Dienekes has been looking for just the right way to define ‘race’ in an on-going series of posts over at his blog. I know people have a lot of uncertainty with this topic, so I would recommend leaving comments, concerns and questions for him if you have them.
The new PBS series “Race – The Power of an Illusion” motivated him into searching for a new clean and precise way of communicating the biological phenomenon, and determining when and how it should (and shouldn’t) be applied.
Is Race for Real? The arguments against the reality of race are based on (a) an extreme view of what the race concept actually meant to most people historically, (b) a misrepresentation of modern scientific facts, (c) social consequences of the race concept, which have nothing to do with its biological reality. I plan to write a series of blog entries on the arguments presented in the PBS Series.
I have not personally seen the program, b/c I don’t own a TV (yeah, yeah. Now I’m that guy… I really have nothing against TV, I just don’t happen to presently own one), but looking through their website it’s clear to me that their message is much more related in substance to American politics than it is to biology.
Dienekes posts so far:
*PBS and “Is Race for Real?”
*Definition of Race
*Definition of Race (II)
*More on the Definition of Race
*Potential Problems with the Definition of Race
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