What was black in 1940 is different from what is black in 2000. Certainly, with the evolution of whiteness, what was white in 1920 - as a Jew I was not white then, but I'm white now, so white has changed tremendously" (Goodman 2003).
The views of biological anthropologists on race have varied widely throughout the ages, almost as much as human physical differences of dress, skin, hair, and size. Yet beneath the skin, modern science reveals, we are genetically far more alike than different. In contrast to the old, culturally-justifying racism of the past, physical anthropologists today look to science to 'set us free' as a species with the truth -- that race is a cultural construction, not a biological fact. This once conservative field now takes one of the most radical views of the human condition of all the social sciences.
Works Cited
Gravlee, Clarence, C.H. Russell Bernard, & William R. Leonard. (2003). New answers to old questions: Did Boas get it right? Heredity, environment, and cranial form: A reanalysis of Boas' immigrant data. American Anthropologist, 105(1), 125-138. Retrieved May 25,
2009, from...
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