Abstract
In an article in the February 2014 issue of Demography, Guo et al. claimed that their research “establishes geographic genetic bio-ancestry as a component of racial classification” (p. 141). In doing so, they argued that their work has “a larger theoretical significance on identity studies” (p. 169) by providing racial classification categories with a concrete, “measurable,” and “logical” basis against which social construction should be analyzed. Instead, I argue that their main accomplishment is the “molecular reinscription of race” (Duster 2011:104). In this article, I review the existing critiques of this type of work.
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Frank, R. The Molecular Reinscription of Race: A Comment on “Genetic Bio-Ancestry and Social Construction of Racial Classification in Social Surveys in the Contemporary United States”. Demography 51, 2333–2336 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13524-014-0342-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13524-014-0342-5