ABSTRACT
Social scientists, when studying variations within the US population in a range of economic, political, social and health-related variables, routinely classify members by race, but, in their dealings with one another, they classify each other by race as well. Race is a tool social scientists use to describe their subjects, but race is also a badge social scientists wear, and, like their subjects, they are colored by race, marked as Black or White, as Asian or American-Indian; their racial attitudes or antipathies shape them, inuence their practice, no less than they shape or inuence the people they study.
