"Believing in race can be compared to people believing in astrology"-Dorothy Roberts, Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Business Re-create Race in the Twenty-First Century
Last night, ITYC had the honor and the pleasure to speak with Professor Dorothy Roberts about her incredible new book Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-create Race in the Twenty-First Century. In the book, Roberts painstakingly and thoroughly lays out the evidence that race has absolutely nothing to do with biology and is purely a political designation which determines a particular group's social value. Roberts also reveals how intimately science and race are intertwined in the U.S. as scientists from the 18th century forward used scientific theory to give validity to the purely political beast called race.
Now in the 21st century, even in the face of the 20th century science of the Human Genome , Roberts uncovers how scientists, politicians and big business are working frantically to preserve these long discredited theories from the 18th century. Professor Roberts outlined the dangerous implications of treating race as a biological reality in our society and how our tax dollars are being used to support bad science. Professor Roberts also shared how her parents, especially her father, her own background as a person of mixed ancestry, inspired the work she does today.
