Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Pages: 160
•
Trim: 6¼ x 9¼
978-1-5381-0501-6 • Hardback • September 2019 • $40.00 • (£30.00)
978-1-5381-0502-3 • eBook • September 2019 • $38.00 • (£30.00)
Mary Catherine Bateson is Robinson Professor Emerita of Anthropology at George Mason University in Virginia. She followed her parents, Gregory Bateson and Margaret Mead, into anthropology, with an emphasis on linguistics and Middle Eastern studies. She has taught at Harvard, Amherst College, and Northeastern University, and served as visiting faculty at Spelman College, Ateneo de Manila University in Manila, and Damavand College and the University of Tehran in Iran. She holds a joint doctorate in linguistics and Middle Eastern studies from Harvard as well as six honorary doctorates and is the author of five books (including a memoir of her parents) and coauthor of two others, Thinking AIDS with Richard Goldsby and Angels Fear with Gregory Bateson.
Richard A. Goldsby is the Thomas Walton Jr. Memorial Professor Emeritus at Amherst College. Now visiting scientist at MIT’s associated Whitehead Institute, he has taught at Amherst, the Universities of Massachusetts and Maryland, Stanford, and Yale, where he was briefly master of Pierson College. He has written books in the areas of immunology, cancer, AIDS, and race. This is the second book he has coauthored with Mary Catherine Bateson.
Preface
Acknowledgments
1 Generations of Migration
2 The Notion and Nature of Race
3 Human Diversity
4 Race and Medicine
5 Race and Ability
6 Seeking Solutions
Suggested Readings for Thinking Race
Index
Recommended: . . . geared toward a popular audience, [Thinking Race] effectively highlight[s] some of the major US policies that have created significant racial inequities in terms of education, housing, health care, the criminal justice system, and economic net worth. Beyond providing an overview of the role racism has played in creating false racial hierarchies, Goldsby and Bateson suggest policies that can be implemented to eradicate these hierarchies and the injustices they produce.
— Choice Reviews
Is race a social construction or a biological reality? In this brave and necessary book, Richard Goldsby and Mary Catherine Bateson provide a persuasive response: it is both. Using a wealth of genetic and cultural evidence, Goldsby and Bateson shed light on a question too often dominated by heat, and they explore the implications of their answer for medicine, social policy, and politics.
— William A. Galston, Senior Fellow, The Brookings Institution
This scholarly, but completely accessible and entertaining, treatise examines what we term “race” providing food for serious thought on several levels. The authors bring expertise from their respective areas of scholarship to bear on this complex topical issue. Their discussion of the intricacies involved, not readily resolved by current DNA analyses or dissection of cultural issues, gives new and thoughtful insight. Having defined race in a reasonable way next are enumerated consequences of racial discrimination along with some suggestions to balance inequity. An open-minded reading of this treatment may require rethinking of common stereotypes and abandoning racist attitudes.
— Thomas J. Kindt, author
This wise book by a distinguished biologist and an acclaimed anthropologist forthrightly, clearly, and concisely summarizes the objective evidence that there are races and racial differences: readers will find some surprising. The authors’ take bears on many ‘hot-button’ issues and provides compelling and reasoned insight into how society and culture, not biology, determines racial inequality. Thinking Race is a must read.
— Lydia Villa-Komaroff, independent consultant, Intersections: Science, Business, Diversity; former vice president of research, Northwestern University
If we are ever to move beyond the racial divisiveness that continues to plaque our nation, we must have courageous conversations about race. Goldsby and Bateson have written an important and engaging book that can enlighten these conversations in the interest of social justice. By explaining the biology of race, and how race is largely socially constructed, the authors help us accept human differences among us at the same time that we understand the power of human unity.
— Johnnetta Betsch Cole, President Emerita of Spelman College and Bennett College for Women
The authors draw upon a wide spectrum of sources and methods in crafting a compelling argument that distinguishes and illustrates the complexities between race as a biological concept and race as a social construct.
— Robert Wedgeworth, founding President and CEO of ProLiteracy Worldwide