What's Real about Race?

""What’s Real about Race? is a tour de force of scholarly research and energizing prose that dissects one of the most misunderstood and misrepresented concepts in society today. It is not just informative—it is transformative, providing essential insights that will change the way we understand and engage with the world around us."" -- Ruha Benjamin, author of Imagination: A Manifesto and Viral Justice: How We Grow the World We Want ""With dazzling insight that braids together culture, history, science and memoir, What’s Real about Race? deeply enriches our understanding of one of humanity’s most complex and dynamic concepts. Bliss bravely and meticulously debunks the most pernicious fallacies about race and shines a light on the ways it remains all too real for people’s lived experiences. This is essential reading for us all."" -- Alondra Nelson, Science, Technology, and Social Values Lab, Institute for Advanced Study and author of author of The Social Life of DNA ""At the interfaces of science, society, and policy, this is a must-read. Rina Bliss is amazing at handling these tough topics with respect, documentation, engaging style and clarity."" -- George Church, Professor of Genetics at Harvard and MIT and author of Regenesis ""Rina Bliss passionately and powerfully interrogates the devastating harms wrought by scientists and doctors who keep falling back on race as a biological variable, even when they know how useless it is at mapping real human difference. An invaluable book for those working in genetics or healthcare. . . or anyone ever tempted to take a DNA ancestry test. "" -- Angela Saini, author of Superior and The Patriarchs ""With personal anecdotes and deep history, this provocative account makes a forceful argument for disentangling racism from racialism, race from genetic ancestry, and for seeing race as a purely social category."" -- Dalton Conley, author of The Social Genome