Race is a political category disguised as a biological one

Evidence

“There is no such thing as a set of genes that belong exclusively to one [racial] group and not another,” University of Pennsylvania bioethics scholar Dorothy Roberts explained in her 2011 book Fatal Invention, in which she exposes the unscientific basis of biological races, race-specific genes, and race-specific drugs for race-specific diseases. “Race is not a biological category that is politically charged,” she added. “It is a political category that has been disguised as a biological one.” But the biological ideas lived on comfortably. By 2014, Nicholas Wade had retired from the New York Times and released his own defense of biological racism, A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race, and Human History. — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 1179

Categorization

• DEFINE: Roberts’ formulation — race as political category disguised as biological — is a compact definitional tool for the book’s three-way scheme.
• SEED: Why do discredited biological-race theories keep returning (curse theory, phrenology, Social Darwinism, genes)? An article could trace the resurrection cycle.
• XREF: connects to: Races are produced by racism, not by biology — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 76; Nature is a political category defined by exclusion from reason — Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, 40; Race is a culturally invented discursive category used to inferiorize groups. — Rebecca A. Martusewicz, Jeff Edmundson, and John Lupinacci, EcoJustice Education: Toward Diverse,…, 1106 (+4 more)