People may not realize it, but by conceptualizing different races, the world is supporting an ill-conceived way of thinking that ostracizes certain groups.
That was the message of Sociology Professor Tukufu Zuberi's talk on Tuesday at a signing for his book, Thicker than Blood: How Racial Statistics Lie.
"Race is a socially constructed idea used to exploit people and to facilitate domination," he said.
Zuberi went on to discuss the historical context that gave rise to present-day misconceptions of race.
In front of more than a dozen people at the Penn Bookstore, Zuberi singled out eugenics, a scientific movement which has left its mark throughout government, society and even on the highest institutions of education.
According to Zuberi, eugenics involves the "elevation of society" by selectively breeding intelligent people of certain races. Zuberi mentioned Francis Galton, the founder of eugenics, who believed that intelligence is inherited.
Eugenics, a movement that reached its climax in the 1920s and 1930s, seems like dry and dusty history now, but Zuberi said its impact is still felt.
Zuberi sees the infection of eugenics and racist ideas in the history departments of schools and colleges. He criticized western teaching.
"It's all Europe... entirely Eurocentric," Zuberi said. "How can we understand the history of the world without knowing the history of Africa or Asia?"
He blamed Europe for creating the concept of race.
"As Europeans spread over the world, they encountered non-Europeans who they had to classify."
Zuberi pointed out how "ill-defined intelligence is" and why that creates invalid assumptions. Eugenists use IQ tests to insinuate that certain groups are inherently more intelligent.
His book maintains that researchers have always mishandled racial statistics, by leaping to conclusions and then being unwilling "to admit to logical flaws."
"What do they mean by race causing something?" Zuberi said. "Does having black skin mean that a person will have a certain income, or is there an innate blackness that dictates what income the person will receive?"
These are questions that Zuberi said statisticians are either too afraid or too ignorant to answer, citing examples of identical statistics used to prove fundamentally different arguments.
The aim of his book and all his work "is for humanity to discover itself and enlighten itself." Especially now.
We have such great potential for destroying our land as well as each other, Zuberi closed, saying the need for "discourse on who we are" has never been more important.
