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How Real is Race? A Sourcebook on Race, Culture, and Biology. Carol C. Mukhopadhyay, Rosemary Henze, and Yolanda T. Moses. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield Education, 2007. 316 pp.
Reviewed by: Mica Pollock I've learned something from my own research, and from personal experience as a teacher and new blogger attempting to assist public discourse (www.schoolracetalk.org). Race is incredibly hard to talk about precisely. Any comment can be warped by a critic to serve his own worldview. Any word can be twisted to reinforce preexisting myths. In fact, these days I'm less worried about sounding "racist" when I speak than about reinforcing racism by confusing people who need to think about race more clearly. How Real is Race? A Sourcebook on Race, Culture, and Biology wades directly into this terrain, and it is a godsend for people struggling to talk about race. Its core contention is that more people, and particularly young people in our schools, should access "big ideas" about race. At the sentence level, it is full of "gold nugget" quotes that both professors and K12 teachers can use in discussions about what race is and is not. I urge anyone who regularly discusses issues of race to get a copy. Like a good colleague, it will sit ready and waiting to assist particularly in debates over race and biology, which are still an absolutely central subtext to debates about race and schooling in the United States. How Real is Race? contends that since anthropology offers insights on biology and insights on culture, it is a crucial discipline from which to engage race issues (xx). It proves itself right. Indeed, the book, written by three anthropologists, shows that anthropologists, who were central to creating the myth of ranked race categories in the first place, can be central to taking that myth apart. When one's brain tires from endless engagements with racial "worldviews" that are not based in facts (see Audrey Smedley's great book Race: The Origin of a Worldview), the sentences in How Real is Race? are mental and verbal life preservers. As just one example, one introductory quote uses anthropological thinking to ram home the book's core point that racial categories are socially real in many places, but neither biologically valid nor universal. "In the United States we think of racial categories as universal, but cross-cultural evidence reveals this is not the case" (xxi). This is such a simple point, and so useful to find in print. In a recent guest appearance on a national education blog, I ended up in a predictable conversation about race and biology. I had expected to discuss the issues of racial inequality and schooling raised in my own new book. Instead, several online readers wanted to discuss the issue of race and biology, and they started using the "achievement gap" as evidence that some "races" are more "gifted" than others. How Real is Race? proved its mettle as an invaluable discussion companion. I started off by making the point that "the racial achievement gap is a result of differing educational experiences, not biology." I then used How Real is Race? to support my point. Here is what the book helped me write: Old myths that so-called "races" are useful biological categories die hard. Look up the science. Here are two resources: http://www.understandingrace.org; and How Real is Race? A Sourcebook on Race, Culture, and Biology (2007). How Real is Race demonstrates that "there are no subspecies of humans" (xv) and that racial categories are a "biological fallacy and cultural reality" (xvi). See particularly the chapter "Why Contemporary Races are Not Scientifically Valid," which is full of scientific knowledge about the invalidity of racial categories from a biological perspective. See also "Human Biological Variation, What We Don't See," which demonstrates that "populations differ genetically but these populations do not correspond to major racial groupings." (35) Here are some "gold nugget" points from the book. Even though some populations share some propensities for some diseases (as John Doe points out in his post), the groups we have come to call "races" just don't share enough other exclusive genetics to be biologically valid containers for classifying human diversity. The groups we have come to call "races" "whites," "blacks," and "Asians," for example are too genetically diverse internally to be classified scientifically as genetic, biological populations. How Real is Race? shows that per Lewontin's 1972 study, misquoted in "rory's" post from yesterday, almost 95 percent of "total human genetic diversity" occurs WITHIN the geographic-origin populations that we've often called "races." (65) Indeed, as How Real is Race? reminds us, "Africa also contains more human genetic diversity than any other geographic area in the world" (63). Lewontin concluded that "racial classification is now seen to be of virtually no genetic or taxonomic significance" (66). Scientists a few centuries ago decided that a handful of "races" could be classified based on a selection of visible traits (skin color, hair texture, nose and eye shape, for example). Those visible traits are genetic, of course, but they are too genetically insignificant to be used for classifying subgroups of the human race. As How Real is Race? puts it, "If we wanted to classify people by genetic traits, it would probably make more sense to form races based on ABO blood type or lactose intolerance than to base them on skin color or nose shape." (35) Humans originated in Africa, then migrated elsewhere on the globe and developed different appearances, in part due to "adaptations of populations to . . . different microclimates" (4445). But that doesn't mean that these groups became so genetically different that we should label them genetic subgroups to the human race. How Real is Race puts it nicely: "Given the 30,000 or so genes in the human genome," racialized appearance traits "constitute only a small fraction of the total genetic variation within the human species" (62). Most of humans' genetic variation is invisible. And, "most human biological variation lies at the individual level." (61) Appearance traits don't even classify humans neatly into "races." See http://www.pbs.org/race/004_HumanDiversity/004_01-explore.htm, another resource offered in How Real is Race? that offers many such links.] which demonstrates visually that populations have "mixed" throughout world history and that various appearance traits are shared around the globe and are not easily clumped into "races." For example, some people who are "Asian" share the same skin color with people who are "white," and some people in India share the same skin color with people who are "black." Also, people across Africa, whom Americans might all call "black," have infinite shades of skin color. Types of noses and hair are similarly shared worldwide. Here's the point: our genetics simply don't divide us into the "races" we have come to take for granted. The categories just don't work out, genetically speaking. That's why I say they are "social realities built on biological fictions." I have a few books on my shelf that I routinely thank for offering me something that really serves me intellectually and in my everyday work. I feel that way about this book. How Real is Race? explains, in crystallized form, many issues I have spent many years reading about. Of course, the book isn't flawless. As with any book on race, it contains some sentences and organizational decisions that are bound to confuse, or reconfuse, the reader. For example, the authors write quickly in their introduction that "we can select our own race, based on our cultural identity, regardless of how we look" (xv). At the organizational level, the book's first section clarifies expertly that race groups are scientifically invalid containers for classifying human biological diversity. Yet the book's second section starts with a (well-written) chapter generally defining "culture" that may confuse the reader who needs to hear that racial categories are not natural but "cultural" creations. Still, the book makes this point clearly in the next chapter ("Culture and Classification: Race is Culturally Real") by using the necessary tool: history. Race categories are not "natural," the authors demonstrate, but things people made up in an inequality context. As the reader continues, even the placement of the earlier "cultural" discussion starts to make sense. The reader is shown that race categories and racial inequality were (and are) made by people. The book continues by discussing issues of race and schooling. Throughout, it offers not just invaluable quotes and references, but also lesson plans for teachers. Any mishap moments pale in comparison to the clarifying role played by the book as a whole, particularly in its discussion of race categories themselves. And here's what I liked best. Each chapter ends by restating five or six "Key Conceptual Points" pithy, clear, takeaway points that summarize the findings of countless studies. The authors would really serve educators by pulling these points out on a handout. Or maybe I'll put them on my blog. This review is cited and indexed in issue 39.4 of Anthropology & Education Quarterly. |
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