schoolracetalk.org

How did racial inequality in the United States come about? How did racist ideas about “types of people” come about?

For educators, knowing some history is crucial. In my classes, I do a gallop through almost 600 years of history, to show:

1) How racial categories were created despite their having no valid genetic basis, starting with colonial expansion and slavery (see anthropologist Audrey Smedley’s book Race: The Origin of a Worldview);

2) How those categories became central to who got which opportunities in the colonies and United States, in part through laws (see legal scholar Ian Haney Lopez’ book White By Law);

3) How these inequalities were “justified” by “scientists” trying to prove that some “races” were less valuable and less smart than others (see The Mismeasure of Man, by scientist Stephen J. Gould);

4) How racial inequality continued to accumulate over time, in large part through the unequal distribution of opportunity via schools. (To start thinking about this, see the work on “cumulative racial disadvantage” by economist Rebecca Blank: Blank, Rebecca M. 2005. Tracing the Economic Impact of Cumulative Discrimination. American Economic Review 95(2): 99-103.)

******(I may post a series of my Contextual Lectures on these points in the future on schoolracetalk.org.)

I created this basic powerpoint to go along with workshops I've been conducting for educators, so I thought I'd post it here. In the future, I may post handouts that can go with each slide.

Mica

Start a public conversation on the “achievement gap” in the U.S., and rumbling beneath it will be a dangerous myth that is several centuries old. This is the myth that some race groups are smarter than others. See Stephen J. Gould’s Mismeasure of Man for the history of how “science” contributed to creating this myth.

Here’s some valid science from the nation’s foremost association of psychologists that counters the “race and intelligence” myth.

According to the American Psychological Association (Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns (1995/6)), first of all, scientists are not very good at measuring “intelligence” and “ability” at all. Scientists try to measure these with IQ tests. But IQ tests insufficiently measure “intelligence,” which is a phenomenon just too complex to be so easily quantified. There are just too many versions of skill, ability, and intelligence to quantify someone’s “intelligence” with a number.

Despite this fact that “intelligence” is a phenomenon just too complex to be easily quantified, we often call IQ test scores someone’s “intelligence.”

The Association notes that there are some small average differences across “racial” lines on IQ test scores. “White” people often score slightly higher than “black” people, for example. But the statement makes very clear that there is no empirical support for genetic explanations for these differences.

The Association also makes clear that many life experiences contribute to a child’s IQ test score. Various differences in life experience could likely be the cause of the IQ test score differences, just like differences in life experience are the cause of other forms of racial “achievement gap.” It finds no empirical support for genetic explanations.

Remember this: an IQ test score, like any test score, is affected by many life experiences. These include children’s educational experiences over time; their experience (or lack thereof) of formal schooling; and their experiences of certain forms of instruction.

Remember this: ANY test score is, in some part, the result of life experience – including countless interactions with teachers inside schools.

As a renowned psychologist colleague put it to me recently, people think we are measuring something “innate” when we give an IQ test. They forget that we are measuring the outcome of training (education, and life experience).

So anyone claiming that race groups are differentially INTELLIGENT should be challenged. Children’s life experiences often differ along racial lines; their intellectual capacity does not. As we show in EAR, antiracism in schools is often about refuting the myth that some race groups are smarter than others.

Everyday Antiracism proposes four core “principles” of everyday antiracism, based on the research by the 70 scholars who contributed to the book:

1. Rejecting false notions of human difference

2. Acknowledging lived experiences shaped along racial lines

3. Learning from diverse forms of knowledge and experience

4. Challenging systems of racial inequality.

One core “false notion of human difference” that shows up in schools is the notion that race groups are biologically distinct sub-groups to the human race. It is crucial to remember that race groups are groups created by human beings (see my prior post “Race and Biology: Challenging the Myths.”). Race categories are socially real due to nearly six centuries of world history. They are not biologically valid subgroups to the human race.

A world-renowned psychologist colleague at Harvard put it most succinctly in an email to me yesterday:

luckily for the anthropologists, the bio evidence is fitting with the basic thesis that there are no race markers in the genome or so weak as to be uninteresting.

Other false notions of human difference have everyday ramifications in schools. One key one is the dangerous myth that some race groups are “smarter” than others. I’ll do another post on this issue in the near future.

As a guest on another education site this week, I ended up in a predictable debate with several readers about whether "the races" are biologically/genetically distinct subgroups to the human race. Here's how I responded. -Mica

***Note: To print out a pithy version of similar ideas, see The American Anthropological Association's Statement on Race, at http://www.aaanet.org/stmts/racepp.htm

Old myths that so-called “races” are biologically/genetically distinct subgroups to the human race die hard. Look up the science. Here are two resources: http://www.understandingrace.org; and How Real is Race? A Sourcebook on Race, Culture, and Biology (2007).

How Real is Race demonstrates that “There are no subspecies of humans” (xv) and that racial categories are a “biological fallacy and cultural reality” (xvi). See particularly the chapter “Why Contemporary Races are Not Scientifically Valid,” which is full of scientific knowledge about the invalidity of racial categories from a biological perspective. See also “Human Biological Variation, What We Don’t See,” which demonstrates that “populations differ genetically but these populations do not correspond to major racial groupings.” (35)

Here are some “gold nugget” points from that book. Even though some populations share some propensities for some diseases, the groups we have come to call “races” just don’t share enough other exclusive genetics to be biologically valid containers for classifying human diversity. The groups we have come to call “races” – “whites,” “blacks,” and “Asians,” for example -- are too genetically diverse internally to be classified scientifically as genetic, biological populations.

How Real is Race shows that Lewontin’s famous 1972 study showed that almost 95% of “total human genetic diversity” occurs WITHIN the geographic-origin populations we’ve often called “races.” (65) Indeed, as How Real is Race reminds us, “Africa also contains more human genetic diversity than any other geographic area in the world” (63). Lewontin concluded that “racial classification is now seen to be of virtually no genetic or taxonomic significance” (66).

Scientists a few centuries ago decided that a handful of “races” could be classified based on a selection of visible traits (skin color, hair texture, nose and eye shape, for example). Those visible traits are genetic, of course, but they are too genetically insignificant to be used for classifying subgroups of the human race. As How Real is Race puts it, “If we wanted to classify people by genetic traits, it would probably make more sense to form races based on ABO blood type or lactose intolerance than to base them on skin color or nose shape.” (35)

Humans originated in Africa, then migrated elsewhere on the globe and developed different appearances, in part due to “adaptations of populations to . . . different microclimates” (44-5). But that doesn’t mean that these groups became so genetically different that we should label them genetic subgroups to the human race. How Real is Race puts it nicely: “Given the 30,000 or so genes in the human genome,” racialized appearance traits “constitute only a small fraction of the total genetic variation within the human species” (62). Most of humans’ genetic variation is invisible. And, “Most human biological variation lies at the individual level.” (61)

Appearance traits don’t even classify humans neatly into “races.” Check out http://www.pbs.org/race/004_HumanDiversity/004_01-explore.htm, which demonstrates visually that populations have “mixed” throughout world history and that various appearance traits are shared round the globe, not easily clumped into “races.” For example, some people who are “Asian” share the same skin color with people who are “white,” and some people in India share the same skin color with people who are “black.” And people across Africa, whom Americans might all call “black,” have infinite shades of skin color! Types of noses and hair are similarly shared worldwide.

Here’s the point: our genetics simply don’t divide us into the “races” we have come to take for granted. The categories just don’t work out, genetically speaking. That’s why I say they are “social realities built on biological fictions.”

Everyday Antiracism is designed for use in teacher inquiry groups, preservice courses, and inservice professional development. The essays are all just a few pages. They're written for people without a lot of time to read!

The book purposefully prompts discussions among educators at three levels:

The level of PRINCIPLE: big ideas about antiracist teaching and the pursuit of equal opportunity.
The level of STRATEGY: general actions for classroom use.
The level of TRY TOMORROW: specific solutions for a specific classroom or school, depending on local personalities and dynamics.

Everyday Antiracism came out in early June.

Here’s a Q and A I did that helps introduce what the book is about:
http://www.gse.harvard.edu/news_events/features/2008/07/2_pollock.php