Title: What’s Real About Race? Untangling Science, Genetics, and Society
Abstract: Biologically, race is a fiction—but it is a fiction that has real social consequences. In What’s Real About Race? sociologist Rina Bliss unpacks how genetic and social research have perpetuated racial categories and stereotypes. How, Bliss asks, did categories of race emerge and get embedded in modern-day science? How did scientists begin misusing DNA collections and genetic research stratified by race? Are there ethical ways to consider race in scientific research? And the elephant in the room: what, if anything, is real about race? Bliss offers a new conceptual framework: race is not a genetic reality, but it is also not merely a social construct; it is a social reality with a stark impact on our life chances and health.
Bio: Dr. Rina Bliss’s work explores the personal and societal significance of emerging genetic sciences. She is Associate Professor of Sociology at Rutgers University and the author of Rethinking Intelligence: A Radical New Understanding of Our Human Potential, Race Decoded: The Genomic Fight for Social Justice and Social by Nature: The Promise and Peril of Sociogenomics. She lives in Princeton, New Jersey, with her family.
