Alan H. Goodman is Professor of biological anthropology at Hampshire College and former Vice President of Academic Affairs and Dean of Faculty. He has written extensively on human variation and the biological consequences of inequality and poverty and co‐leads the RACE national public education project sponsored by the AAA and funded by NSF and the Ford Foundation. Goodman is a former President of the AAA.
Yolanda T. Moses is Professor of anthropology and recent 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. She co‐leads the RACE national education project and is a former President of the AAA.
Joseph L. Jones is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the College of William & Mary. A biological anthropologist, his work involves descendant community engagement and skeletal research on African diasporic biohistory and health. He has published on slavery and environmental lead exposure at the New York African Burial Ground in Lower Manhattan. Jones is former RACE project manager for the American Anthropological Association.
Second Edition
This second edition first published 2020
© 2020 American Anthropological Association
Edition history: American Anthropological Association (1e, 2012)
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The right of Alan H. Goodman, Yolanda T. Moses, and Joseph L. Jones to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted in accordance with law.
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Library of Congress Cataloging‐in‐Publication Data
Names: Goodman, Alan H., author. | Moses, Yolanda T., author. | Jones, Joseph L., author.
Title: Race : are we so different? / Alan H. Goodman, Yolanda T. Moses, Joseph L. Jones.
Description: Second edition. | Hoboken, NJ : Wiley‐Blackwell, 2020. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019040592 (print) | LCCN 2019040593 (ebook) | ISBN 9781119472476 (paperback) | ISBN 9781119472377 (adobe pdf) | ISBN 9781119472414 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Race–Social aspects–United States. | Race–Social aspects. | Racism–United States. | Racism.
Classification: LCC E185.86 . G637 2020 (print) | LCC E185.86 (ebook) | DDC 305.800973–dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019040592
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019040593
Cover Design: Wiley
Cover Image: Courtesy of American Anthropological Association
1.1 | White supremacists in Charlottesville, VA, 2017 |
The imaginary of whiteness | |
3.1 | The “Great Chain of Being” |
3.2 | Lorenz Fries’ Caribbean cannibals |
3.3 | The Landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth |
3.4 | Pocahontas |
3.5 | The first Africans arrive in Jamestown |
3.6 | Metacom, or King Philip |
3.7 | Carolus Linnaeus |
3.8 | Systema Naturae |
3.9 | Thomas Jefferson |
4.1 | Blumenbach’s five races |
4.2 | Samuel Morton |
4.3 | Nott and Gliddon’s Types of Mankind |
4.4 | Frederick Douglass |
4.5 | Native American lifeways display c. 1902 |
4.6 | Anténor Firmin |
4.7 | Minik |
4.8 | Franz Boas |
4.9 | 1917 Army Beta test for “innate intelligence” |
4.10 | Jesse Owens at the start of his record‐breaking 200‐meter race in the 1936 Olympics |
4.11 | “The Inheritance of Racial Features” |
4.12 | Kennewick Man |
5.1 | Map of the distribution of the European race |
5.2 | Caricature of the unassimilable Irish |
5.3 | Visit of the Ku‐Klux |
5.4 | Native children forced to attend boarding school |
5.5 | Anti‐Chinese “Workingmen’s Party” poster |
5.6 | The Cliff Dwellers’ Village at the 1904 World’s Fair |
5.7 | Booker T. Washington |
5.8 | The Birth of a Nation |
5.9 | Lucky Brown Pressing Oil |
5.10 | The cast of Leave It to Beaver |
5.11 | “Race tag” |
6.1 | Slave auction advertisement |
6.2 | Harriet Tubman |
6.3 | Dred Scott |
6.4 | Mid‐19th‐century advertisement encouraging westward migration |
6.5 | “Some reasons for Chinese exclusion” |
6.6 | Wong Kim Ark |
6.7 | Composite photograph of the heads of justices from various years |
6.8 | Thurgood Marshall |
6.9 | Social Security poster |
6.10 | Japanese Americans bound for Manzanar |
6.11 | George McLaurin, required to sit apart from white students |
6.12 | Rosa Parks following her arrest for violating segregation law |
6.13 | President Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act into law |
6.14 | U.S. presidents to 2016 |
Race is not “in the blood” | |
7.1 | Jeff Van Gundy and Yao Ming |
7.2 | Race is like a gun |
7.3 | Kenyan children |
7.4 | Girls from Oslo |
7.5 | Cube of variation |
7.6 | “The Tall and Short of It” |
7.7 | Silhouettes of individuals, from short to tall |
8.1 | Rainbow of human skin colors |
8.2 | Vitamin D metabolism |
8.3 | Map of human skin color distribution |
8.4 | The layers of human skin |
8.5 | Inuit children |
8.6 | Radiograph of a child with rickets |
8.7 | Von Luschan color tiles |
8.8 | Skin reflectance spectrophotometer |
8.9 | Walk from Nairobi to Oslo |
9.1 | Normal and sickled red blood cells |
9.2 | The structure of hemoglobin |
9.3 | Cross‐section of a blood vessel with normal and sickled red blood cells |
9.4 | How individuals might inherit sickle cell disease and sickle cell trait |
9.5 | Pathway by which individuals contract malaria |
9.6 | Farming in humid climates, producing pools of stagnant water |
9.7 | Anopheles minimus |
9.8 | Distributions of malaria and sickle cell allele |
9.9 | Frank Giacomazza and his daughter, Angelina |
10.1 | Venn diagrams representing three views of human genetic variation |
10.2 | Bar graph of the average genetic differences within and between “races” or continental groups |
10.3 | Venn diagram of human genetic diversity |
11.1 | “21 A Bus” |
11.2 | Dominos as a metaphor for the spread of genetic variation |
11.3 | A pointillist view of human evolution and variation |
11.4 | Major routes of migration |
11.5 | Trade routes ca. 800 to 1000 years ago |
11.6 | Ear ornament made of seashell from the Gulf Coast |
11.7 | Costa Rican jade pendant |
11.8 | Henry Greely |
11.9 | Alondra Nelson |
11.10 | Kim TallBear |
11.11 | Duana Fullwiley |
“Chief Illiniwek,” the mascot of the University of Illinois at Urbana‐Champaign | |
12.1 | Taking a knee |
13.1 | Students and a faculty advisor from Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota |
13.2 | U.S. census race categories, 1790–2010 |
13.3 | Enslaved African American family |
13.4 | Closing the gate on racially undesirable Chinese immigrants |
13.5 | Japanese Americans being relocated to internment camps |
13.6 | Alabama physician Josiah Nott |
13.7 | Asian immigrants arriving at Angel Island, about 1910 |
13.8 | Romina Takimoto |
13.9 | South Asian girl |
13.10 | Deportees waiting at a train station in Los Angeles, March 9, 1932 |
13.11 | Immigration reform activists protest in Washington, DC |
13.12 | The children in this family can now choose how the census classifies them |
13.13 | Kemi Adeyemi |
13.14 | “I am a person” |
13.15 | “I’m a grown man who just exposed my breasts to a complete stranger” |
13.16 | A wide range of people are classified together within the census’s “black or African American, or Negro” category |
13.17 | Tinbete Ermyas |
13.18 | Jessica Masterson |
13.19 | United States Census Bureau 2010 questionnaire |
14.1 | Busing. Boston, 1976 |
14.2 | Students in classroom |
14.3 | President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs the GI Bill into law |
14.4 | Tuskegee Institute (later, Tuskegee University) |
14.5 | Supporters and opponents of affirmative action |
14.6 | President Lyndon Baines Johnson |
14.7 | 2003 U.S. Supreme Court |
15.1 | Native lands today |
15.2 | Cherokee lands |
15.3 | President Andrew Jackson |
15.4 | The Trail of Tears |
15.5 | American Progress |
15.6 | Land transferred to the United States at the end of the Mexican–American War |
15.7 | Del Valle family |
15.8 | Anti‐Japanese discrimination in California, c. 1920 |
15.9 | Heart Mountain Relocation Center |
15.10 | U.S. home‐ownership rates, 2005 |
15.11 | 1937 map of Syracuse, New York |
15.12 | Displaced New Orleans residents take shelter in the Houston Astrodome |
15.13 | Lynju Yang and John Sou Yang |
15.14 | Race and the wealth gap |
16.1 | Distribution of birth weights in Illinois, 1980–95 |
16.2 | Life expectancy at birth by education, race, and gender |
16.3 | Salud |
16.4 | Prevalence of hypertension in Africa and in diasporic Africans |
16.5 | Measuring blood pressure |
16.6 | Socioeconomic status, skin color, and blood pressure |
16.7 | Race, pollution, and health |
16.8 | BiDil |
17.1 | I can’t breathe |
17.2 | Incarceration rates by race |
Not unlike the networks of meaning and actions that coalesce and continually refashion the powerful idea of race, writing a multiauthored book on race comes about through the synergies of multiple personal, institutional, and professional connections. In writing this book, we have had the benefit of a large, complex, active, and supportive network. This has been invaluable in our project.
Race looks different depending on one’s experience, place, and history. We expect, then, that this book will strike each reader in slightly different ways. They may gravitate to areas that have particular, individual interest and meaning. However, this book is meant to be read from front to back as a sort of primer on race, human biological variations, and racism. It is unique with respect to the breadth of subjects covered, as well as the depth of information and analysis presented for each.
In three parts, we explain how politicians, scientists, and others created and made race biological as a justification for inequalities; why human biological categories of race are nothing more than science fiction; and how race and racism nonetheless continue to influence most aspects of our lives today. As a companion to the larger project called RACE: Are We So Different?, we have designed this book to show, in broadly accessible language, how these three topics are linked inextricably. Seeing these connections, whether they are obvious or hidden, is fundamental to any real understanding of race and racism. We hope that our main messages are expressed in ways that resonate with all readers.
The project that led to this book first took recognizable shape in 1997. One of us, Yolanda Moses, then president of the American Anthropological Association (AAA), the world’s largest and foremost organization of professional anthropologists, called together a group of scholars from the subfields of anthropology to talk to each other about what race means in each.
The participants came out of that session with a clear consensus that, rather than occupying conceptually different universes, we had many points of agreement: much more agreement than difference. We came to these points from different intellectual histories and with different observations and data. We found that the subfields of anthropology, such as linguistic anthropology, archaeology, biological anthropology, and political anthropology, highlighted diverse aspects of the complexly protean idea of race and the dynamics of racism.
Remember the parable of the blindfolded individuals touching different parts of an elephant? One touches the tail and thinks she has a snake. Another touches the trunk and thinks he is feeling a wall. It was much like that. It was clear that working together, and ultimately with colleagues from other fields from physics to the humanities, was the best way of describing and understanding the whole of the elephant that is race and racism.
Finally, it was also clear just how harmful the idea of race had been and continues to be in the hands of individuals with the power to maintain and benefit from a racial status quo. Systems of inequalities were built and are maintained around the unchallenged idea that racial differences and inequalities are biological and natural. These notions reverberate even more widely today. However, it is apparent that they are refutable and simply based on bad science. This is why we felt compelled to educate that race is powerful, but not based in genes or biology, rather on a deeply held cultural and therefore changeable concept. We hope this book helps to change how we understand biological and cultural diversity.
We concluded then that we had the potential through anthropology and other sciences to talk to one another and to articulate to a larger public that race as we know it is a social construct. Through the lenses of biology (human variation), history, and lived experience, we created a multi‐layered framework to talk about what race is, and what it is not. We needed to do more than talk to our colleagues about this approach. Our students have been invaluable in this process. This book would not have been possible without them, and we hope that we will reach more college classrooms in this second edition. We need to continue to elevate the public discussions about race, bringing it back to fundamental issues such as how race came about in history and was invented, and how race and human variation are different. And we needed to try and include everyone in the discussion.
The RACE public education program, of which this book is a part, was launched by a steering committee under the guidance of the AAA and the staff leadership of Dr. Peggy Overbey. The tangible results include a website (www.understandingrace.org), created by S2N Media, Inc. (led by Kathy Prusinksi), and a museum exhibit, designed and built with our museum partners, the exceptional staff of the Science Museum of Minnesota (SMM), led by then president Eric Jolly, with the project headed by Robert Garfinkle and Joanne Jones‐Rizzi. To them, we owe our first and deepest gratitude. This book simply would never have happened if not for Robert and Joanne, their creative and resourceful team, and their courageous and collaborative spirit.
Due to the success of the first edition of this book, and because race and racism remain all too salient, we undertook an expanded and updated second edition, designed to reach a wider audience. Many of the essays are revised and will help to shed new light on topics such as slavery, scientific racism, and health and educational disparities. The science section has been updated to reflect current information on human genetic diversity. New data and analyses appear rapidly, but reaffirm a basic structure of genetic diversity completely incompatible with the idea of race.
The racial landscape has shifted since we wrote the first edition of RACE. Today, few would suggest we have entered a “post‐racial” era of American life. Unfortunately, recent years instead have seen a resurgence of antisemitism, Islamophobia, and other forms of racism, especially since Donald Trump succeeded Barack Obama as U.S. president. Terms like “white nationalism” and “white supremacy” are once again common in public discourse amid increased police violence against communities of color and a sharp rise in anti‐immigrant sentiment. With this edition, then, we thought it important to make even clearer the connections between racial ideology – beginning with the basic belief in human biological races – and racism. Thus, we greatly expanded the sections on the politics of race and the struggles for racial justice in policing, law enforcement, and related domains.
Once again, this book is about a bad but powerful idea. We tell the story of how, at a critical point in history, some people managed to transform aspects of human variation into social vulnerability. We explore the consequences of this decision, which range from subtle but damaging microaggressions to public symbols, and from displays of hatred to state‐sanctioned separation of families and even genocide. At the same time, we acknowledge that people have always fashioned from their troubled histories collective identities. These identities engender pride and take on shared meanings beyond whatever negative experiences or attributes may be associated with them by others. Social racial identities are no different.
Ultimately, though, we ask: are we really so different, if human races never evolved but the idea of race did? For most, this question has no simple or single answer. So, we offer this book as a resource for discussing, reflecting on, and drawing your own conclusions about race and human diversity. We also invite you to join us in reclaiming human diversity from race and racism – and in celebrating the fact that our differences pale in comparison to what makes us the same.
The second edition of RACE is an outgrowth of almost two decades of work that went into the conceptualization, research, and construction of the website and especially into the creation of the components of the museum exhibit. Many people and organizations assisted AAA in developing, producing, and implementing the RACE: Are We So Different? public education program. They include the Project Advisory Board members: Michael L. Blakey (College of William and Mary), Louis Casagrande (Children’s Museum of Boston), Robert Hahn (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), Faye Harrison (University of Illinois), Thomas Holt (University of Chicago), Janis Hutchinson (University of Houston), Marvin Krislov (formerly of Oberlin College), Richard Lewontin (Harvard University), Jeffrey Long (University of New Mexico), Shirley Malcom (American Association for the Advancement of Science), Carol Mukhopadhyay (San Jose State University), Michael Omi (University of California, Berkeley), Kyeyoung Park (University of California, Los Angeles), Kenneth Prewitt (Columbia University), Enid Schildkrout (Museum for African Art), Theodore Shaw (Columbia University), Marcelo Suarez‐Orozco (New York University), David Hurst Thomas (American Museum of Natural History), Russell Thornton (University of California, Los Angeles), and Arlene Torres (City University of New York).
Additionally, AAA staff contributed extensively to the project. They include executive directors William Davis and Ed Liebow; Elaine Lynch, deputy executive director; Suzanne Mattingly, former controller; Susannah Bodman and Lauren Schwartz, former media relations associates; Lucille Horn, former meetings director; Khara Minter, former meetings coordinator; Stacy Lathrop and Dinah Winnick, former managing editors, Anthropology News; Oona Schmid, former director of publishing; Damon Dozier, former director of public affairs; Amy Goldenberg, managing editor, Anthropology News; Mark Booker, production editor, Anthropology News; and Carla Fernandez, meetings planner and exhibits manager.
Felica Gomez worked as an intern on the project and coauthored the family guide published on the RACE Project website. Amy Beckrich served as project assistant, helping to coordinate the massive project and keep everyone in line. Because of her excitement about the project, Mary Margaret Overbey left a permanent position at AAA and was for many years the force behind the project as its director through to the completion of the website and exhibit. Leslie Walker and Alexandra Frankel were invaluable in helping to pull together images for the second edition.
The exhibit and the book have benefited immensely from collaborations with California Newsreel. Under the directorship of Larry Adelman, California Newsreel produced the exceptional video “Race: The Power of an Illusion” (see www.pbs.org/race). This award‐winning documentary film has been an inspiration to our project, and in fact we have portions of two interviews from it in this book.
A number of eminent scholars from a cross‐section of disciplines graciously agreed, under tight deadlines and time constraints, to write and include their voices in the form of guest essays; our profound thanks go to Kamari Clarke, Faye Harrison, Nina Jablonski, Kenneth Kidd, Ian Haney López, Carol Mukhopadhyay, Michael Omi, Nell Irvin Painter, Mica Pollock, Susan Reverby, Audrey Smedley, Deborah Thomas, Arlene Torres, Bonnie Urciuoli, and Joseph Watkins for participating in the first edition and for their timely updates to the second. Other individuals have been directly quoted or featured in the book via excerpts from “Race: The Power of an Illusion” or their inclusion in the museum exhibit. These include scientists Joseph Graves and Richard Lewontin. The story of sickle cell is movingly told by Frank and Vickie Giacomazza.
At Wiley Blackwell, we were guided and encouraged through the first edition by Rosalie Robertson and Julia Kirk. Rosalie saw at the very start the importance of our project. In an incredibly efficient manner, she and Julia were able to elicit seven insightful and very constructive manuscript reviews, which we used to enhance our final product. We also wish to thank these anonymous reviewers.
For the second edition, we were guided and encouraged by Rachel Greenberg and Richard Sampson. Richard doggedly helped secure permissions and Rachel expertly oversaw all aspects of production. The cover was designed by Joanna Vieira.
Neither would this project have come about without the many individuals who have allowed us to use their images and text (see individual credits). Major financial support for the project was provided by the AAA and the National Science Foundation (NSF). The Ford Foundation specifically provided funding to start the project and to produce the book that you are now holding. We express our deep gratitude to the funding program officers: Al Desena at NSF and Margaret Wilkerson, Gertrude Fraser, Irma McClaurin, and Irene Korenfield at the Ford Foundation.
In the course of this project, we have all benefited from help in many forms and from many people. Alan Goodman wishes to thank numerous students, staff, and faculty at Hampshire College and other venues, not least the 8th graders at Amherst Regional Middle School, Massachusetts, who helped in thinking through the best way to communicate ideas around race and human variation: In the early 1990s, my colleagues and I helped organized “teach‐ins” on race, not because of any crisis but just to educate about the myriad ways that race permeates our (mostly white) lives. My father taught me to be critical and always question my position. I learned about the power of stories from filmmakers Larry Adelman, Christine Sommers, and Lew Smith and exhibit developers including Joanne Jones‐Rizzi and Robert Garfinkle. In addition to advisory board members, many colleagues have helped me, including, but not limited to, Larry Adelman, George Armelagos, Lee Baker, Michael Blakey, Joseph Graves, Faye Harrison, Evelynn Hammonds, Thomas Leatherman, Richard Lewontin, Jonathan Marks, Michael Montoya, Lynn Morgan, Leith Mullings, Dean Robinson, and Banu Subramanian. Chaia Heller, my spouse and a cultural anthropologist, added tremendous insight into how to communicate the power of the idea of race, not to mention giving me daily moral support. I hope this book will help to unveil some of the systems behind race and racism, and why racism hurts.
Yolanda Moses wishes to thank the many people who have helped to make this project a reality for her and who have given her personal support over the years: At UC Riverside, the intellectual contributions of Tom Patterson, Wendy Ashmore, Christine Gailey, Sang Hee Lee, T. S. Harvey, and Juliet McMullin have been invaluable to me as I have worked on ideas for this book. I thank them for that support. A special thanks goes to the students in my classes who challenged me to explain the intricacies of the social construction of race and human variation in ways that tracked with their everyday experiences of race and racism. I want to thank the following graduate students who helped me with various tasks connected to this book, from basic research to helping to track down numerous permissions: Scott Smith, John Gust, Jenny Banh, Priscilla LoForte, Isabel Placentia, Richard Alvarez, Linda Hall, Holly Okonkwo, and Doris Logan. Special thanks to staff members Felecia Garrett and Sonia Zamora who helped me to type early drafts. And finally, thanks to my family, my husband of almost 45 years James F. Bawek, and my two grown daughters, Shana and Toni, who have been my sounding board for my ideas, research, and activities for this project since its inception. To my 97‐year‐old mother, Willie Lee Moses, I give thanks for her encouragement to complete this project so that others may know what it means “to not live a day of your life without thinking about race.”
Joseph Jones would first like to thank Alan Goodman and Yolanda Moses for their invaluable support and guidance towards realizing a vision of public anthropology and social justice. Numerous others who share this vision gave generously of their time and knowledge: They include Michael Blakey and Mark Mack (who together introduced me to the worlds of anthropology at Howard University), Faye Harrison, Audrey Smedley, R. Brooke Thomas, Alan Swedlund, Bob Paynter, John Bracey, Maddie Marquez, Dula Amarasiriwardena, Warren Perry, John Higginson, and many more at University of Massachusetts–Amherst and outside of the academy. I hope their varied insights and influences come through as you read this text. My work has also been supported by numerous colleagues and students at the College of William and Mary. A special thanks goes to Deans Kate Conley and Virginia Torczon, and to Katie Bragdon, Brad Weiss and Martin Gallivan, Linda Triponi, and Marisa LeForge for institutional support. I also want to thank Chardé Reid for being such an inspiring graduate student and the students of my biocultural courses for keeping me hopeful! Danielle and Nia, my wife and daughter, graciously provided necessary time and encouragement. To my mother and late father, Mary and Robert Jones, I am grateful for so many enduring lessons and of course for your decades of steadfast support and confidence. My efforts here are an extension of your inability to settle for racism. May this book help others to see through social inequality to the truth of human equality.