Challenging the Biological Concept of Race (VIDEO)

This past April, the Program on Race, Science, and Society (PRSS) hosted Ordering the Human: Global Science and Racial Reason, a symposium that brought together an international group of biological and social scientists, historians, and legal scholars to discuss how the understanding and categorizing of racial difference has significant implications for individuals across the globe. PRSS, housed under the Center for Africana Studies, is a research project devoted to transformative and interdisciplinary approaches to the role of race in scientific research and biotechnological innovations, aiming both to promote social justice and to dispel the myth that race is a natural division of human beings.

PRSS is directed by Dorothy Roberts, George A. Weiss University Professor of Law and Sociology; Raymond Pace and Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander Professor of Civil Rights; and Professor of Africana Studies, who says that, “Challenging the biological concept of race is extremely important because it provides a logic for violence and unequal outcomes for people all across the world. It's essential that we finally end this way of thinking about human beings' differences and similarities and think about more innovative ways our common humanity can aid us in addressing social inequalities.”

The event was supported by the Center and the Penn Arts and Sciences’ Global Inquiries Fund, an initiative that supports research projects, faculty working groups, seminars, and other activities that stimulate collective investigation of global topics between the humanities and social sciences, as well as across departments, programs, centers, and schools.

Click here to watch the entire event video from Ordering the Human: Global Science and Racial Reason.