DR. JOSEPH L. GRAVES, JR.: There is No Gene For Race

DR. JOSEPH L. GRAVES, JR.: There is No Gene For Race - Wolfman Productions

Dr. Joseph L. Graves, Jr.- Dean, University Studies and Professor of Biological Sciences, North Carolina A&T State University. His research concerns the evolutionary genetics of postponed aging and biological concepts of race in humans, with over forty papers and book chapters published, and appearances in six documentary films on these general topics. He has been a Principal Investigator on grants from the National Institute of Health, National Science Foundation and the Arizona Disease Research Commission. His books on the biology of race are entitled: The Emperor's New Clothes: Biological Theories of Race at the Millennium, Rutgers University Press, 2001 and The Race Myth: Why We Pretend Race Exists in America, Dutton Press, 2004. In April 2002, he received the ASU-West award for Scholarly Research and Creative Activity.

He has been a leader in addressing the under representation of minorities in science, directing successful programs in California and Arizona (see for example: http://www.west.asu.edu/lsi.) Finally, he has been an active participant in the struggle to protect and improve the teaching of science, particularly evolutionary biology in Arizona public schools.

Dr. Joseph Graves, Jr. received his Ph.D. in Environmental, Evolutionary and Systematic Biology from Wayne State University in 1988. In 1994 he was elected a Fellow of the Council of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS.) He is Dean of University Studies and Professor of Biological Sciences at North Carolina A&T State University. He held the position of University Core Director and Professor of Biological Sciences at Fairleigh Dickinson University from August 2004 – 2005. Prior to this he was Professor of Evolutionary Biology at Arizona State University –West. There he held a joint appointment in African American Studies at Arizona State University – Main in Tempe, AZ from July 1994 to 2004. His professional appointments include being Secretary for the Division on Integrating and Comparative Issues in the Society of Integrative and Comparative Biologists, and he has been a member of the external advisory board for the National Human Genome Center at Howard University, amongst other distinctions.

About Dr. Graves' Lecture:

    •  You will learn why virtually everything you think you know about race is socially constructed.

    •  You will learn about how and why racial theories are deeply intertwined with social dominance and injustice.

    •  You will be empowered to address the five pillars of modern racist thought:

            a Biological races exist in modern humans.
            b Genetically based differences exist in humans and are crucial to social structure.
            c The human races differ in genetic predisposition to complex diseases.
            d The human races differ in sexual and reproductive behavior.
            e The human races differ in athletic and musical ability.

    •  You will learn about the terminology and vocabulary of racial thinking.

    •  You will learn about recent developments in genomic research and why they don't support the existence of human races.

    •  You will learn why BiDil and other new medicines are not racial pills.

For Further Explorations on Race, Click Here