I had a friend recently ask for a reading list on race and genetics. They had read the NYT OpEd by Bret Stephens and wanted to understand why race science continues to exist, how people think about genetics, and how people think about race in relation to genetics. In response, I’ve compiled the following. Recommendations for additions are always welcome:
2020 Race & Genetics Reading List
Bliss, C. (2012). Race Decoded: The Genomic Fight for Social Justice. Stanford University Press.
Byrd, W. C., & Best, L. E. (2016). Between (Racial) Groups and a Hard Place: An Exploration of Social Science Approaches to Race and Genetics, 2000–2014. Biodemography and Social Biology, 62(3), 281–299. https://doi.org/10.1080/19485565.2016.1238299
Condit, C. M., Parrott, R., & Harris, T. M. (2002). Lay understandings of the relationship between race and genetics: Development of a collectivized knowledge through shared discourse. Public Understanding of Science, 11(4), 373–387.
Condit, C. M. (2019). Laypeople Are Strategic Essentialists, Not Genetic Essentialists. Hastings Center Report, 49(S1), S27–S37. https://doi.org/10.1002/hast.1014
El-Haj, N. A. (2007). The Genetic Reinscription of Race. Annual Review of Anthropology, 36(1), 283–300. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.anthro.34.081804.120522
Heine, S. J., Dar-Nimrod, I., Cheung, B. Y., & Proulx, T. (2017). Essentially Biased: Why People Are Fatalistic About Genes. In J. M. Olson (Ed.), Advances in Experimental Social Psychology (Vol. 55, pp. 137–192). Academic Press. https://doi.org/10.1016/bs.aesp.2016.10.003
Kahn, J., Nelson, A., Graves, J. L. J., Abel, S., Benjamin, R., Blacker, S., Bliss, C., Braun, L., Bridges, K. M., Calhoun, C., Rapp, R., & Roberts, D. (2018, March 30). Opinion: How Not To Talk About Race And Genetics. BuzzFeed. https://www.buzzfeed.com/bfopinion/race-genetics-david-reich
Keval, H. (2015). Risky cultures to risky genes: The racialised discursive construction of south Asian genetic diabetes risk. New Genetics and Society, 34(3), 274–293. https://doi.org/10.1080/14636778.2015.1036155
Panofsky, A. (2018). Rethinking scientific authority: Behavior genetics and race controversies. American Journal of Cultural Sociology, 6(2), 322–358. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41290-017-0032-z
Reich, D. (2018, March). How Genetics Is Changing Our Understanding of ‘Race.’ The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/23/opinion/sunday/genetics-race.html
Yudell, M., Roberts, D., DeSalle, R., & Tishkoff, S. (2016). Taking race out of human genetics. Science, 351(6273), 564–565. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aac4951
Krimsky, S., Sloan, K., & Council for Responsible Genetics (Eds.). (2011). Race and the genetic revolution: Science, myth, and culture. Columbia University Press.
