ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the impact of each of the historical and socio-political events on American views of race in later chapters, but first let’s review how the new advances in biological science have influenced anthropological definitions of race throughout the twentieth century. In 1964, C Loring Brace wrote a short but influential paper that clearly stated the scientific weakness of the race concept and supported Frank Livingstone’s work on clines. Brace clearly recognized the typological roots of the race concept in anthropology and argued strongly for its rejection and replacement with an evolutionary and adaptive approach to the study of human diversity, much like the one advocated by many anthropologists. Medical scientists have vigorously debated whether using patient’s self-identified race or ethnicity will improve our ability to identify risk factors of different illnesses or if the ambiguity and arbitrariness of the biological race concept make it unsuited for studies of the real causes of health and illness.
