Gender and the Deconstruction nf the Race Concept

Lieberman, Leonard

doi:10.1525/aa.1997.99.3.545

Cited by 33 publications

(24 citation statements)

References 31 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…Borrowing an item from Lieberman's (1997) survey of academics, 49 students were asked whether they agreed or not with the following statement: "There are biological races within the species Homo sapiens." As Table 1 shows, the sample was split almost evenly between those who agreed (47 percent) and those who disagreed (43 percent).…”

Section: Statement On Biological Racementioning

confidence: 99%

Toward a Sociology of Racial Conceptualization for the 21st Century

Morning

2009

Social Forces

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Despite their longstanding interest in race, American sociologists have conducted little empirical research on sociodemographic patterns or longitudinal trends in "racial conceptualization" -that is, notions of what race is, how races differ, and the origins of race. This article outlines key empirical, methodological and theoretical considerations for a research agenda on racial conceptualization. Drawing on in-depth interviews with more than 50 college students, I describe the variety of race concepts among respondents, illustrate the importance of using multiple measures of conceptualization, and demonstrate the malleability of conceptualization, linking it to demographic context and thereby raising the question of its future evolution in the changing United States of the 21 st century.The color line, "problem of the twentieth century" as Du Bois (1986[1903]) famously put it, has long been a prominent concern of American sociologists (Calhoun 2007). The ways in which they have engaged the topic of race, however, reflect the preoccupations of their times. Early work on "race relations" (Park 1949) gave way to theories of "racism" in the civil-rights era, drawing new attention to institutional structures of racial oppression (Winant 2000). Large-scale surveys began to track attitudes -toward groups and policies -that might pose obstacles to achieving racial equality (Schuman, Steeh, Bobo and Krysan 1997). And in the wake of diversifying immigration inflows and rising intermarriage rates, scholars have revisited longstanding assumptions about racial identity and classification, launching new research on the categorization of mixed-race people and immigrant groups (Lee and Bean 2004). By the end of the 20 th century, American sociology had acquired a significant body of knowledge on race relations, attitudes, stratification and classification. I thank Elizabeth M. Armstrong, Troy Duster, Michèle Lamont, François Nielsen, Marta Tienda, Robert Wuthnow and an anonymous reviewer for thoughtful comments on

show abstract

Section: Statement On Biological Racementioning

confidence: 99%

Toward a Sociology of Racial Conceptualization for the 21st Century

Morning

2009

Social Forces

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…In contrast, college and university students, in-service teachers, and other adult participants usually struggle to identify the \correct" location of this division. Perhaps this is simply an artifact of adults having had greater life experiences in which this dividing line, in a variety of contexts, has been repeatedly supported (Lieberman, 1997).…”

Section: Two Important Themesmentioning

confidence: 92%

Role of Physical Anthropology in Intermediate and Secondary Education

Ashmore

2005

Am. J. Phys. Anthropol.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The role of physical anthropology in precollegiate education has been limited, but has the potential to play a vital and integral role in promoting students' understanding of themselves and others. This study describes the development, implementation, and results of a program constructed on an inquiry-based learning model that introduces middle and high school students to the content of physical anthropology. Demonstrated student learning indicates that intermediate and secondary students are capable of acquiring and applying complex content about human evolution and diversity. Program findings indicate that students frequently had previous knowledge about the hominid fossil record but little information about the significance of human biological diversity. Teaching intermediate and high school students about our common evolutionary heritage and the fact that humans exhibit clinal variation were found to be both powerful and effective content material. The fact that program participants lacked previous knowledge about the relationship between human biological diversity (illustrated in this program by light and dark skin color) and the erroneous sociocultural construction of this diversity confirmed the suspicion that this content is not being addressed in precollegiate education. Traditionally, intermediate and secondary students are taught about human variation within the context of social studies, reading, communication, and finearts classes. This program identifies a new paradigm for teaching about human variation. Providing students with scientific knowledge about human origins and diversity provides a constructive starting point, creating a common platform and knowledge base on which to then frame discussions about cultural variation.

show abstract

“…Students self‐identified their age, race, and gender during the baseline survey, because these variables are known to correlate with essentialist thinking (Condit, Parrott, Bates, et al., ; Jayaratne et al., ; Lieberman, ; Parrott et al., ; Williams & Eberhardt, ).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Framing the Genetics Curriculum for Social Justice: An Experimental Exploration of How the Biology Curriculum Influences Beliefs About Racial Difference

Donovan

2016

Science Education

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This field experiment manipulated the racial framing of a reading on human genetic disease to explore whether racial terminology in the biology curriculum affects how adolescents explain and respond to the racial achievement gap in American education. Carried out in a public high school in the San Francisco Bay Area, students recruited for the study (N = 86) were randomly assigned to read either a racially framed or a nonracially framed textbook passage on genetic diseases as part of a unit on Mendelian genetics. Afterwards, they responded to two instruments measuring belief in the biological/genetic basis of race and one measure that recorded their explanations of the racial achievement gap and their willingness to volunteer their free time to fix it. Results demonstrated that students in the racially framed condition exhibited significantly greater agreement in the genetic basis of racial difference than students in the nonracially framed condition. A content analysis of students’ explanations of the achievement gap also demonstrated that a significantly greater proportion of students gave genetic explanations of the achievement gap in the racially framed condition compared to the other condition. Furthermore, students’ prior beliefs about race interacted with the reading treatments to affect students’ willingness to fix the racial achievement gap.

show abstract

Gender and the Deconstruction nf the Race Concept

Cited by 33 publications

References 31 publications

Toward a Sociology of Racial Conceptualization for the 21st Century

Toward a Sociology of Racial Conceptualization for the 21st Century

Role of Physical Anthropology in Intermediate and Secondary Education

Framing the Genetics Curriculum for Social Justice: An Experimental Exploration of How the Biology Curriculum Influences Beliefs About Racial Difference

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About