What's Real about Race?: Untangling Science, Genetics, and Society

A paradigm-shifting tour of genetics and identity arguing that race is at once a biological fiction and a social reality.

Biologically, race does not exist. Scientists have proven that human DNA is 99.9 percent identical. But we know that racism and its structural impacts shape our health, opportunities, and lives in profound ways. What is the true relationship between genetics and race? And how should we talk about identity in science and medicine?

In What’s Real About Race?, sociologist Rina Bliss illuminates the truth about one of the most misunderstood, controversial concepts in our society and reveals why we cannot confuse race with genetic difference. Blending energizing prose with the latest in genetics research, this paradigm-shifting tour unmasks what’s truly real about race: namely, racism’s impact on our bodies and lives.

Bliss traces the history of race, revealing how unscientific categories of identity―White, Black, Asian/Pacific Islander, and American Indian/Alaska Native―became the modern standard, and illuminates how the myth of biological races endures in science and society, warping our understanding of complex topics like intelligence, disease susceptibility, and behavior. Along the way, What’s Real About Race? busts enduring myths about IQ, ancestry tests, behavioral racism, and more. In fascinating explorations of gene research, medicine, and social justice, Bliss argues for a new way forward. To create equity in science and society, we must disentangle our understanding of genetics from identity and see race for what it really is: a purely social category

At a time when misinformation about our bodies and identities is dangerously prevalent, What’s Real About Race? is an indispensable resource and a powerful reminder that, biologically, our similarities vastly outweigh our differences.

Dr. Rina Bliss is the award–winning author of Rethinking Intelligence, Race Decoded, and Social by Nature, and an associate professor of sociology at Rutgers University. She lives in Princeton, New Jersey.