The Race Myth: Why We Pretend Race Exists in America

Rating:
Summary: A marvelous book
Review:
What a remarkable and readable book. Joseph Graves has penetrated scientific jargon to provide us readers with one of the most insightful explanations of race that I have ever read. He convincingly argues that the term "race" as it is commonly used to identify "caucasoids, mongoloids
and negroids" is a figment of the 19th century imagination. At the genetic level, population groups do not fall into such neat packages. In the course of making his point about race, he explodes several related myths at the same time. American society's obsession with black athletes is just that, an
irrational obsession. Graves makes the point that since there are more Europeans in the National Basketball Association than Africans, then the most logical conclusion that we can draw is not that "blacks" are superior athletes, but rather that the European rather than African side of African-Americans mixed ancestry might account for their superiority in this
sport. The author raises and then persuasively answers some of those thorny questions about race that many of us surely ponder but feel too inhibited by considerations of political correctness to pose aloud: if skin color is genetic in the sense that it is based on a person's biology, then why isn't
that person's race genetically valid? How could it be that a random white patient might find his black next door neighbor a compatible blood donor, while his white sister-in-law is not? If the races aren't real, then why can forensics specialist identify the race of a perpetrator in a crime from DNA evidence? Since blacks and not whites suffer from sickle-cell anemia, doesn't that validate the concept of race? Or, how can we be so sure that intelligence is not a function of racial inheritance since blacks consistently score 15 points below whites on IQ exams? If you're itching for the answers, then read this marvelous book!




Rating:
Summary: Worth Reading
Review: Graves' book is certainly a good introduction for those not previously familiar with the idea that race is a social construct. I personally wish, though, that the book was a longer, and that more time was spent addressing the arguments of the opposition. Alan Templeton's 1998 article in American Anthropologist makes a good companion.

Rating:
Summary: Worth Reading
Review: Graves' book is certainly a good introduction for those not previously familiar with the idea that race is a social construct. I personally wish, though, that the book was a longer, and that more time was spent addressing the arguments of the opposition. Alan Templeton's 1998 article in American Anthropologist makes a good companion.

Rating:
Summary: A penetrating exploration
Review: I am really glad that I bought this book even though I initially hesitated after reading a very detailed but lukewarm review for it in this reviewers' section. Personally I loved the book. I am admittedly no expert on the subject, but the author struck just the right tone for me. He presented detailed scientific information demonstrating why "race" was not a genetically valid means of categorizing humans. But he did so in a persuasive and highly readable manner, which educated the lay person, without (in my opinion) compromising the scientific-ness of his narrative. I was especially impressed with the introductory chapter explaining the meaning of genetic variability and genetic distance, and showing how they contradicted the belief in race as a biological construct. Also, I have in recent years read several books concerning black dominance in certain sports. But it was this author's perspectives on the subject that I found most convincing. I believe that Prof. Graves accomplished the goal he set out to meet, and that was to show far beyond a reasonable doubt that the punitive concept of "race" as it has been used to bludgeon people of African ancestry, while favoring Europeans has no place in modern science nor society.

Rating:
Summary: A Book Hampered By Lack of Detail
Review: Myth, it has been said, is the buried part of every story. Joseph L. Graves, Jr. wants a certain myth, the myth of biologically sound races, to be resurrected and at the forefront of his newest book, The Race Myth: Why We Pretend Race Exists in America, which, to its advantage and disadvantage, reads like a story. Graves' book attempts to explain, first, why there is no such thing as a biological race, and second, the consequences of believing in this misconception. He is largely successful in the first endeavor, but it is quite debatable if he succeeds in the latter, and it is unfortunate that Graves does not give a more detailed analysis to the latter half of the book. Overall, The Race Myth has its heart in the right place, but its facts and arguments are disjointed at times, giving the book a general feeling of incompleteness and half-hearted analysis.

There are many reasons why Graves is simultaneously successful and unsuccessful in his attempt to debunk the race myth, and these reasons stem from his personal expertise and his political bias. The fact that Graves is an evolutionary biologist clearly pushes him to provide stronger evidence in support of genetic evidence debunking the race myth. In fact, the first chapter of The Race Myth is superb, particularly so for the general reader. It is in this chapter that Graves uses his expertise of genetics to nicely summarize the evidence against those who believe there are genetic components to race. He covers all of these latest techniques of population genetics and physical anthropology used to test hypotheses about race, and demonstrates that the evidence clearly suggests that race is a social construction, since the genetic findings don't correlate at all with the social groups used to test for such differences. For the general reader, this chapter will be informative and easy to read, and for the expert, this chapter will be a nice summary of current findings, a refresher course on genetic techniques used to dispel the race myth.

Chapters Two and Three focus on a history of racism and the psychological processes that maintain modern racism in our current society. It is in these chapters that Graves makes his first questionable move in The Race Myth. Because Graves is writing for the general reader, he is at times very general in his arguments. This technique does not always work to his advantage, both from the standpoint of the general reader and the scientist. Some general readers and experts alike may be put off by some of the claims Graves' makes, particularly those claims which aren't provided by empirical evidence. One example is Graves' brief discussion of coalition behavior in Chapter Two. Graves claims that coalitional behavior in humans evolved because "coalitions with more individuals possessing . . . highly desirable traits stood a better chance of survival and, ultimately, reproductive success compared to groups lacking such attributes" (The Race Myth, p. 36). He goes on to cite a study by evolutionary psychologists John Tooby and Leda Cosmides, which demonstrates how racial coalitions can be easily broken by focusing participants' attention on other stimuli of group members, such as color of clothing. While social scientists may be able to make the connection that racial categorization is one but many aspects individuals can use to categorize groups of individuals, many general readers may be left in the dark. Graves could have relied on a multitude of research demonstrating the human tendency to instantly categorize individuals on extremely novel categories. For example, Henry Tajfel and John Turner and colleagues have performed hundreds of experiments documenting human tendencies to form coalitions on the most novel stimuli, using a procedure called the minimal group paradigm. Basically, these social psychologists give participants extremely novel labels, and these individuals, time and time again, prefer other people who share the same label, no matter how novel the label. Graves could have expounded upon the implications of these findings in support of his notion that humans have a cognitive adaptation to form coalitional alliances, instead of skipping to the issue of using race as a modern label to form coalitions. However, he may leave the general reader confused instead. Graves' argument would have been more effective had he provided more evidence regarding humans' tendencies to cognitively differentiate individuals into categories.

The same can be said for Graves' arguments concerning social dominance and how it is related to systems of maintaining reproductive success. This seriously hampers Graves' arguments in the latter chapters of The Race Myth. Graves argues in Chapters 3 and 4 that we evolved to have cognitive mechanisms for hierarchy enhancing behaviors, and stretches the argument in modern times to suggest that in America, White individuals (particularly, White males) politically and economically maintain these hierarchies and coalitions to gain access for more mating opportunities. Racism, he says, is based on a recent social construction of a biologically-determined race which has inherent differences. This enables the more powerful individuals (i.e., White individuals) to have more profitable mating opportunities and to maintain their high status within the social hierarchy.

While this can be considered a traditional liberal response to racial inequality in America, and can be backed up by voluminous amounts of sociological and psychological data, Graves focuses on the connection between racial inequality and evolutionary psychology, with sub-par results. Unfortunately, Graves misses many opportunities to support many of his latter assumptions regarding the race myth in health care, athletics, and intelligence. In Chapter Five, for example, he goes into great detail to talk about "Just-so" stories about supposed differences in hypertension rates between Whites and Blacks in Americans. He is certainly right in dispelling such a myth - for the implications of believing in a difference would certainly influence medical decisions that would not be based in reality. However, Graves engages in many "just-so" stories himself, which is really unfortunate, since there is a multitude of evidence in the area of the social sciences that could provide more depth to Graves' arguments. For example, take Graves' discussion of differential lead intake as a function of socially constructed race. Throughout The Race Myth, Graves argues that many health differences - including IQ differences - may be due to environmental factors such as housing. Lead, a substance which can deter normal development and retard cognitive growth, is found in more inner city areas than in suburban areas, as many buildings in inner city areas are older and used lead-based paint, before it was found to be damaging to individuals' health. Perhaps lead can be a factor that leads to differences in IQ between Blacks and Whites. This may be true, and it is a fascinating hypothesis that Graves presents in The Race Myth. However, to demonstrate that this is part of a system of social domination, he would need to provide information regarding Americans' attitudes regarding issues of housing, such as The Fair Housing Act. Providing the majority's (i.e., White's) attitudes towards housing issues would provide a good measure of modern racism and whether the majority legitimizes any inequalities based on housing. Unfortunately, Graves does not include such information in his book, and thus it is a "just-so" story. On the other hand, such information regarding attitudes towards housing is out there. Sociologists Snyderman and Piazza (1993), in their book, The Scar of Race, demonstrate that a significant portion of White Americans feel that Blacks are getting more housing opportunities than needed, even when, in fact, inner city conditions are at an all time low. In addition, higher-income tiered White Americans are less likely to support full integration into their communities. Such evidence would have been useful for Graves' arguments concerning health and intelligence disparities, yet as Graves' arguments stand, they are not fully connected to his main thesis that America pretends race exists in order to sustain the traditional social hierarchy of White domination. Add this to his evolutionary argument of social hierarchies and you get a loose, frayed string of arguments that, while convincing, are lacking with the empirical evidence that is very much needed, for both the general reader and social scientist alike.

So this is the predicament of a brave book that really has good intentions: on the one hand, such arguments concerning race are easy to believe, particularly to individuals who strive towards creating an environment of racial equality. But to those who are not of a particular liberal bent, and to those who have more expertise in the social science field, The Race Myth invariably will give feelings of disappointment. While much of the evidence for what Graves is asserting is out there, Graves himself does not always make use of it. What is left, then, is a book whose intentions are laudable, but whose arguments seem half-hearted and disingenuous.

Rating:
Summary: Explores why modern definitions of race are wrong
Review: Plenty of debates on affirmative action and issues of racism fuel the fires in America, but evolutionary biologist Joseph Graves here argues that science can't account for the radical categories used to classify people, and racism is a consequence and byproduct of evolution. While race does not exist, according to Graves, and humans don't have separate genetic lines of descent, The Race Myth: Why We Pretend Race Exists In America explores why modern definitions of race are wrong, and how they can be overcome. Racism as social invention, not biology reality, is explained.