[CCoE Notice] Ethics in Science Lecture Series - Classifying People by Color: How Racial Categories Change Over Time

[Thayer, Natalie H]

[cid:image001.jpg at 01D152CB.20324860]

Title: Classifying People by Color:  How Racial Categories Change Over Time
Speaker: Alberto Martinez, Ph.D., University of Texas at Austin
Date:  Monday, February 29, 2016
Time:  11:00 am to 12:30 pm
Cost: FREE and open to the public
Location:  Philip G Hoffmann Hall, Room 232 (PGH-232) Main Campus, University of Houston
Contact and Phone Number:  Ioannis Pavlidis, Ph.D., 713-743-0101
Link: http://www.uh.edu/ethicsinscience/Seminars/Alberto-Martinez.php



Summary: For years, I've taught a course titled "Biology, Behavior, and Injustice." Among various topics, we discuss the history of how past scientists struggled to classify people in terms of race. At the University of Texas at Austin, where I teach, students are classified into five major racial categories: Black, Hispanic, Native American, Asian, and White. For comparison, I show my students an old science textbook, published a hundred years ago, that shows somewhat similar racial categories: "Black," "Brown," "Red," "Yellow," and "White." Now of course, skin tones are not the most scientific way to classify people. Still, such classifications are among the most pervasive ways in which people think about others. Even scientists, physicians, and statisticians end up using and reifying such traditional and problematic categories. I will argue that we should stop reifying traditional racial categories. To do so, I will show how racial categories have changed over time, in American history in particular, to illustrate the arbitrariness of such categories. I will also discuss the results of an experiment that I've carried out with students at UT Austin. I compared students' perceptions of skin tones and have found strikingly unexpected results showing how much they disagree when trying to identify races. I will urge that it is unethical for scientists to reify traditional racial classifications, but that we should devise better ways to plainly describe human differences.


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