Ethnicité et race. Séminaire MIM. Séance 16

Race as Genetics: Contemporary American Concepts of Human Difference

The idea that race is a social construct circulates widely among social scientists in the United States, but is it accepted by biological scientists and the public as well? In my work I investigate the varied concepts of race that Americans hold: race as biological difference, race as cultural membership, race as social construction. I do so through several research projects: content analysis of biology textbooks, interviews with biologists and anthropologists, interviews with college students, and review of the rapidly-expanding biomedical literature on the nature of race. Based on my empirical findings, I conclude that many Americans continue to believe that races are recognizable biological entities, whose members are marked by inherited and unalterable physical traits. This is not just a "folk" belief, but rather one that enjoys considerable acceptance among biological scientists. Furthermore, the notion that race is rooted in the human body is not simply a relic of older beliefs, but is gaining new strength from certain interpretations of recent discoveries in the field of human genetics. Genetic tests to discern an individual’s racial identity, for example, or race-specific pharmaceutical drugs are new products that reinforce the public’s longstanding essentialist belief that racial difference is biological difference. This new essentialism is further fuelled by the suspicion that the constructionist perspective on race is nothing more than an academic exercise in political correctness.

Ann Morning est assistant professor à la New York University. Ses recherches se situent dans les domaines de race and ethnicity, démographie, et de la sociologie des sciences. Elle publie prochainement un ouvrage aux University of California Press The Nature of Race: American Understandings of Human Difference. Elle est en 2008-2009 chercheure invitée à l’Université de Milan-Bicocca dans le cadre du programme Fullbright.