The AAA is at odds with biologists, esp. geneticists, and that statement is the result of heavy politicization. The philosophers and anthropologists (among others) have used a silly strategy to attack research on group differences, by assigning bogus meaning to the word race and pretending that there is no such thing. Neven Sesardic is a philosopher with some good (in the journal Philosophy of Science, etc) articles on the subject, and reveals the blatant dishonesty of some of the philosophical misrepresentations on the subject:
I disagree with him on the proper stance to take on the word “race”, but I doubt our disagreement goes any deeper than that. At the end of the day, my feeling on the matter probably does have more to do with politics than linguistics.
The AAA is at odds with biologists, esp. geneticists, and that statement is the result of heavy politicization. The philosophers and anthropologists (among others) have used a silly strategy to attack research on group differences, by assigning bogus meaning to the word race and pretending that there is no such thing. Neven Sesardic is a philosopher with some good (in the journal Philosophy of Science, etc) articles on the subject, and reveals the blatant dishonesty of some of the philosophical misrepresentations on the subject:
http://www.ln.edu.hk/philoso/staff/sesardic/getfile.php?file=Race.pdf http://www.ln.edu.hk/philoso/staff/sesardic/getfile.php?file=POS-2000.pdf
I disagree with him on the proper stance to take on the word “race”, but I doubt our disagreement goes any deeper than that. At the end of the day, my feeling on the matter probably does have more to do with politics than linguistics.