Name:
Date:
Assignment: The Race Pit
Objective:
 SWBAT analyze the concept of race from a biological standpoint
 SWBAT analyze the concept of race from a social standpoint
Instructions: Read the following article, titled “The Race Pit” by Alan Goodman. After you have read
the article (or as you are reading the article) answer the questions at the end of the article. Please make
sure you use full and complete sentences when you answer each question.
Due:
Points: 15 pts.
THE RACE PIT
By Alan H. Goodman
Anthropology Newsletter, May 1998
Recent commentaries and letters in Anthropology Newsletter show that many of my biological
anthropology colleagues have fallen into the race pit. Let's pull them out! But first, they must
realize they are in a pit so that they will extend a hand.
Falling into the race pit is easy to do. Racial terms are frequently used and are very familiar. To
paraphrase Henry Louis Gates, we see and are seen as race. Race is a trope, a floating signifier.
Race is lived experience and a sociopolitical construct. It is not biology.
Falling into the race pit starts with thinking that race is a biological and scientific concept. It is as
easy as unreflectively using racial terms to describe a skull. The racial terms than take on power
when they connect to imbued meanings.
It takes vigilance to avoid falling into the race pit; and it takes a thoughtful and scientific effort to
get to deeper meaning. The race pit is most harmful because it is a place from which one cannot
advance to understand human variation. Medical proclamations made without a biological basis
result in a great deal of unseen harm. And, in some cases, scientific statements feed political
abuse.
Silent Violence and Racism
It is hardly radical to suggest that there are connections - sometimes subtle and indirect through
words, ideas, programs and actions - between soft uses of race in everyday science and blatant
racism. Falsely maintaining that race is real biologically leaves the door open to misuse. It is an
easy step from the misuse of race in studies of skull shape or hemoglobin levels to its misuse in
studies of intelligence.
We have also seen many times the leap from the misuse of race in science to its misuse in public
policy. Bad science always makes bad policy. But educating that biological differences between
groups are not deep, hereditary and fixed eliminates a major weapon in the racists' arsenal. It
exposes racism as the human social evil that it is.
Back to Basics
To judge from the discussions at the 1997 AAA presidential panel on race, it is now widely
accepted in anthropology that race is a biological myth but that racial discrimination and racism
are all too real (C Mukhopadhyay, March 1998, AN, p. 28). This consensus, however, does not
yet include many physical anthropologists. Fundamental errors are voiced in recent letters and
commentaries in the AN submitted by skeletal biologists who, with other physical
anthropologists, lay claim to scientific authority and are key to articulating anthropological
perspectives on human diversity. The first error is that the idea of race is confused with the
reality of human biological variation. A second error occurs when race as biology is confused
with race as sociocultural construct. It's time to go back to basics.
It has been known for decades that racial typology fails to explain human variation, that is, our
species does not fit into a small number of fixed, ideal types. We know, for example, that:

Human variation is generally continuous, with no clear points of demarcation. (It is
impossible to reliably say where one race ends and another begins. Groups living close to
each other tend to be biologically alike, and so race has an appearance of reality, but this
is only geographic similarity.)

Human variation is highly nonconcordant. One trait infrequently predicts for another.
(One can not read deeper meanings into physical cues.)

There is greater variation within an individual’s race than between purported races.
(Knowing an individual's purported race tells us little about the individual.)
Although there is no disagreement with these points, about half of all physical anthropologists
continue to think race is a salient concept and many teach and do research on human variation
from a racial approach. They continue to use race because they think that race shifted from a
typological to a population concept starting with Carleton Coon's work after World War II. Gill
writes that Ashley Montagu and his followers failed to notice (1990). In common usage,
scientists, students and the public reduce human variation to 3 or 4 types, just as they did a
century ago. Color lines shift, but the underlying concept, challenging Gill’s, endures. Montagu
did notice; he just did not buy it.
George Armelagos has characterized the race concept as a chameleon, which changed its color,
but not its reality as a folk concept, to survive the Darwinian revolution, the evolutionary
synthesis of the 1930s and the new physical anthropology of more recent years. Compare this
with the common refrain that those who deny race are simply trying to be "politically correct."
Gill writes that "they have their hearts, but not their heads in the right place." (Gill and S. Rhine,
Skeletal Attribution of Race, 1990, p. viii). What is so "heady" about a concept that cannot be
explained or defined?
Classification Wrongs
In addition to convincing themselves that race is an evolutionary concept, there is an additional
reason why anthropologists still use the concept: race is convenient. By analogy, classifying hats
by size allows us to pick those most likely to fit. The classification may not be perfect, but it is a
useful start. Gill suggests that racial classification is no different than classification by sex, age
or height (March 1998 AN, p. 1). The analogy, however, falls on its nasal spine.
When a hatter sizes a hat, she knows what she is measuring and her work can be repeated.
Classifications by sex, age or height might not be perfect, but the criteria are sensible, they fit the
problem and they are agreed upon. Conversely, because race is socially defined, it is first like
classifying by a concept such as "beauty," with no way to compare standards of beauty across
classifiers and then having others decide to classify by "purity." The problem is that there is no
objective and repeatable standard of classification. As a result, use of race in biomedicine, where
repeatability is monumentally important, courts disaster.
It gets worse. The unexamined movement from social definition of race to biology leads to
conflation of nature and lived experience. This clouds whether observed racial differences in
athletic performance, birth weight or IQ are due to lived experience, genes, or a tangled geneenvironment combination.
Furthermore, when genes come into play, the assumption is that a racial analysis might substitute
for a more detailed individual genetic analysis. Separate U.S. black and white standards for
diagnosis of anemia have been constructed because it was found that blacks have lower mean
hemoglobin concentrations (the basis of diagnosis of anemia) than whites. It was thus suggested
in the 1970s that the standard for diagnoses of anemia in blacks should match this inherited, panracial characteristic. The consequence of lowering the black standard halves the number of black
women diagnosed as anemic and probably too the percent treated.
Robert and Fatimah Jackson have demonstrated two grand leaps of scientific faith in
constructing race specific standards (Ethnicity and Disease, 1991, p. 1). First, hemoglobin
differences between blacks and whites are almost entirely explained by environmental factors
(conflation of nature and lived experience). Second, there is no basis to assume that a genetic
difference is pan African American (conflation of genes and race). Race as biology is not just
wrong, it is harmful. Race science is bad science because it inhibits deeper understanding.
From Biology to Lived Experience
Human biological variability is real. But race is a biological sham: it is theoretically passé, does
not fit the facts, holds back science and causes harm. A common sleight of hand of some
American politicians use is to conflate the myth of biological race with the cultural experience of
race, e.g., "If race is a (biological) myth, let's get rid of affirmative action." But the truth is just
the opposite. Showing that race is a biological myth leads us to clarify the sociopolitical salience
of race and racism. Race as biology does not explain the persistent and shameful rate at which
black babies suffer low birth weight and infant mortality. It doesn't explain why the death rate
from breast cancer recently fell for all women but did not budge for black women, who already
had a higher rate of death. Nor does race as biology explain why black male life expectancy in
Harlem is less than the life expectancy of men in Bangladesh. But the suffering is still there.
There is no half way between seeing race as biologically valid or not. Any reformation of race as
biology will simply be interpreted as race in the older typological paradigm. What do we lose by
giving up race as a biological concept? We lost some instant recognition of what we do. It takes
a bit longer to explain human variation.
What do we gain by sending race to the dust heap of history? The possibilities are awesome. We
could develop a new and exciting biocultural paradigm. More important still, we would literally
save lives.
Alan Goodman is professor anthropology at Hampshire College and co-author of Building a
New Biocultural Synthesis.
Questions – The Race Pit
Instructions: Answer each question using full and complete sentences. A good answer will include
facts or key points from the article.
1. What is the “Race Pit” according to Goldman?
2. Why does Goodman think that the “Race Pit” is harmful?
Silent Violence and Racism
3. How might we misuse the concept of race?
Back to Basics
4. How reliable is race from a biological standpoint? Why?
Classification Wrongs
5. Explain the “hatter sizing a hat” analogy uses, and how he compares this thinking to race.
6. Why is “race as biology…harmful” according to Goodman?
From Biology to Lived Experience
7. Towards the end of the article, Goodman states, “Showing that race is a biological myth leads us to
clarify the sociopolitical salience of race and racism.” Explain this line of thinking.
8. Reflection Question: Goodman states at the beginning of the article that, “it is now widely
accepted in anthropology that race is a biological myth but that racial discrimination and racism
are all too real.” If race is a social construct (i.e., it exists as an idea in our collective conscious)
but NOT a biological reality (i.e., science has determined there are no reliable markers to
differentiate between races) how do you think racism came about?