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Race and Reality: What Everyone Should Know About Our Biological Diversity ReviewSkeptic Michael Shermer described races as "fuzzy groups," promoting the idea that race is a social rather than scientific concept. Harrison took this idea and made it truly solid.
I've long believed that racism is sort of like Freddie Krueger: if we didn't pay so much attention to race, racism would go away. Thank goodness we'd still have sexism to make things interesting. It looks to me like a lot of the ways we think about race in the US are counter-productive and incorrect. I have heard blacks say, for example, that racism is worse now than it was sixty years ago before the civil rights movement-- which I find very hard to believe!
Because race is such a taboo subject, at least for a Caucasian writer such as Guy P. Harrison, it took guts to point out that the emperor is in fact naked. He points out, for example, that in the US, if a person has any black ancestors at all-- say, a great-grandparent-- that person is often labeled as "black." When people call Obama black, I point out that he is half-and-half and could just as truthfully be called Caucasian. (I usually prefer to say Caucasian rather than white, and black to African American-- what if the latters aren't American?)
Harrison brings up many surprising facts and incidents: the white Australian who made a hate-filled joke about Aborigines. Two humans of different "races" still have more genes in common than two chimpanzees from the same troop. Many non-blacks get sickle cell anemia--which sounds like a great episode of House.
Harrison heavily quotes Jared Diamond's bestseller Guns, Germs and Steel (so it helps that I've read that) Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies to illustrate why European (white) people came to dominate the world. His point: cementing that the success or failure of different races or ethnic groups has nothing to do with innate talents or intelligence. Much of it can be attributed to geography.
It is my hope that anyone interested in race will read this book to get the bigger picture.
For more skepticism about race and racism, read Playing the Race card by Richard Thompson Ford. The Race Card: How Bluffing About Bias Makes Race Relations Worse
I have a lot of thoughts about race and racism, but feel that as a Caucasian person, I am not "allowed" to say them, no matter what those ideas are. (And they are not about organizing cross-burnings, believe me.) Maybe having a rational dialogue would go a long way towards mending fences and Harrison came forward to do so.
Race and Reality: What Everyone Should Know About Our Biological Diversity OverviewThe concept of race has had a powerful impact on history and continues to shape the world today in profound ways. Most people derive their attitudes about race from their family, culture, and education. Very few, however, are aware that there are vast differences between the popular notions of race and the scientific view of human diversity. Yet even among scientists, who understand the current evidence, there is great controversy regarding the definition of the term race or even the usefulness of thinking in terms of race at all. Drawing on research from diverse sources and interviews with key scientists, award-winning journalist Guy P Harrison surveys the current state of a volatile, important, and confusing subject. Harrison's thorough approach explores all sides of the issue, including such questions as these: If analysis of the human genome reveals that all human beings are 99.9 per cent alike, how meaningful are racial differences? Is the concept of race merely a cultural invention? If race distinctions are at least partially based in biological reality, how do we decide the number of races? Are there just three or maybe 3 million? What do studies of racial attitudes reveal? Are we all, in one way or another, racists? How does race correlate with environmental and geographical differences? Are race-based drugs a good idea? How does race influence intelligence, athletic ability, and love interests? Harrison delves into these and many more intriguing, controversial, and important questions in this enlightening book. After reading this book you will never think about race in the same way again.
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