{"id":59339,"date":"2019-12-29T02:07:58","date_gmt":"2019-12-29T02:07:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=59339"},"modified":"2019-12-29T02:07:58","modified_gmt":"2019-12-29T02:07:58","slug":"how-i-changed-my-mind-about-the-biology-of-race","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=59339","title":{"rendered":"How I changed my mind about the biology of race"},"content":{"rendered":"

How I changed my mind about the biology of race<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The Guardian<\/a>
\n2019-12-28<\/p>\n

Philip Ball<\/strong><\/a>, Science Writer<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/a>
\n \u2018I have all the liberal lefty\u2019s revulsion at racism, but I couldn\u2019t help thinking that if we insisted that race is not biologically determined, wouldn\u2019t that just confuse people?\u2019 Photograph: Anadolu Agency\/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images<\/em><\/small><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

Angela Saini\u2019s<\/a> book <\/em>Superior<\/a> showed me our misconceptions about race and science arise from a habit of the mind<\/em><\/p>\n

It has been common for several years now to assert that science shows the concept of race has no biological basis, and that we must see it instead as a social construct. That case was argued, for example, by Kenan Malik<\/a> in his 2008 book Strange Fruit<\/em><\/a>, and it is presented, too, in Angela Saini\u2019s Superior<\/em><\/a> (which I reviewed for the Guardian<\/a> in July), a popular choice on many \u201cbooks of the year\u201d lists.<\/p>\n

I used to be sceptical about this claim. I have all the liberal lefty\u2019s revulsion at racism, but I couldn\u2019t help thinking: \u201cIf we insist that race is not biologically determined, won\u2019t that just confuse people, given that it is so blindingly obvious that characteristic markers of race are inherited?\u201d The usual argument is that genomics has identified no clusters of gene variants specific to conventional racial groupings: there is more genetic variation within such groups than between them. But doesn\u2019t that insist on a definition of race that most people simply won\u2019t recognise? Isn\u2019t it better to say that yes, race has a biological basis \u2013 but the relevant bodily features are a trivial part of what makes us us?<\/p>\n

I confess that I was too nervous to make this suggestion in such an incendiary area. Fortunately, after reading Saini\u2019s book I no longer need to, for Superior gave me the perspective I needed to see what is wrong with it. Our concept of race is not really about skin colour or eye shape, and never has been. It has baked into it beliefs that can\u2019t be dispelled merely by reducing its biological correlates to trivialities. For in our assumptions about race, those features have always been rather irrelevant in themselves. Rather, they serve to activate prejudices stemming from deeply ingrained cognitive habits…<\/p>\n

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

Angela Saini\u2019s book “Superior” showed me our misconceptions about race and science arise from a habit of the mind<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,2039,8,26,394],"tags":[29802,30579,2103],"class_list":["post-59339","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-health-medicine","category-media-archive","category-politics","category-socialscience","tag-angela-saini","tag-philip-ball","tag-the-guardian"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59339","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=59339"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59339\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59340,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59339\/revisions\/59340"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=59339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=59339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=59339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}