Race as biology is fiction, racism as a social problem is real: Anthropological and historical perspectives on the social construction of race.

Race as biology is fiction, racism as a social problem is real: Anthropological and historical perspectives on the social construction of race.

Am Psychol. 2005 Jan;60(1):16-26.

Smedley A, Smedley BD.
Anthropology, School of World Studies, and African American Studies, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA 23284, USA. asmedley@mail1.vcu.edu

Racialized science seeks to explain human population differences in health, intelligence, education, and wealth as the consequence of immutable, biologically based differences between "racial" groups. Recent advances in the sequencing of the human genome and in an understanding of biological correlates of behavior have fueled racialized science, despite evidence that racial groups are not genetically discrete, reliably measured, or scientifically meaningful. Yet even these counterarguments often fail to take into account the origin and history of the idea of race. This article reviews the origins of the concept of race, placing the contemporary discussion of racial differences in an anthropological and historical context. (c) 2005 APA