Book Review: Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, And Big Business Re-Create Race In The Twenty-First Century
by Dorothy Roberts
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Publication Date: Jul 05, 2011
List Price: Unavailable
Format: Hardcover, 400 pages
Classification: Nonfiction
ISBN13: 9781595584953
Imprint: The New Press
Publisher: The New Press
Parent Company: The New Press
Read a Description of Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, And Big Business Re-Create Race In The Twenty-First Century
Book Reviewed by Kam Williams
"Race is an invented political system, not a natural biological division. The Human Genome Project has confirmed that the human species cannot be divided into genetically distinguishable races. Race is a political grouping created to support slavery and colonialism, and its boundary lines have shifted over time and across nations to suit political ends…
For the last three centuries, science… has been instrumental in justifying the concept of biological races—and this century’s genomic science is no different… Despite the scientific and political evidence, some scientists are attempting to modernize the myth that race is a biological category… What’s new is that today’s racial science claims to divide human beings into natural groups with more accurate precision and without the taint of racism."
—Excerpted from Part I (pgs. 20-27)
The mapping of the human gene has established, scientifically, that there
is only one race, the human race. So, one might naturally expect any
arbitrary groupings by experts of individuals along color lines to cease.
Think again. Regrettably, this is not the case, according to Professor
Dorothy Roberts of Northwestern Law School.
She is the author of Fatal Invention, a cautionary examination of the
current state of affairs in terms of the intersection of ethnicity and
bioethics. In the book, she issues a dire warning that researchers are
repackaging outmoded notions of race by hiding behind benign-sounding
euphemisms like "geographic ancestry" when they should really be disposing
of such baseless categorizations entirely.
For example, you may be familiar with television commercials being run by
ancestry-testing companies offering to determine what percent white, black,
Asian and Native-American you are based on a DNA sample. However, the
perspicacious Professor Roberts warns that these ads erroneously "reinforce
the myth that human beings were originally divided into pure races that
exist in our genes."
Perhaps more problematic, she suggests, is the way in which the medical
community seems to be "searching for genes to explain racial disparities in
health care that are actually caused by social inequities." In this regard,
Roberts indicates that "In 2005, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration
approved the first race-specific drug, a heart failure therapy that was
targeted to black patients for marketing reasons."
A seminal appeal for the findings of the Genome Project to be applied not in
service of separation and exploitation but to promote the ideals of
inclusion and equality among all members of the human family.