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How Real Is Race? Using Anthropology to Make Sense of Human Diversity Author(s): Carol Mukhopadhyay and Rosemary C. Henze Source: The Phi Delta Kappan, Vol. 84, No. 9 (May, 2003), pp. 669-678 Published by: Phi Delta Kappa International Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20440455 Accessed: 23-03-2017 04:33 UTC

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Using Anthropology to Make Sense Of Human Diversity Race is not a scientifically valid biological category, and yet it remains

important as a socially constructed category. Once educators grasp this

concept, they can use the suggestions and resources the authors offer

here to help their students make sense of race.

BY CAROL MUKHOPADHYAY AND ROSEMARY C. HENZE

URELY WE'VE all heard people say there is only one race the human race. We've also heard and seen overwhelming evidence that would seem to contradict this view. After all, the U.S. Census di vides us into groups based on race, and there are certainly observable physical differences among people skin color, nose and eye shape, body type, hair color and texture, and so on. In the world of

education, the message of racial differences as biological "facts" is re

inforced when we are told that we should understand specific learn

ing styles and behavior patterns of black, Asian, Native American, white, and Latino children and when books such as The Bell Curve make pseudoscientific claims about race and learning.'

How can educators make sense of these conflicting messages about race? And why should they bother? Whether we think of all human beings as one

race, or as four or five distinct races, or as hundreds of races, does anything really change? Ifwe accept that the con

cept of race is fundamentally flawed, does that mean that young African Americans are less likely to be followed by security guards in department stores?

Are people going to stop thinking of Asians as the "model" minority? Will racism become a thing of the past?

CAROL MUKHOPADHYAY is a professor in the Department of Anthropology, San JoseState University, SanJos6, Calif., where ROSEMARY C. HENZE is an associate pro fessor in the Department of Linguistics and Language Development. They wish to thank Gilberto Arriaza, Paul Erickson, Alan Good man, and Yolanda Moses for their comments on this article.

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Many educators understandably would like to have clear information to help them teach students about hu

man biological variability. While mul ticultural education materials are now

widely available, they rarely address basic questions about why we look dif ferent from one another and what these

biological differences do (and do not) mean. Multicultural education empha sizes respecting differences and finding

ways to include all stu dents, especially those who have been historically mar ginalized. Multicultural ed ucation has helped us to un derstand racism and has pro vided a rich body of litera ture on antiracist teaching strategies, and this has been all to the good. But it has not helped us understand the two concepts of race: the biological one and the social one.

In this article, we explain what anthropologists mean when they say that "races don't exist" (in other words, when they reject the concept of race as a scientifically valid biolog ical category) and why they argue in stead that "race" is a socially con structed category. We'll also discuss why this is such an important under standing and what it means for edu cators and students who face the so cial reality of race and racism every day. And finally, we'll offer some sug gestions and resources for teachers who want to include teaching about race in their classes.

WHY RACE ISN'T BIOLOGICALLY REAL

For the past several decades, bio logical anthropologists have been ar guing that races don't really exist, or, more precisely, that the concept of race has no validity as a biological cat

egory. What exactly does this mean? First, anthropologists are unrav

eling a deeply embedded ideology, a long-standing European and Amer ican racial world view.2 Historically, the idea of race emerged in Europe in the 17th and 1 8th centuries, coin ciding with the growth of colonial ism and the transatlantic slave trade.

Attempts were made to classify hu mans into "natural," geographically

For the past several

decades, Hological anthropologists have been

arguing that the concept of

race has no validity ao a

biological category.

distinct "races," hierarchically ordered by their closeness to God's original forms. Europeans were, not surpris ingly, at the top, with the most per fect form represented by a female skull from the Caucasus Mountains, near the purported location of Noah's ark and the origin of humans. Hence the origins of the racial term "Cau casian" or "Caucasoid" for those of European ancestry.3

In the late 19th century, anthro pologists sought to reconstruct hu man prehistory and trace the evolu tion of human cultural institutions. Physical and cultural evolution were seen as moving in tandem; "advanc es" in human mental capacity were thought to be responsible for human cultural inventions, such as marriage, family, law, and agriculture. If cul tural "evolution" was propelled by bi ological evolution, according to this logic, the more "advanced" cultures

must be more biologically and intel lectually evolved. Physical indicators of evolutionary rank, such as skull size,

were sought in order to classify and rank human groups along an evolu tionary path from more "primitive" to more "advanced" races.

Nineteenth-century European sci entists disagreed on when the "races" began. Theologians had long argued that there was "one human origin,"

Adam and Eve, and that certain races subsequently "degenerated" (predictably, the non-Europeans). Some evolutionary scientists, how ever, began to argue for mul

tiple origins, with distinct races evolving in different places and times. By the be ginning of the 20th century, European andAmerican sci ence viewed races as natural, long-standing divisions of the human species, evolv ing at different rates bio

logically and hence culturally. By such logic was racial inequality naturalized and legitimized. When contemporary scientists, in

cluding anthropologists, assert that races are not scientifically valid, they are rejecting at least three fundamen tal premises of this old racial ideol ogy: 1) the archaic subspecies concept, 2) the divisibility of contemporary humans into scientifically valid bio logical groupings, and 3) the link be tween racial traits and social, cultur al, and political status.

1. There were no distinct, archaic human subspecies. The first premise anthropologists reject is that humans were originally divided, by nature or God, into a small set of biologically distinct, fixed species, subspecies, or races. Anthropologists now know con clusively, from fossil and DNA evi dence, that contemporary humans are one variable species, with our roots

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in Africa, which moved out of Africa into a wide range of environments around the world, producing hun dreds, perhaps thousands, of cultur ally and genetically distinct popula tions. Local populations, through nat ural selection as well as random ge netic mutation, acquired some dis tinctive genetic traits, such as shovel shaped incisor teeth, hairy ears, or red hair. Adaptation to human cultural in ventions such as agriculture, which creates concentrations of water that allow malaria-carrying mosquitoes to breed - also produced higher fre quencies of sickle-cell genes (related to malaria resistance) in human pop ulations in some parts of Africa, In dia, Arabia, and the Mediterranean.4 At the same time, continuous migra tionandintermatingbetweenlocalpop ulations prevented us from branching off into distinct subspecies or species and instead created a richer and more variable gene pool, producing new combinations and permutations of the human genome.

Human prehistory and history, then, are a continuing story of fusion and fission, of a myriad of populations, emerging and shifting over time and space, sometimes isolated temporari ly, then fusing and producing new for

mations. There have been thousands and thousands of groups throughout human history, marrying in and, more often, out; they have disappeared and reemerged in new forms over time.

In short, there are no "basic" or "ancient" races; there are no stable, "natural," permanent, or even long standing groupings called races. There have never have been any "pure" races. All human populations are histori cally specific mixtures of the human gene pool. This is human evolution, and we see these same processes at work in the 19th and 20th centuries and today. "Races" are ephemeral here today, gone tomorrow.

2. Contemporary humans are not divisible into biological races. When anthropologists say races aren't bio logically real, they also reject the idea

that modern humans can be divided into scientifically valid, biologically distinct groupings or races. For races to be real as biological categories, the classification must be based on ob jective, consistent, and reliable bio logical criteria. The classification sys tem must also have predictive value that will make it useful in research.

Scientists have demonstrated that both the concept of race and racial criteria are subjective, arbitrary, and inconsistently applied.5 U.S. racial categories, such as the ones used in the Census, aren't valid in part be cause the biological attributes used to define races and create racial classi fications rely on only a few visible, su perficial, genetic traits - such as skin color and hair texture - and ignore the remaining preponderance of hu

man variation. Alternative, equally vis ible racial classifications could be con structed using such criteria as hair col or, eye color, height, weight, ear shape,

or hairiness. However, there are less visible genetic traits that have far great er biological significance. For exam ple, there are at least 13 genetic factors

related to hemoglobin, the protein that

helps carry oxygen to tissues, and there is also significant variation in the ABO,

RH, and other blood systems. We could create racial classifications based on genetic factors that affect susceptibil ity to diabetes or to certain kinds of breast cancer or to the ability to di gest milk. In sum, given the variety of possible biologically based traits for classifying human beings, the cri teria used in U.S. racial categorizations are highly arbitrary and subjective. Our discussion here focuses on the U.S. concept of race. While racial con cepts are no doubt similar in Canada and Europe, this is not true in other parts of the Americas.6

The number of potential biolog ically based racial groupings is enor

mous. Not only are there millions of

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genetic traits, but most genetic traits even culturally salient but super

ficial traits such as skin color, hair tex ture, eye shape, and eye color - do not cluster together. Darker skin can cluster with straight hair as well as with very curly hair or with hairy or nonhairy bodies; paler skin can clus ter with straight or curly hair or with black or blond hair or with lighter to darker eyes. Each trait could pro duce a different racial classification. For example, if one used height as a criterion rather than skin pigmenta tion, then the Northern Afghan pop ulation would be in the same racial category as the Swedes and the Tutsi of Rwanda. There are huge numbers of genetically influenced traits, visi ble and nonvisible, which could be

used to classify humans into biolog ically distinct groups. There is no "nat ural" dassification - no co-occurring clusters of racial traits. There are just alternatives, with different implica tions and uses.

Racial classifications are also un scientific because they are unreliable and unstable over time. Individuals cannot reliably be "raced," partly be cause the criteria are so subjective and unscientific. Robert Hahn, a medi cal anthropologist, found that 37% of babies described as Native Ameri can on their birth certificates ended up in a different racial category on their death certificates.7 Racial iden tifications by forensic anthropologists,

long touted as accurate, have been shown to be disturbingly unreliable,

even in relatively ethnically homo geneous areas, such as Missouri and Ohio.8 Forensic evidence from such urban areas as San Jose, California, or New York City is even more prob lematic.

Racial categories used by the U.S. Census Bureau have changed over time. In 1900, races included "mu latto, quadroon, or octoroon" in ad dition to "black." Southern Europeans and Jews were deemed to be separate races before World War II. Asian In dians ("Hindus") were initially cate gorized as "Caucasoid" - except for voting rights. The number and defi nitions of races in the most recent U.S. Census reflect the instability - and hence unreliability - of the con cept of race. And U.S. racial classifi cations simply don't work in much of the rest of the world. Brazil is a clas sic, often-studied example, but they also don't work in South Asia, an area that includes over one-fifth of the

world's population. Historical and contemporary Eu

ropean and American racial categories are huge, biologically diverse macro categories. Members of the same ra cial group tend to be similar in a few genetic ways that are often biologi cally irrelevant. Moreover, the genet ic variability found within each ra cial grouping is far greater than the genetic similarity. Africa, by itself, is home to distinct populations whose average height ranges from less than five feet (the Mbuti) to over six feet (the Tutsi). Estimates suggest that con temporary racial variation accounts for less than 7% of all human genet ic variation.9 U.S. races, then, are not biologically distinct or biologically meaningful, scientifically based group ings of the human species.

3. Race as biology has no scientfPic value. An additional critique of the concept of race is that racial cate gories, as defined biologically, are not

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very useful in understanding other phenomena, whether biological or cul tural.

There is no substantial evidence that race, as a biological category, and "ra cial" characteristics, such as skin col or, hair texture, and eye shape, are causally linked to behavior, to capac ities, to individual and group accom plishments, to cultural institutions, or

to propensities to engage in any spe cific activities. In the area of academ ic achievement, the focus on race as biology can lead researchers to ignore underlying nonbiological causal fac tors. One dassic study found that con trolling for socioeconomic and other environmental variables eliminated purported "racial" differences in I.Q. scores and academic achievement be tween African American, Mexican

American, and European American students. '

Health professionals have also cri tiqued the concept of race. Alan Good

man and others have shown that race does not help physicians with diagno sis, prevention, or treatment of med ical diseases." Racial categories and a false ideology of race as "biology" encourage both doctors and their pa tients to view medical conditions as necessarily genetic, ignoring possible environmental sources. Hypertension, infant birthweights, osteoporosis, ovar

ian cysts - all traditionally viewed as "racial" (i.e., genetically based) - now seem to reflect environmental rather than racially linked genetic factors. The Centers for Disease Control con cluded in 1993 that most associations between race and disease have no ge netic or biological basis and that the concept of "race" is therefore not use ful in public health.

As a result of recent evolution and constant ntterbreeding betreen groups of humans, two individuals from dif ferent "races" are just as likely to be

more similar to one another genetic

ally than two individuals from the

same race." This being so, race-as biology has no predictive value.

IF NOT RACE, THEN WHAT?

Classifications are usually created for some purpose. Alan Goodman and other biological anthropologists suggest that investigators focus on using traits relevant to the problem at hand. For example, if a particular blood factor puts an individual at risk for a disease, then classify indi viduals on that basis for that purpose.

Some suggest using the term "pop ulation" or "breeding population" to refer to the multitude of small, often geographically localized, groups that have developed high frequencies of one or more somewhat distinctive bi ological traits (e.g., shovel-shaped in cisors) in response to biological, his torical, and cultural factors. But oth ers point out that there could be thou sands of such groups, depending on the classifying criteria used, and that the groups would be merging and re combining over time and space. More over, the variability "captured" would reflect only a fraction of the variabil ity in the human species. Most anthropologists now use the

concept of"clines" to help understand how genetic traits are distributed.12 New data indicate that biological traits, such as blood type or skin color, are distributed in geographic gradations or "clines"; that is, the frequency of a trait varies continuously over a geo graphic area. For example, the genes for type B blood increase in frequen cy in an east-to-west direction (re flecting, in part, the travels of Gen ghis Khan and his army). In contrast, skin pigmentation grades from north to south, with increasing pigmenta tion as one gets closer to the equator.

The frequency of the gene for sickle cell decreases from West Africa mov

ing northeast. Virtually all traits have distinct geo

graphic distributions. Genes control ling skin color, body size and shape (head, limbs, lips, fingers, nose, ears), hairiness, and blood type are each dis tributed in different patterns over ge ographic space. Once again, for bio logical races to exist, these traits would

have to co-vary, but they don't. In stead, biological traits produce a near ly infinite number of potential races. This is why anthropologists conclude that there are no scientifically distin guishable biological races - only thou sands of clines!

SO WHAT IS RACE THEN?

We hope we have made the point that the concept of separate, biolog ically distinct human races is not sci entifically defensible. Unfortunate ly, racial ideology, by focusing on a few physical attributes, traps us in to a discourse about race as biology rather than race as a cultural construc tion. The concept of race is a cultural invention, a culturally and historical ly specific way of thinking about, cat egorizing, and treating human beings.'3

It is about social divisions within so ciety, about social categories and iden tities, about power and privilege. It has

been and remains a particular type of ideology for legitimizing social in equality between groups with differ ent ancestries, national origins, and histories. Indeed, the concept of race is also a major system of social iden tity, affecting one's own self-percep tion and how one is perceived and treat

ed by others. But race does have a biological com

ponent, one that can trick us into think

ing that races are scientifically valid, biological subdivisions of the human species. As noted earlier, geographic ally localized populations - as a result of adaptation, migration, and chance

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- tend to have some characteristic physical traits. While these may be traits that characterize an entire pop ulation, such as hairy ears, it is more accurate to talk about the relative fre quency of a particular trait, such as blood type 0, in one population as compared to another, or the relative amount of pigmentation of individu als in a population, relative to other populations. Some traits, such as skin color, reflect climatic conditions; oth ers, such as eye color and shape, probably reflect ran dom, historical processes and migration patterns. The U.S. was peopled by pop ulations from geographic ally distinct regions of the world - voluntary immi grants, forced African slaves,

and indigenous American groups. Therefore, domi nant northwestern Euro pean ethnic groups, such as the English and Germans,

were able to exploit certain visually salient biological traits, especially skin color, as markers of race.

The effectiveness of these physi cal traits as markers of one's race de pended, of course, on their being pre served in future generations. So dom inant cultural groups created elabo rate social and physical barriers to

mating, reproduction, and marriage that crossed racial lines. The most ex plicit were the so-called anti-misce genation laws, which outlawed sex between members of different races, whether married or not. These laws were not declared unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court until the 1967 case of Lovingv. Virginia.'4 An other vehicle was the cultural defini tion of kinship, whereby children of interracial (often forced) matings ac quired the racial status of their lower ranking parent; this was the so-called

one-drop rule or hypodescent. Espe cially during the time of slavery, the lower-ranking parent was generally the mother, and thus the long-stand ing European cultural tradition of af filiating socially "legitimate" children

with the father's kinship group was effectively reversed.

In contrast, there have been few er social or legal barriers in the U.S.

Race, racial classifications,

racial stratification, and other

forms of racism, including

racial ideology, rather than

being part of our biology, are

part of our culture.

to mating and marriage between Ital ians, British, Germans, Swedes, and others of European ancestry. Con sequently, the physical and cultural characteristics of European region al populations are less evident in the U.S. With intermarriage, distinct Eu ropean identities were submerged in the culturally relevant macroracial cat egory of "white" - more accurately, European American.

Thus even the biological dimen sion of contemporary racial groupings is the result of sociocultural process es. That is, humans as cultural beings first gave social significance to some physical differences between groups and then tried to perpetuate these "ra cial markers" by preventing social and physical intercourse between mem bers of the groups. Although the dom inant racial ideology was about main taming racial "purity," the issue was

not about biology; it was about main taining social, political, and econom ic privilege.15

WHY IS THIS UNDERSTANDING IMPORTANT FOR EDUCATORS?

We hope we've convinced you that race isn't biologically "real" and that race in the U.S. and elsewhere

is a historical, social, and cultural creation. But so what? What is the signifi cance of this way of view ing race for teachers, stu dents, and society?

1. Thepotentialfor change.

First, it is important to un derstand that, while races are biological fictions, they are social realities. Race may not be "real" in a biological sense, but it surely is "real" socially, politicaHy, econom ically, and psychologically. Race and racism profound ly structure who we are, how

we are treated, how we treat others, and our access to resources and rights.

Perhaps the most important mes sage educators can take from the fore going discussion is that race, racial classifications, racial stratification, and other forms of racism, including ra cial ideology, rather than being part of our biology, are part of our cul ture. Like other cultural forms, both the concept of race and our racial clas sifications are part of a system we have

created. This means that we have the ability to change the system, to trans form it, and even to totally eradicate it. Educators, in their role as trans

mitters of official culture, are partic ularly well poised to be active change agents in such a transformation.

But how, you may well ask, can teachers or anybody else make peo ple stop classifying by race? And are there any good reasons to do so? These

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familiar categories - black, white, Asian, Native American, and so on

seem so embedded in U.S. socie ty. They seem so "natural." Of course, that's how culture works. It seems "nat

ural" to think of chicken, but not rats,

as food. But, as we have shown above, the labels and underlying constructs that we use to talk about human di versity are unstable, depending on par ticular social, political, and historical contexts. Individuals in positions of authority, of course, have the ability to change them institutionally. But ordinary people also have the ability to change how they classify and label people in their everyday lives.

Several questions arise at this point. Do we as educators consciously want to change our way of conceptualiz ing and discussing human biological variation? What makes the "race as biology" assumption so dangerous? Are we going to continue to classify people by race, even while recogniz ing that it is a social construct? What vested interests do people have in hold

ing onto or rejecting - racial cat egories? How can we become more sophisticated in our understanding of how systems of classification work while also becoming more critical of our own ways of classifying people? Are there alternative ways of think ing about, classifying, and labeling human beings that might be more em powering for students, teachers, and community members? By eliminat ing or changing labels, will we change the power structures that perpetuate privilege and entitlement? Moving be yond race as biology forces us to con front these and other issues.

2. The dangers ofusing racial clas sif cations. Categories and classifica tions are not intrinsically good or bad. People have always grouped others in ways that were important within a given society. However, the myth of race as biology is dangerous because

it conflates physical attributes, such as skin color, with unrelated qualities, such as intelligence. Racial labels de lude people into thinking that race predicts such other outcomes and be haviors as achievement in sports, mu sic, or school; rates of employment; pregnancies outside marriage; or drug use. Race was historically equated with intelligence and, on that basis, was used to justify slavery and education al discrimination; it later provided the rationale that supported the genocide of Jews, blacks, Gypsies, and other "inferior" races under Hitler. So using racial categories brings along this his tory, like unwanted baggage. Macroracial categories are danger

ous in that the categories oversimpli fy and mask complex human differ ences. Saying that someone is Asian tells us virtually nothing concrete, but

it brings with it a host of stereotypes,

such as "model minority," "quiet," "good at math," "inscrutable," and so on. Yet the Asian label includes a wide range of groups, such as Kore ans, Filipinos, andVietnamese, with distinct histories and languages. The same is true for "white," a term that homogenizes the multiple nationali ties, languages, and cultures that con stitute Europe. The label "African American" ignores the enormous lin guistic, physical, and cultural diver sity of the peoples of Africa. The term "black" conflates people of African descent who were brought to the U.S. as slaves with recent immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean. These mac roracial labels oversimplify and reduce human diversity to four or five giant groups. Apart from being bad science, these categories don't predict anything helpful - yet they have acquired a life of their own. Macroracial categories, such as

those used in the U.S. Census and other institutional data-collection ef forts, force people to use labels that

may not represent their own self-iden tity or classifying system. They must either select an existing category or select "other" - by definition, a kind of nonidentity. The impossibility, un til recently, of selecting more than one

ethnic/racial category implicitly stig matizes multiracial individuals. And the term "mixed" wrongly implies that

there are such things as "pure" races, an ideology with no basis in science. The recent expansion of the number of U.S. Census categories still cannot accommodate the diversity of the U.S. population, which includes people whose ancestry ranges from Egypt, Brazil, Sri Lanka, Ghana, and the Do minican Republic to Iceland and Ko rea.

3. How macroracial categories have served people in positive ways. Having noted some negative aspects, it is equal ly important to discuss how macro racial categories also serve society. Re call that labels are not intrinsically "good" or "bad." It depends on what people do with them. During the 1960s, the U.S. civil rights movement helped bring about consciousness and pride in being African American. This consciousness - known by terms such as ethnic pride and black power - united people who had been the vic tims of racism and oppression. From that consciousness sprang such edu cational interventions as black and Chicano history classes, ethnic stud ies departments, Afrocentric schools, and other efforts to empower young people. The movement to engender pride in and knowledge of one's ances

try has had a powerful impact. Many individuals are deeply attached to these racial labels as part of a positive iden tity. As one community activist put it,

"Why should I give up being a race? I like being a race.

Racial classification can also have positive impact by allowing educa tors to monitor how equitably our

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institutions are serving the public. Racial categories are used by schools to disaggregate data on student out comes, including achievement, atten dance, discipline, course placements, college attendance rates, and other areas of school and student perform ance. These data are then used to ex amine whether certain groups of stu dents are disproportionately repre sented in any outcome areas. For ex ample, a school might discover that the percentage of Latino students who

receive some type of disciplinary in tervention is higher than that for oth er school populations. The school can then consider what it can do to change this outcome. Teachers might ask, Is there something about the way Lati no students are treated in the school that leads to higher disciplinary refer ral rates? What other factors might be involved?

The racial classifications that ed ucators use to monitor student out come data reflect our society's social construction of race. As such, the cat egories represent groups that have been

historically disenfranchised, oppressed, or marginalized. Without data disag gregated by race, gender, and other categories, it would be difficult to iden

tify problems stemming from race based institutional and societal fac tors that privilege certain groups, such as the widespread U.S. practice oftrack ing by so-called ability. Without data broken out according to racial, gen der, and ethnic categories, schools would not be able to assess the posi tive impact intervention programs have

had on different groups of students.

4. Shifting the conversation from bi ology to culture. One function of the

myth of race as biology has been to distract us from the underlying caus es of social inequality in the United States. Dismantling the myth of race as biology means that we must now shift our focus tO analyzing the social,

economic, political, and historical con ditions that breed and serve to per petuate social inequality. For educa tors, this means helping students to recognize and understand socioeco nomic stratification, who benefits and who is harmed by racial discrimina tion, and how we as individuals and institutional agents can act to dis

mantle ideologies, institutions, and practices that harm young people.

There is another, more profound implication of the impermanence of race. Culture, acting collectively, and humans, acting individually, can make races disappear. That is, we can mate and marry across populations, thus destroying the racial "markers" that have been used to facilitate categori zation and differential treatment of people of different ancestry and so cial rank. An understanding of hu man biological variation reveals the positive, indeed essential, role that intermating and intermarriage have played in human evolution and hu man adaptation. Rather than "mon grelizing" a "pure species," mating be tween different populations enriches the genetic pool. It is society, rather than nature - and socially and eco nomically stratified societies, for the most part - that restricts social and sexual intercourse and severely penal izes those who mate across racial and other socially created lines.

SUGGESTIONS AND RESOURCES FOR EDUCATORS

Anthropological knowledge about race informs us about what race is and is not, but it cannot guide edu cational decision making. The under lying goal of social justice can help educators in making policy decisions, such as whether to use racial and eth nic categories to monitor ed ucation al outcomes. As long as we contin ue to see racially based disparities in

young peoples' school achievement, then we must monitor and investi gate the social conditions that pro duce these disparities. We must be care fill, however, to avoid "biologizing" the dassification; that is, we must avoid

assuming genetic explanations for ra cial differences in behaviors and edu cational outcomes or even diseases.

As we pursue a more socially just world, educators should also contin ue to support young people's quest for knowledge about the history and struggles of their own people, as well as those of other groups, so that stu dents in the future will not be able to point to their textbooks and say, "My people are not included in the curriculum." In the process, we can encourage both curiosity about and respect for human diversity, and we can emphasize the importance that historical and social context plays in creating social inequality. We can al so encourage comparative studies of racial and other forms of social strat ification, further challenging the no tion that there is a biological expla nation for oppression and inequality. In short, students will understand that there is no biological explanation for a group's historical position as either oppressed - or oppressor. We can encourage these studies to point out variations and fine distinctions with in human racial groupings.

In addition to viewing the treatment

of race and racial categories through a social-justice lens, we would apply another criterion that we call "depth of knowledge." We believe that it is important to challenge and inspire young people by exposing them to the best of our current knowledge in the sciences, social sciences, and oth er disciplines. Until now, most stu dents in our education system have not been exposed to systematic, sci entifically based teaching about race and human biological variation. One

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reason is that many social studies teach

ers may think they lack sufficient back

ground in genetics and human biol ogy. At the same time, many biology teachers may feel uncomfortable teach ing about race as a social construct. The null move for teachers seems to be to say that we should all be "color blind." However, this does not help educate students about human diver sity, both biological and social. In rare cases when students have the oppor tunity to engage in studies of race, ethnicity, culture, and ways to end racism, they are both interested and intellectually challenged.16 One high school teacher who teaches students about race said he wants to dispel the notion that teaching about diversity is "touchy feely." "We don't just want to touch diversity; we want to ap proach it academically.... We feel we have a definite discipline."17

Rather than shield students and our selves from current scientific knowl edge about race, induding its contra dictions and controversies, we submit that educators should be providing oppor tunities for students to learn

what anthropologists, geneti cists, and other scientists, in cluding social scientists, have to say about human biolog ical variation and the issue of race. Particularly in mid dle schools, high schools, and beyond, students should be involved in inquiry projects and social action projects, in critical examination of the labels we currently use, and in analysis of the reasons for and against using them in par ticular contexts. Rather than tell students that they should or should not use racial la bels (except for slurs), educa tors should be creating proj ects in which students ex

plore together the range of possible ways of classifying people and the im plications and political significance of alternative approaches in differ ent contexts.

We would like to conclude by of fering readers some ideas for student inquiry and by suggesting some re sources that can serve to get teach ers in all subject areas started on the quest to learn about human biolog ical variation and ways to teach about it.

1. Ideas for student inquiry. Here are some examples of how teachers

might engage students in critically examining the social, historical, and cultural construction of racial cate gories.

* Have students create and em ploy alternative "racial" classification schemes using as many observable and nonobservable physical differenc es as they can think of (e.g., foot size, height, ear shape, eyebrow shape, waist/

shoulder ratio, hairiness). What do

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the groups look like? What does this tell us about macroracial classifica tions based on skin pigmentation and other surface features?

* Show students U.S. Census forms from 1870, 1950, and 2000, and ask them to place themselves in the most appropriate category. Or show a photo graph of a person of multiple ethnic ancestry and ask students to place this person in one of the categories from these three censuses. Ask them why they

think the census form has changed over time and what that says about the meaning of "race."

* Ask immigrant students to in vestigate the racial/ethnic categories used in their country of origin and to reflect on how well they mesh with the U.S. categories. For example, have students from Mexico taken on an identity as Latino or Hispanic? And

what does it mean for them to be come part of a larger "macro" race in the U.S.?18

* Ask students how they feel when someone asks them to "rep resent their race." For ex ample, how do students who identify themselves as Af rican Americans feel when someone asks, "How do Af rican Americans feel about this issue?" or "What's the

African American perspec tive on this?"

* Discuss "reverse dis crimination." When did this term come into use and why?

Who is being discriminated against when discrimination is reversed?

* Discuss "political cor rectness." Where did this term come from? Who us es it and for what purpos es? And why did it emerge?

2. Resources for teachers. The following examples will give readers a place to start

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in compiling resources available for teaching about race.

* Two major anthropological as sociations have produced highly read able position statements on the topic of race and human biological varia tion. First, the American Anthropo logical Association website features both the AAA position and a sum mary of testimony given in conjunc tion with the debates on the 2000 census categories. Second, the offi cial statement of the American Asso ciation of Physical Anthropologists has appeared in that organization's journal. 1

* The American Anthropological Association is making a special ef fort to disseminate understandings about race and human variation to the broader public. AnthroNotes, de signed for precollege teachers, is a superb resource that offers concrete approaches to teaching about race, human diversity, and human evolu tion. It is available at no charge from the Anthropology Outreach Office ([email protected]). Sev eral past issues of AnthroNotes treat race and ethnicity 20 Anthropologists have produced materials for precol lege teachers and teacher educators that deal with cultural diversity; some include strategies for teaching about culture and human diversity.21 Oth ers provide useful overviews of rele vant topics.22

* The AAA is currently engaged in a public education initiative called

Understanding Race and Human Vari ation, which will involve a traveling museum exhibit and a website. The Ford Foundation has contributed one million dollars to this project.

* In 1999, theAAAcreated aspe cial commission called the Anthro pology Education Commission (ABC) tO "help achieve significant progress towards the integration of anthropo logical concepts, methods, and issues

into pre-K through community col lege and adult education as a means of increasing public understanding of anthropology." The two teaching modules by Leonard Lieberman and by Lieberman and Patricia Rice, which we cited above, are available at no charge on the AEC website (www. aaanet.org/committees/commissions/ aec). The AEC webpage contains ex tensive resources that teachers can use to teach anthropological concepts and

methods, including some that address race.

Anthropologists recognize an ob ligation to disseminate their knowl edge of human biological variation and the social construction of race to the wider public. We hope that this article and the resources we have pro vided will contribute to this effort.

1. Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in Amer ican Life (New York: Free Press, 1994).

2. Audrey Smedley, Race in North America: Ori gin and Evolution of a Worldview (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1998).

3. Jonathan Marks, Human Biodiversity: Genes, Race, and History (New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 1995). 4. Leonard Lieberman and Patricia Rice, "Races

or Clines?," p. 7, available on the Anthropolo gy Education Commission page of the Ameri can Anthropological Association website, www. aaanet.org/committees/commissions/aec ? click on Teaching About Race.

5. George J. Armelagos and Alan H. Goodman, "Race, Racism, and Anthropology," in Alan H. Goodman and Thomas L. Leatherman, eds., Building a New Biocultural Synthesis: Political Economic Perspectives on Human Biology (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1998).

6. Jeffrey M. Fish, "Mixed Blood," in James Sprad ley and William McCurdy, eds., Conformity and Conflict, 11th ed. (New York: Allyn & Bacon, 2002), pp. 270-80. 7. Alan Goodman, "Bred in the Bone?," Sci ences, vol. 37, no. 2, 1997, p. 24.

8. Ibid., p. 22. 9. Leonard Lieberman, " 'Race' 1997 and 2001 :

A Race Odyssey," available on the Anthropolo gy Education Commission page of the Ameri can Anthropological Association website, www. aaanet.org/committees/commissions/aec ?

click on Teaching About Race.

10. Jane Mercer, "Ethnic Differences in IQ Scores: What Do They Mean? (A Response to Lloyd Dunn)," Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences, vol. 10, 1988, pp. 199-218.

11. Goodman, op. cit.

12. Lieberman and Rice, op. cit.

13. Carol Mukhopadhyay and Yolanda Moses, "Reestablishing 'Race' in Anthropological Dis course, " American Anthropologist, vol. 99,1997, pp. 517-33.

14. Janet Hyde and John DeLamater, Under standing Human Sexuality, 6th ed. (New York:

McGraw-Hill, 1997).

15. Smedley, op. cit.

16. Karen Donaldson, Through Students' Eyes: Combating Racism in United States Schools (West port, Conn.: Praeger, 1996); and Rosemary C. Henze, "Curricular Approaches to Developing Positive Interethnic Relations," Journal of Negro Education, vol. 68, 2001, pp. 529-49.

17. Henze, p. 539.

18. Clara Rodriguez, Changing Race: Latinos, the Census, and the History of Ethnicity in the United States (New York: New York University Press, 2000); and Gilberto Arriaza, "The School

Yard as a Stage: Missing Culture Clues in Sym bolic Fighting," Multicultural Education Jour nal, Spring 2003, in press.

19. American Anthropological Association, "AAA Statement on Race," www.aaanet.org/stmts/racepp. htm; and American Association of Physical An thropologists, "AAPA Statement on Biological

Aspects of Race," American Journal of Physical Anthropology, vol. 101, 1996, pp. 569-70. 20. Alison S. Brooks et al., "Race and Ethnici

ty in America," in Ruth O. Selig and Marilyn R. London, eds., Anthropology Explored: The Best of Smithsonian AnthroNotes (Washington, D.C: Smithsonian Institution Press), pp. 315-26; E. L. Cerrini-Long, "Ethnicity in the U.S.A.: An An thropological Model," AnthroNotes, vol. 15, no. 3, 1993; William L. Merrill, "Identity Transfor mation in Colonial Northern Mexico," Anthro Notes, vol. 19, no. 2, 1997, pp. 1-8; and Boyce Rensberger, "Forget the Old Labels: Here's a New

Way to Look at Race," AnthroNotes, vol. 18, no. 1,1996, pp. 1-7.

21. Hilda Hernandez and Carol C Mukhopa dhyay, Lntegrating Multicultural Perspectives in Teacher Education: A Curriculum Resource Guide

(Chico: California State University, 1985); and Conrad P. Kottak, R. Furlow White, and Patri

cia Rice, eds. The Teaching of Anthropology: Prob lems, Lssues, and Decisions (Mountain View, Calif.:

Mayfield Publishing, 1996). 22. Faye Harrison, "The Persistent Power of 'Race' in the Cultural and Political Economy of

Racism," Annual Review of Anthropology, vol. 24,1995, pp. 47-74; and Ida Susser and Thomas Patterson, eds., Cultural Diversity in the United States: A Critical Reader (Maiden, Mass.: Black well, 2001). IC

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