Mixed Race Studies

Is science racist?

Polity
January 2017
140 pages
122 x 188 mm / 5 x 7 in
Hardback ISBN: 9780745689210
Paperback ISBN: 9780745689227
Open eBook ISBN: 9780745689258

Jonathan Marks, Professor of Anthropology
University of North Carolina, Charlotte

Every arena of science has its own flash-point issues – chemistry and poison gas, physics and the atom bomb – and genetics has had a troubled history with race. As Jonathan Marks reveals, this dangerous relationship rumbles on to this day, still leaving plenty of leeway for a belief in the basic natural inequality of races.

The eugenic science of the early twentieth century and the commodified genomic science of today are unified by the mistaken belief that human races are naturalistic categories. Yet their boundaries are founded neither in biology nor genetics and, not being a formal scientific concept, race is largely not accessible to the scientist. As Marks argues, race can only be grasped through the humanities: historically, experientially, politically.

This wise, witty essay explores the persistence and legacy of scientific racism, which misappropriates the authority of science and undermines it by converting it into a social weapon.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction
2. How science invented race
3. Science, race, and genomics
4. Racism and biomedical science
5. What we know, and why it matters

Choosing Ethnic Identity

Polity Books
February 2003
192 pages
229 x 152 mm, 6 x 9 in
Hardback ISBN: 9780745622767; ISBN10: 0745622763
Paperback ISBN: 9780745622774; ISBN10: 0745622771

Miri Song, Professor of Sociology
University of Kent

Choosing Ethnic Identity explores the ways in which people are able to choose their ethnic identities in contemporary multiethnic societies such as the USA and Britain. Notions such as adopting an identity, or self-designated terms, such as Black British and Asian American, suggest the importance of agency and choice for individuals. However, the actual range of ethnic identities available to individuals and the groups to which they belong are not wholly under their control. These identities must be negotiated in relation to both the wider society and coethnics. The ability of minority individuals and groups to assert or recreate their own self-images and ethnic identities, against the backdrop of ethnic and racial labelling by the wider society, is important for their self-esteem and social status.

This book examines the ways in which ethnic minority groups and individuals are able to assert and negotiate ethnic identities of their choosing, and the constraints structuring such choices. By drawing on studies from both the USA and Britain, Miri Song concludes that while significant constraints surround the exercising of ethnic options, there are numerous ways in which ethnic minority individuals and groups contest and assert particular meanings and representations associated with their ethnic identities.

Table of Contents

Preface.
Chapter 1 Ethnic identities: choices and constraints.
Chapter 2 Comparing minorities’ ethnic options.
Chapter 3 Negotiating individual and group identities.
Chapter 4 The growth of `mixed race’ people.
Chapter 5 The diversification of ethnic groups.
Chapter 6 The second generation in a global context.
Chapter 7 Debates about racial hierarchy.
Chapter 8 The future of `race’ and ethnic identity.
Notes.
References.
Index