relations in the Bay Area.<\/em><\/p>\n

The President’s Initiative on Race, designed to attack prejudice by bringing people of different races together to talk, may have overlooked something.<\/p>\n

Namely, that the very concept of race is bogus and has no basis in biology, according to most scientists.<\/p>\n

“This dialogue on race is driving me up the wall,” said Jefferson Fish, a psychologist at St. John’s University in New York who has written extensively about race in America. “Nobody is asking the question, ‘What is race?’ It is a biologically meaningless category. It is a cultural term that Americans use to describe what a person’s ancestry is…<\/p>\n

…Despite this, many Americans still believe in three great racial groups, a system developed in Europe and North America in the 18th century…<\/p>\n

…If anything, the president’s initiative should have been on racism, say the scientists. For, even without race, racism can exist as a belief that ancestry is a significant factor in cultural and behavioral differences among peoples…<\/p>\n

…In years past, children of mixed marriages “were assigned the racial (and legal) status of the more subordinate parent,” said Faye Harrison<\/a>, an anthropologist at the University of South Carolina [now University of Florida].<\/p>\n

“That rule, called . . . the ‘one drop rule’ (for one drop of blood), has worked to classify me as African American, period,” said Harrison. “Despite the fact that I, like most other African Americans I know, have a mixed heritage and mixed ‘race’ genealogy. But that multicultural or multiracial reality is part of my extended family’s private transcript, not our public identity as blacks, as African Americans.”<\/p>\n

Studies show that the ancestry of American blacks is about 70 percent African, with the rest European and American Indian….<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

PAGE ONE — No Biological Basis For Race, Scientists Say \/ Distinctions prove to be skin deep San Fransisco Gate Chronicle 1998-02-23 Charles Petit, Chronicle Science Writer This is one of a series of articles in “About Race,” a year-long public journalism project in which The Chronicle, KRON-TV, BayTV and KQED-FM are examining various aspects […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1649,12,8,394,20],"tags":[2153,2142,2152,2147,2148,1761,2150,2151,2149,2141],"class_list":["post-5233","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anthropology","category-articles","category-media-archive","category-socialscience","category-usa","tag-alan-r-templeton","tag-charles-petit","tag-dennis-stanford","tag-faye-harrison","tag-jefferson-fish","tag-jonathan-marks","tag-luigi-cavalli-sforza","tag-mary-margaret-overbey","tag-robert-sussman","tag-san-fransisco-gate-chronicle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5233","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5233"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5233\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}