How Real Is Race? : Unraveling Race, Biology, and Culture

An in-depth and accessible unraveling of the complex relationships between race, biology, culture, inequality, and power

Biologically speaking, there is no such thing as race. Yet this seems to contradict the experiences of people in the United States and other countries where racial classification is used daily, by individuals and institutions. Race still matters, whether in wealth accumulation, educational achievement, health, the legal system, or in personal safety. How can race not be real when we experience its effects every day?

Mukhopadhyay, Henze, and Moses systematically deconstruct the myth of race as biology and address the reality of race as a cultural invention, drawing on biocultural, historical, and cross-cultural anthropological perspectives. In doing so, they shed light on the intricate interplay among race, biology, culture, power, and stratification. Part I, “The Fallacy of Race as Biology,” unravels the myth that races are biologically valid divisions of humanity. Part II, “Culture Creates Race,” explores race as a social construction; the emergence of the racial worldview as ideological justification for inequality; and how social processes, especially restrictions on interracial sex and marriage, maintained visible markers of racial hierarchy. Part III, “Contemporary Issues,” examines current manifestations of racial stratification including the educational achievement gap, health disparities, and how the language of race embodies and reinforces a racial worldview.

New to this Edition:
· New Chapter 11, “Unpacking the Health Consequences of Racial Stratification,” explores the continuing impacts of the racial worldview on race-related health disparities, using the COVID-19 pandemic, maternal health and “weathering,” and exposure to environmental toxins as case studies
· New Chapter 12, “Dismantling the Racial World View,” explores racial ideology, including language, and offers alternative approaches to racial language dilemmas.
· Updated and expanded discussion of human evolution includes contemporary critiques and alternative scenarios of long-standing models of human evolution and emphasizes our collective African roots.
· Updated and expanded coverage of genomics, DNA, epigenetic processes, and the enormous human variability at the molecular level, all challenging “nature” versus “nurture” models of how we become who we are.
· New data on immigrants, languages, religions, socio-economic and regional racial-ethnic patterns, interracial marriage and other trends explores contemporary diversity in the United States and suggests traditional racial ideology and categories are becoming obsolete.