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9 - Is Race Real?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 December 2022

Rasmus Grønfeldt Winther
Affiliation:
University of California, Santa Cruz
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Summary

As we have learned throughout these pages, defining, investigating, and interpreting identity is complex. Many of our questions about Who am I? refer us to our local, geographic population(s) of origins, but just as many refer us to each other, as a whole, and to the human genome we each carry. This chapter zooms out from case study analysis to consider another form of identity that genomics helps us define and investigate – race (Figure 9.1, chapter opener). A book that approaches human evolutionary genomics through a philosophical lens would be incomplete without considering the particularly contentious analyses and interpretations associated with the genomic study of race. Conceived of as a social indicator of varying importance, race is linked to social structures and, thus, politics. Racism is the process of frequent and systemic judgments and prejudices based on perceived racial differences leading to differential access to social goods, including dignity, trust, and opportunity. We can work to ignore race, insist race does not matter, and strive for the post-racial future some of us may long to inhabit, but we do not live there yet, and a variety of futures are possible.

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Chapter
Information
Our Genes
A Philosophical Perspective on Human Evolutionary Genomics
, pp. 262 - 283
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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