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JASs forum

What is race today?  Scientific, legal, and Journal of Anthropological Sciences


social appraisals from around the globe Vol. 95 (2017), pp. 283-290
doi 10.4436/JASS.95008

Reflections on “race” in science and society in the United


States
Alan H. Goodman

School of Natural Science, Hampshire College, Amherst, MA 01002, USA


e-mail: agoodman@hampshire.edu

This commentary on the discourses, use, and For example, have genomics and the prom-
salience of “race” in the United States has two linked ise of personalized medicine had any impact
purposes. First, I would like to provide readers with on the use of race in medicine (Bonham et
a glimpse of the “state of race” in science in America, al., 2016)?
focusing on both the current relationship among • How is race used in legal documents and
studies of race, racism, and human variation and the legal proceedings? Have there been any de-
relationship of these studies to “race” in society. I will bates about changing the definition or use
reflect on how race is discussed, the underlying ideol- of the word race and related terminology,
ogy of race, and how the word race is intended and especially as they might reference informa-
used in science and society. Second, the editors would tion about human genetic variation?
like to initiate a thoughtful forum on the current state • What are the current political and cultural
of race, racism, and human biological variation. The points of tension, or “hot spots,” with re-
hope is to provide an opportunity to compare current gard to race and racism? Do they intersect
discussions and debates that center on race, human in any way with the scientific and legal sta-
biological variation, and racism in science, law, and tus of race?
other intersecting domains, such as in popular cul- • Has progress been made in improving the
ture (race in media and public forums, for example) study and understanding of human variation?
in different countries within and beyond Europe. What progress might be made to use a full
This essay is the first in the forum. I begin range of humanistic and scientific expertise to
by summarizing the state of race in the United eliminate (instead of perpetuate) racism?
States, the country in which I live, was trained,
and work. Subsequently, others will contribute
their own analyses of the state of race in the Race in the United States
country or countries they are most familiar with.
Among the guiding questions are the following. I must start with a blunt disclaimer. In a brief
commentary, it is impossible to systematically
• How is race - both the concept and the word summarize the diverse ways in which race is dis-
itself - used in science today? Although sci- cussed - and the multiple ways in which the word
ence is international in scope, have there race is used - in the United States. Mine is a hugely
been notable changes in how race is con- complicated nation. It would be difficult to sum-
ceptualized and used in your country or in marize the state of race on my college campus,
the language of your country? more challenging to summarize the state of race
• Is there a decline in the salience of the term in my town, and almost unimaginable to summa-
“race” as a proxy for human genetic varia- rize race in a single discipline such as linguistics.
tion, and if so, in what ways is it evident? It is impossible to systemically summarize “race”

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284 JASs forum: What is race today?  Scientific, legal, and
social appraisals from around the globe

in any larger social or institutional group because are in fact due to subtle and overt forms of racism
racial discourses and how race is used move in (Goodman, 2000; Olshansky et al., 2012).
many directions at once. The “revolution” in how we think about race
With that caveat, some general trends are clear. as distinct from human biological and genetic
First, the inability to summarize the state of race variation is still in its early stages. Whereas social
is itself meaningful: it is the result of, in part, the epidemiology is showing the deep and multiple
size and heterogeneity of the United States. More pathways by which racism affects health (Krieger,
important, though, is the fluidity of its meaning. 2003), many doctors and medical researchers still
The word race is a chameleon. While it harks back believe that racial differences in health are innate
to old tropes of difference and hierarchy, it is also and natural (Satel, 2002), and many scientists still
a constantly changing concept, and it veers from use race as a convenient shorthand for human
institution to institution, person to person, and variation (Wade, 2014). Race is used without
from one moment to the next. Race, as an actor, much notice in medicine as a biological grouping
does not sit still. (Goodman, 2000). And race also appears in legal
In the United States, as it was through- documents, again without much questioning of
out Europe, race was once accepted as a fixed, its meaning (Haney López, 1997).
unchanging, natural way to characterize individu- Despite a national obsession with race, my
als and groups. This idea of race supported Euro- sense is that most individuals in the United States
American empire building, taking of lands, and are confused about how biology, genetics, and race
slavery. It naturalized differences and the status interrelate; how the categories of race, ethnicity,
quo of a racial hierarchy. color, religion, and so on were formed; and how
The science of the seventeenth century to the they intersect today (Goodman, 1997). Although
twentieth added insult to injury by elevating the some clearly see race as a socially constructed
folk idea to objective and natural truth. In Linné’s category with biological consequences, most still
first classification of humans into subspecies or consider it a natural division of humans, just as
races, in 1755, race was used to explain unchal- Linné did in 1755. Most European-Americans are
lenged biological differences such as skin color, confused about what race is and is not. And they
as well as temperament, mode of governance, are also confused about the underlying causes of
and, by extension, socioeconomic conditions and racial differences in wealth and health. That con-
accomplishments. That view of race as the expla- fusion, I believe, is problematic: It inhibits acting
nation for biological and social differences lives on on racial differences in access to resources and on
in the United States. racism itself.
A few, starting as far back as the middle of the What is true today in the United States is that
nineteenth century, challenged this view, most one hears a cacophony of opinions about race.
notably the antislavery activist Frederick Douglass President Obama has tried to promote a national
(1858), who argued that environment shapes dialogue on the subject, but we have not gotten
human biology and that the idea of racial types very far in our understanding of what race is and
is flawed. In the last half century, evidence has what it is not. As many have commented with
mounted at an exponential rate that race simply regard to discussions about race and racism, there
does not explain or account for human genetic is more talk than understanding, more smoke
variation (Lewontin, 1972; Yu et al., 2002). than fire.
With increasing data on genomic diversity since In short, although evidence suggests that the
the 1990s, the usefulness of race as a biogenetic concept of race-as-genetics is losing credibility,
construct seems to be slowly losing acceptance change in this hegemonic worldview is painfully
among scientists in the United States (Yudell et al., slow (Mills, 1997). We in the United States are
2016). Moreover, research is beginning to dem- obsessed with race but we do little to address rac-
onstrate that persistent racial differences in health ism. We collect information on racial inequalities
JASs forum: What is race today?  Scientific, legal, and 285
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but then do not alleviate them. Race is the cor- American president (https://www.ted.com/talks/
nerstone of an unwritten social contract in which nate_silver_on_race_and_politics). Among some
whites of European ancestry have greatest access to groups, such as southern Republications, the race
power and resources and everyone else has the least of a candidate is shockingly relevant.
access (Mills, 1997). Why has the race-as-genetic On the positive side, one can point to a younger
worldview changed so slowly with fifty years of generation that seems to hold less firmly some of
data to show it to be obsolete? the divisive racial stereotypes. This change, how-
I would say that the racial worldview has ever, does not seem to be very deep. I recently gave
remained largely intact because the political- a talk on race to a group of two hundred young
economic stakes are so high (Goodman, 1997; teenagers at a school in my university town. Even
Goodman et al., 2012). in this educated community, kids tend to eat lunch
What follows are further observations and with individuals they see as within their own race
some examples of the state of race in the United or ethnicity. I asked them how they see or explain
States. My comments are divided into three race. For most, race is real and biologically based.
overlapping domains: sociopolitical and public The reported rate of racial intermarriage is on
discourse, law and institutional race, and race in the rise in the US, but this might be related, at least
science and among scientists. I end with a brief in part, to the implementation of a multiracial cat-
call to action by scholars, educators, and scientists egory on the 2000 and 2010 censuses. Note that
to challenge out-of-date legal doctrines, sociopo- as recently as 1967 it was illegal to marry outside
litical discourses, and uses of the word - and the one’s race in the state of Virginia. Indeed, at one
concept of - race. time or another, thirty-three of the then forty-eight
states in the United States had laws that prohib-
ited miscegenation - that is, marrying someone of
Race in socio-politics, popular a different race - for fear of degeneration and to
culture, and discourses protect the so-called white race.
I want to be optimistic, but change is glacially
Of all the domains in which race resides, it is slow and the glass seems still to be more empty
most fluid and varied in the domains with the least than full. In the last few years, a frighteningly high
structure: popular culture, everyday discourses, number of acts of police brutality have come to
and socio-politics. As always in the United States, public attention. This is probably nothing new;
citizens of color see more than whites the salience rather, it may be simply a result of the increased
of race and the realities of racism. Reactions to the access to video footage. But the important point
2015 Academy Awards (the Oscars) nominations is that the victims are almost always black men.
for acting illustrates this point. For the second In almost every form of statistical evidence, one
consecutive year, all of the nominees were white. finds persistent inequalities among races. For exam-
Most whites saw little wrong with that; it sort of ple, in the United States, the chance of being incar-
just happened. On the other hand, individuals of cerated is three times greater if you are Hispanic
color saw the nominations as a visible tip of the than if you are white and six times greater if you
iceberg of systems of racial thinking in which act- are black (Pettit & Western, 2004). The average
ing roles are tailored for white actors (and white wealth of white families is about twelve times that
audiences). of black and hispanic families and the difference
Some political analysts point to Obama’s elec- seems to be rising (Shapiro et al., 2013).
tion as a sign of the declining salience of race in The more open and visible signs of police
political life. Yet the answers to a question posed to brutality against black men have shed more light
voters after the 2008 presidential election showed on systemic inequalities in the criminal justice
that race played a role for many in their decision system, including the rates of crime, convictions,
to vote against Barak Obama, our first African and sentencing. Repeated acts of violence against

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286 JASs forum: What is race today?  Scientific, legal, and
social appraisals from around the globe

black men have led to the sustained Black Lives The proof of enduring ideological and institu-
Matter (BLM) movement. There is an important tional racism is in the data. In the United States,
aspect to BLM: the focus specifically on African racial variations are huge in all matters of wealth,
Americans. Indeed, most statistics show that education, and law enforcement. I am particularly
African Americans are the most impoverished and interested in how the stress of racism is embodied,
oppressed group in the United States. A case can or “gets under the skin.” Living in a racist society
be made for concentrating affirmative action and (the US) has led to persistent racial differences in
reparations on African Americans. almost every measure of morbidity and mortality
The old untruths of racial disparities in intelli- (Kochanek et al., 2013). Recent evidence suggests
gence and violence are now less frequently articu- that the gap in life expectancy between blacks and
lated in open, public discourse. A few neo-Nazi whites has narrowed, from an average of eight years
websites and commentators such as David Duke, less for blacks in 1950 to “only” a little more than
of the Ku Klux Klan, continue to spew talk of four years less in 2009. Some of this difference is
white supremacy and to denigrate Jews and indi- explainable by socioeconomic status, but what are
viduals of color. Anti-Muslim rhetoric post-9/11 the other reasons that blacks live shorter lives?
is still on the rise. Donald Trump, at the moment Perhaps the one certainty is that one can find
the presumptive presidential candidate of the whatever one is looking for: either signs of a blur-
Republican Party, ran on a rant against Mexicans ring of racial lines and a decline in racism or signs
and Muslims and the promise to build a wall that racism is alive and well. The glass of racism is
between the US and Mexico and to ban Muslims both half full and half empty.
from entering the United States.
This openness of xenophobia and bigotry is
a new turn, as it is generally seen in the United Legal and institutionalized race
States as uncivil to comment publically on racial
differences in a way that recalls the outmoded The US Constitution. Throughout the history
race-as-genetic destiny. For example, when of the United States, race and color (race and color
sports commentators refer to the “natural ath- terms are employed somewhat interchangeably)
letic ability” of African Americans and the “bril- have been used in legal documents. The Fifteenth
liance” of white athletes, their unconscious biases Amendment to the US Constitution famously
are exposed - and people notice. That might “prohibits each government in the United States from
sound positive, and in a way it is, but Trump denying a citizen the right to vote based on that citi-
and his popularity suggest that the ideology of zen’s race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”
race-as-deep-and-natural has not disappeared; Both race and color are singled out in this voting-
rather, it had simply gone underground. rights act, so one must assume that the authors
Slavery was abolished more than one hundred differentiated between the two terms. In law, a
fifty years ago and a range of civil rights laws and definition or elaboration of the meaning of race
statutes have passed. The ideologies of biologi- and/or color has never been successfully upheld
cally based racial hierarchies and racism, however, (Haney López, 1997).
are more difficult to change. In the United States, There is a famous aphorism attributed to
neighborhoods, schools, and workplaces are increas- Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart (served
ingly diverse. We are an increasingly diverse nation, 1958-81) in reference to what constitutes por-
yet, as is evident in the middle school I recently vis- nography. Pornography is hard to define, he said,
ited, it is common for blacks, Latinos, Asians, and “[b]ut I know it when I see it.” The same notion
whites to gravitate to those who look like them and has been made for race. Such a casual definition
thus to self-segregate. And, in fact, white public is problematic for pornography, however, and it
space is rarely safe space for all. Enacting laws does is even more problematic for race. Race does not
not change hegemonic worldviews. stand still. We should not base laws on something
JASs forum: What is race today?  Scientific, legal, and 287
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that is changing as we write, speak, read, and sleep. life. Unfortunately, little work seems to be done
Moreover, without a clear and defensible defini- to eliminate these inequalities and little attention
tion of race (as well as of color, ethnicity, and related is paid toward rectifying the social, political, and
terms), the door is wide open to falling back on its ideological conditions that have led to inequalities.
outdated interpretation as a genetic grouping. The Although the collection of data on “race”
lack of a sound definition is bad science and bad is necessary to track inequalities, the data suffer
politics and, inevitably, does harm. from shifts in how they are collected (for exam-
ple, by census taker or head of household), social
The Census and the Office of Management and definitions of race, and changes in the categories
Budget Directive 15 (OMB 15). themselves. A study of race and infant death gives
Slavery was the sin on which the wealth of the a frightening glimpse of the lack of repeatabil-
United States was founded. And even with the ity of race categories. Hahn and his colleagues
abolition of slavery, most Americans know that (1992) compared the birth and death certificates
we are a country with ideological and institutional of infants who had died during their first year of
racism at our core. We pledge equality but know life (infant deaths). They found that almost 44
it is a lie. percent of infants who were Native American
Despite the lack of a definition of race, my on their birth certificate were another race, usu-
nation is obsessed with it. The US census has ally white, on their death certificate. The authors
contained a question about color or race since suggest that most of these cases of a legal change
its inception, in 1790. The categories black and in race came about because a newborn baby’s race
white have been retained from census to census, is matched with that of its mother and a dying
although the social definitions of black and white infant’s race is filled in by the attending physician.
have changed. In addition, race/color options The underlying problem is that race does not
have been added or eliminated almost every dec- have a clear meaning, and, by extension, there is
ade. For example, the 1880 census contained the no guide to providing useful and repeatable racial
categories chinese, mulatto, and indian (as in categories. In fact, a disclaimer is hidden in the
Native American) and ten years later there were text of OMB 15: “These classifications should
three more options: quadroon (one-fourth not be interpreted as being scientific or anthro-
black), octoroon (one-eighth black), and japa- pological in nature”. In short, by 1977 the federal
nese (Nobles, 2000). government had given up any hope of providing a
Since 1977, the collection of information on logical basis for racial classification.
race and ethnicity has been codified by the Office As we approach our next decennial census,
of Management and Budget’s (OMB) Directive in 2020, Race and Ethnicity categories are again
15: “This Directive provides standard classifica- undergoing scrutiny. Currently, the category his-
tions for record keeping, collection, and presen- panic is an ethnicity. Thus, one can be a black
tation of data on race and ethnicity in Federal hispanic or a white hispanic. A 2016 court rul-
program administrative reporting and statistical ing, however, has determined that “Hispanic” has
activities.” And: “[These classifications] have been the legal status of a race - whatever that is!
developed in response to needs expressed by both Given this and other confusions about what
the executive branch and the Congress to provide is race and what is ethnicity, there is some discus-
for the collection and use of compatible, nondu- sion within the Census Bureau about keeping the
plicated, exchangeable racial and ethnic data by categories (white, black, hispanic, and so on)
Federal agencies”. (Visit https://www.whitehouse. but not calling them anything: not race, color, reli-
gov/omb/fedreg_directive_15.) Indeed, federal gion, language group, or ethnicity (http://www.
collection of data by race has proved useful in pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/06/18/census-
tracking racial inequalities in health, education, considers-new-approach-to-asking-about-race-by-
employment, incarceration, and other aspects of not-using-the-term-at-all/). Doing so is important

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288 JASs forum: What is race today?  Scientific, legal, and
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because the categories, though imperfect, are use- Upon publication, the book shot into the top
ful for tracking inequalities. Interestingly, this twenty of the most purchased books on Amazon.
is close to a point suggested by the American com. Prepublication copies had been sent to those
Anthropological Association almost two decades who would most likely give it favorable media.
ago (http://www.understandingrace.org/about/ Indeed, Charles Murray, coauthor of The Bell
response.html). Curve, was one of the first reviewers. He echoed
Wade in arguing that those who do not believe
race is genetic are making a politically correct,
Race, anthropology, and science rather than scientifically correct, argument and
then went on to give it a solid recommendation
The publication and responses to Nicholas in the Wall Street Journal (3 May, 2014). Before
Wade’s A Troublesome Inheritance (2014) is a use- it was even published, the book was discussed in
ful barometer as to salience of use as a race as a a talk show hosted by David Duke, the head of
genetic grouping variation. The UK-born and the Ku Klux Klan, and was widely applauded on
Eton-educated Wade was for decades a science neo-Nazi and anti-immigration websites.
writer for the New York Times; he stepped down As of March 1, 2016, the book had been rated
after his book was published. As a reporter, he more than three hundred times on Amazon.
covered many developments in human evolution com. Most of the reviews are very positive: two
and genetics, and clearly favored genetic and racial of three reviewers give it four or five stars out of
explanations. Wade was an important gatekeeper a possible five and more than half (52 percent)
for his own views: he highlighted for New York give it a full five-star rating (highest ranking). A
Times readers what were in fact sketchy findings minority (17 percent) award the book a single
about the power of genes and the links between star (lowest ranking), suggesting a bifurcation of
race and genetics and ignored evidence that sug- responses: most positive few in the middle and
gested that race is not in the genes. some strongly negative reviews.
His biases are for all to see in A Troublesome The most apparent pattern is that the positive
Inheritance. In the first half of the book, he tries reviews stress what they call Wade’s daring ability
to establish the validity of race as a category for to tell the truth. Often the reviewer is unidentifi-
studying recent human evolution. He attempts able, hidden. The single stars (negative reviews)
to discredit as politically motivated any scholarly often point to his misunderstanding of the sci-
research that argues that race is not a valid and ence on which he has been reporting. These peo-
useful biological category. In the second half of the ple usually self-identify as scholars and scientists
book, he makes a number of speculative efforts and speak specifically to the studies Wade refer-
to explain personality, culture, and economic ences. They demonstrate knowledge of evolution-
achievements as the result of bio-racial differences. ary theory and the facts of human variation.
In my view, the book is astonishing in the In addition, one hundred thirty-nine senior
weakness of its scholarship and the unembel- population geneticists state in a letter to the New
lished scientific racism. It is more akin to racial York Times:
tracts published a century ago and the original
formulation of Linné than to more recent (and “As scientists dedicated to studying genetic
more subtle) race-science screeds such as The Bell variation, we thank David Dobbs . . . for his
Curve (Herrnstein & Murray, 1994). Here is an description of Wade’s misappropriation of
increasingly rare public figure, this time a science research from our field. . . . Wade juxtaposes
journalist, writing what I can best describe as an incomplete and inaccurate account of our
unvarnished scientific racism. It is startling that research on human genetic differences with
the book was published in summer 2014. What speculation that recent natural selection has
would be the reactions? led to worldwide differences in I.Q. test results,
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political institutions and economic development. tried to engage public discussions about race by
We reject Wade’s implication that our findings launching its largest-ever public education project,
substantiate his guesswork. They do not”. titled “Race: Are We So Different?” (understand-
ingrace.org). The project presented to the public
This letter suggests a possible sea change in “race” through the lenses of science, history, and
how geneticists see race and human genetic vari- lived experience. Components of this project
ation. Indeed, an editorial in Science just called comprised a book (Goodman et al., 2012), teach-
for the elimination of race in genetic research ing materials, a highly trafficked website, and an
(Yudell et al., 2016). award-winning museum exhibit. The original
Change in scientific work and theories is often exhibit, which opened in 2007, was so well received
slow, and changes in public perceptions are often that both a duplicate version and a smaller version
slower. With regard to race, the response to Wade’s were manufactured. As of 2016, the three traveling
book suggests that there may be a growing gap exhibits have been on display in fifty museums and
between scientific understandings of human vari- viewed by millions. As indicated by the quantity
ation and public perceptions of those differences. and quality of the responses to it, the project is a
In summary, race in science, like race in great public-education success. But it is also a drop
other realms of life in the United States, is both in the deep ideological seas of race and racism.
in flux and in a confused state. Whereas it might If what we think about race, human variation,
be acceptable to be unsure of what “race” means and racism is to change, I believe it is time for
in some domains, it is far less acceptable in legal us - scholars of humanity, such as social scientists,
terms and in the courts of science. After many cen- anthropologists, and geneticists - to take the lead.
turies, however, that is the state of race in science. It is useful to talk about the structure of human
variation in a classroom or a journal, but that is
not sufficient. We need more public-education
Conclusions projects, like the AAA’s, that elevate the discourse
around race and bring it to open forums.
If the state of race in the United States is to Another recommendation is to examine
provide any sort of guide, I imagine readers will how the idea of race is used in legal documents.
be seriously disappointed. The meaning of race Although documents are not enough to change
- the word or the concept - as I have tried to how race and racism “lives,” they now speak a
explain, is all over the cognitive map. Its actions language that undermines science. Instead, they
vary. Yet race is still a very powerful actor in pub- should provide a legal grounding that supports
lic life, law, and science. the facts of human variation.
The optimist in me would like to think that Science once helped to justify a racial hierar-
we are making social and scientific progress: racial chy by promoting the idea that races are separate
boundaries are now more permeable and less fixed. and unequal. Now I believe it is our obligation to
More and more scientists are starting to realize that repudiate those disproven ideas and to spearhead
race medicine is bad medicine and, in fact, that any- the movement to promote scientifically accurate
where race is used in science makes for bad science. knowledge about human diversity - in the interest
But many signs indicate that change is not only of justice.
slow; it is also superficial. Most Americans still
think race is primordial and genetic and by exten-
sion that disparities in attainment in employment, References
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What can we do? Almost two decades ago, C.D. 2016. Will Precision Medicine Move Us
the American Anthropological Association (AAA) Beyond Race? N. Engl. J. Med., 374: 2003–2005.

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290 JASs forum: What is race today?  Scientific, legal, and
social appraisals from around the globe

Goodman A.H. 1997. Bred in the bone? The Mill C. 1997. The Racial Contract. Cornell
Sciences, 37: 20–25 University Press.
Goodman A. H. 2000. Why genes don’t count Murray C. 2014. Wall Street Journal. May 3.
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Krieger N., Waterman P.D., , Kosheleva A., Chen Race and Human History. Penguin, New York.
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Williams D.R., Freeman E., Russell B. et al. Patthy L., Ramsay M., Jenkins T., Shyue S–K.,
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Addendum

My reflection on “race” in the United States was written during the summer of 2016. Now, less than
a year later, it is outdated by my reference to Donald Trump as the “presumptive candidate.” I wrote that
the “openness of xenophobia and bigotry” that was a hallmark of Trump’s campaign was a new turn in
US public civility and discourse on race. The transition from an African American president to a bigot-
in-chief is a sea change and a further sign that racist ideology is still dominant in the US.
Tweets have replaced reason. Trump and his circle have attacked data and analysis. Their anti-science
stance is clearest with regards to climate science and it also spills into old-fashioned dogma about human
variation and race. They draw support from white nationalists who believe in a white homeland and that
Caucasians are a superior race. And worst of all, this racist ideology fuels a politics of division, specifically
of White poor and working class individuals from individuals that identify with other races, ethnicities
and religions.
Now, more than ever, we scientists, anthropologists, and humanists need to stand up for facts, data,
and scientific analyses and we need to stand up to those who want to manufacture false division among us.
Alan Goodman, May 30, 2017

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