Challenging Racism and Sexism: Alternatives to Genetic Explanations

In this highly volatile debate over the scientific treatment of race and gender, this is the first collection to examine race and gender together. In an effort to uncover the social underpinnings of hatred based on difference, this volume challenges arguments that such traits such as intelligence or aggression are genetically determined along racial or gender lines and provides alternative accounts of the origins of racism and sexism and-most importantly-the nature and consequences of intersection.

Contriubutors include Beverly Greene, Gerald Horn, Ruth Hubbard, Gisela Kaplan, Lesley Rogers, and Choichiro Yatani. Simona Sharoni's "Feminist Reflection on the Interplay of Racism and Sexism in Israel" is representative of the level of analysis in this collection. A political scientist and an expert in conflcit analysis and resolution, Sharoni describes the intersection of racism and sexism as it effects Oriental jews, Palestinians, and Israelis, in the particular context of governmental military policies and social practices, and opens up new space for social and political change.

Challenging racism and sexism is blobal in scope, and hosts perspectives from a wide range of disciplines, including biology, educational studies, history, philosophy, physiology, and psychology. Essay topics include the creation of race and sex as biological categories, derivatives of racism and sexism in psychotherapy, a study of the "rape-lynch" controversy, and myths and realities regarding school performance of Asian and Asian-American school children.