Subtitle: Biological Theories of Race at the Millennium
Author: Joseph L. Graves Jr.
Subject: African American Studies/Evolution and Human Origins/Biological Sciences/Science and Society/History of Medicine and Science
Cloth ISBN 0-8135-2847-X
Pages: 272 pp., 14 figures, 24 tables
Description: A scientific dismantling of the concept of race.
"Intellectually delightful, and at times deeply moving, this book's fundamental thesis is of outstanding importance. The biological non-existence of race is one of the most liberating messages that the American public will hear in a long time. It should be read by anybody who is a registered voter in the United States."-Michael R. Rose, author of Darwin's Spectre: Evolutionary Biology in the Modern World
"The Emperor's New Clothes provides a lucid and stimulating history of the uses and, mostly, abuses of the cultural and biological constructions of the concept of race. Professor Graves insightfully demonstrates that race classifications cannot be biologically justified. His book is eminently readable and engrossing."-Francisco J. Ayala, Donald Bren Professor of Biological Sciences and professor of philosophy, University of California, Irvine
"The simple fact, as will be demonstrated in this book, is that science identifies no races in the human species, not because we wish there to be no races but because the peculiar evolutionary history of our species has not led to their formation. There is more genetic variability in one tribe of East African chimpanzees than in the entire human species! Only political orthodoxy in a racially stratified society has maintained the race concept for this long. If race does not exist at the biological level, then its use in social and political policy is profoundly flawed."-From The Emperor's New Clothes: Biological Theories of Race at the Millennium
In this groundbreaking book, Joseph Graves traces the development of thought about human genetic diversity. He argues that racism has persisted in our society because adequate scientific reasoning has not entered into the equation. Graves champions the scientific method, and explains how we may properly ask questions about the nature of population differentiation and how (if at all) we may correlate that diversity to differences in human capacity and behavior. He also cautions us to think critically about scientific findings that have historically been misused in controversies over racial differences in intelligence heritability, criminal behavior, disease predisposition, and other traits. Greek philosophy, social Darwinism, New World colonialism, the eugenics movement, intelligence testing biases, and racial health fallacies are just a few of the topics he addresses.
According to Graves, this country cannot truly address its racial problems until people understand that separate human races do not exist empirically. With the biological basis for race removed, racism becomes an ideology, one that can and must be expunged.
Joseph L. Graves Jr. is a professor of evolutionary biology with appointments in the Department of Life Sciences at Arizona State University West and in the program of African American Studies at Arizona State University Main.
