Race: Are We So Different

by Goodman, Alan H.; Moses, Yolanda T.; Jones, Joseph L.

• ISBN13: 9780470657140
• ISBN10: 0470657146
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2012-11-05
• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell

Summary

RACE: Are We So Different? offers a new and fully-illustrated primer on the meaning of race in American culture. It is part of a unique national public education project and exhibition of the American Anthropological Association (AAA), currently touring the United States. www.understandingrace.org. Explores the history and contemporary power of race and racism in the United States, and the often-invisible ways race influences laws, traditions, and social institutions Offers a fascinating look at the history of racial concepts, with an emphasis on our evolving scientific understandings of human biological variation vs. our preconceived, popular notions of race Includes engaging short essays by noted scholars to illustrate personal, historical, and scientific concepts of race, racism and human variation Illustrated in full color with images from the popular national public education project and museum exhibit, RACE: Are We So Different?

Author Biography

Alan H. Goodman is Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean of Faculty at Hampshire College. A biological anthropologist who has written extensively on human variation and the biological consequences of inequality and poverty, he co-leads the national public education project sponsored by the AAA and funded by NSF and the Ford Foundation. Goodman is a past President of the AAA. 

Yolanda T. Moses is Professor of Anthropology, Associate Vice Chancellor for Diversity, Excellence and Equity at the University of California, Riverside. A cultural anthropologist, she has published extensively on issues of social inequality in complex societies and cultural diversity in higher education in the United States, India, and South Africa. She chaired the National Advisory Committee composed of distinguished scholars and curators that designed the original exhibit and website.She co-leads the national public education project sponsored by the AAA and funded by NSF and the Ford Foundation. Moses is past President of the AAA.

Joseph L. Jones is former RACE project manager for the American Anthropological Association. He also has written extensively on race and the stresses of enslavement. He is finishing his dissertation from University of Massachusetts Amherst on “The Political Ecology of Early Childhood Lead Exposure for Enslaved Africans from the New York African Burial Ground.”

Sponsored by the American Anthropological Association (AAA). Founded in 1902, the American Anthropological Association (AAA) is the world’s largest professional organization of scholars and practitioners in the field of anthropology. With over 11 thousand members, the Arlington, Virginia-based association includes archaeologists, cultural anthropologists, biological anthropologists, linguists, and applied anthropologists from around the world. AAA publishes 22 peer-reviewed scholarly journals and conducts the largest annual meeting of anthropologists in the world. 

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations vii

Preface xi

Acknowledgments xiii

1 Regarding Race 1

Part 1 Histories of Race, Difference, and Racism 7

2 Introducing Race 9

3 Creating Race 15

4 Human Mismeasure 26

5 Inventing Whiteness 44

6 Separate and Unequal 67

Part 2 Why Human Variation Is Not Racial 91

7 Introduction: Race ≠ Human Biological Variation 93

8 Skin Deep? 101

9 Sickle Cell Disease: Not for Blacks Only 111

10 The Apportionment of Variation, or … Why We Are All Africans Under the Skin 123

11 The Evolution of Variation 133

Part 3 Living with Race and Racism 145

12 Introduction: Living with Race and Racism 147

13 Race and the Census 154

14 Race and Education 174

15 Linking Race and Wealth: An American Dilemma 195

16 Race and Health Disparities 214

17 Conclusion 231

Glossary 246

Index 253