THE HISTORY OF THE IDEA OF RACE AND （历史的种族和的想法）.pdf

This paper was presented at the conference “Race, Human Variation and Disease: Consensus and Frontiers,” sponsored by the American Anthropo ogical Association (AAA) and funded by the Ford Foundation. The conference, an activity of AAA’s public education project RACE funded by the Ford Foundation and the National Science Foundation, was held March 14-17, 2007 in Warrenton, Virginia. This paper represents the views of the author and not the AAA RACE Project. THE HISTORY OF THE IDEA OF RACE… AND WHY IT MATTERS Audrey Smedley Professor of Anthropology Emerita Virginia Commonwealth University The position taken by many anthropologists, both biological and social, and increasingly many other scholars in the social sciences is that “race is a cultural construct.” It should be clear that this is not a definition or even a characterization of “race,” but an assertion about the scholarly or existential domain in which we can best examine and explain the phenomenon of race. Race should be analyzed as a social/cultural reality that exists in a realm independent of biological or genetic variations. No amount of research into the biophysical or genetic features of individuals or groups wi explain the social phenomenon of race. When five white policemen shot a young unarmed African immigrant 41 times in the doorway of his New York apartment, this can’t be explained by examining their genes or biology. Nor can we explain employer preferences for white job applicants or discrimination in housing or any other of the social realities of racism by references to human biologica