Race, once a core anthropological concept, is no longer supported by a majority of members of the discipline. The history of the concept is briefly reviewed. Results of a survey are presented indicating acceptance by 50% of biological anthropologists and 31 % of cultural anthropologists, while 42% of the former and 52% of the latter reject the concept. Alternatives for teaching about human biological and cultural variation are discussed. Ethnicity is suggested as an alternative for teaching about folk taxonomies that arose in the colonial era, while cline, or geographic variation, is proposed for human biological variation.
RACE, ANTHROPOLOGY, DISSENSUS, CLINES, G R A D A -TIONS, ETHNlClTYLeonard Lieberman teaches physical anthropology and does research in the sociology of science at Central Michigan University. Blaine W. Stevenson teaches collective behavior with an emphasis on the Vietnam era at Central Michigan University. Larry T. Reynolds teaches social theory and is the editor of the "Reynolds Series in Sociology"for General Hall Publishers.
Information about social issues is underemphasized in college science education. This article takes the race concept as an example of this neglect. We review the history of the race concept and report the current status of the concept in textbooks and among professors. Responses to surveys of faculty at Ph.D.-granting departments indicate that 67% of biologists accept the concept of biological races in the species Homo sapiens, while only 50% of physical anthropologists do so. Content analysis of college textbooks indicates a significant degree of change over time (1 in physical anthropology but a lesser degree in biology. We suggest several reasons for the dissimilarity in the two disciplines. We propose continued use of the concept for some infrahuman species, while abandoning its application to Homo supiens. For those biologists and anthropologists who continue to use the concept, scientific accuracy can be achieved by the presentation in lecture and text of the following ideas: first, consensus among scientists on the race concept's utility and accuracy does not exist; second, there is more variation within than between so-called races; third, discordant gradations due to natural selection, drift, and interbreeding make consistent racial boundary lines impossible to identify; fourth, past use of the race concept has had harmful consequences; fifth, the most precise study of human hereditary variation maps one trait at a time; and sixth, racial labels are misleading, especially as most populations have a cultural designation.We believe that information about social and conceptual issues relating to biology is a crucial but underemphasized part of the education of college students, because many of them will be teachers, and all of them will participate in society as citizens. Recognition of this deficit in science education has been recently acknowledged by a number of scientists (Bernstein,
Consensus over the utility and validity of the race concept no longer exists in anthropology. More anthropologists today reject the concept than accept it. Women have played a significant role in the concept's deconstruction. Factors that have contributed to this change include the discipline's concepts, traditions, and domain; new data; new research paradigms; feminist viewpoints; biographical histories; and the external social milieu.
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