Local author to lecture on race at Books and Books

(CNS): Local author Guy P. Harrison says races do not exist. He will explain why in a lecture at Books and Books, Camana Bay, scheduled for 7pm this evening, Friday 19 March. Harrison will discuss some of the key findings contained in his new book, Race and Reality: What Everyone Should Know about Our Biological Diversity (published by Prometheus Books, New York). The lecture is free and open to the public. “The news that biological race categoriesare illogical and imaginary is important and more people need to hear it,” said Harrison. “Races are cultural creations. Nature did not impose them upon us—we made them up. Anthropologists have been saying this for many decades now but the public has not yet absorbed it.

"There is diversity in our species, of course, but the specific racial categories that most people believe in are fiction. Considering all the problems that come with racism, it’s vital that people learn the truth. Race belief is a very dangerous delusion.”

Harrison’s book covers several topics related to race, including: intelligence, healthcare, sports, love and sex, prehistoric migrations, European domination of New World peoples, and racism. Although it addresses a complex scientific subject, the book was written to be accessible to laypersons.

Race and Reality already has been selected as assigned reading in a sociology class at a New York college. It also has earned several strong endorsements from the United States academic community. “This is a very important, profound, enjoyable and enlightening book,” says Dr Robert W. Sussman, a Washington University anthropologists and Editor Emeritus of American Anthropologist. “It should go a long way in helping disprove man’s most dangerous myth.”

“We desperately need a book that sets us no-nonsense straight, and Race and Reality is just that book, a tour de force that conveys the current science on racial classification in a rigorous yet readable way,” says Dr. David B. Grusky, Professor of Sociology at Stanford University. “This is a book so clearly written, so elegantly crafted, so packed with nuggets that even those who think they know it all about race and racial classification will come away changed.”

“Harrison is a great teacher,” adds Dr Cameron M. Smith, a Portland State University anthropologist. “Drawing on a wide variety of evidence—the hard data from fossils and DNA, interviews with the victims of racism, and personal experiences—Harrison dismantles the race concept, bolt by bolt. Exposing race as a social illusion and political tool, rather than a biological reality, Harrison forces the reader to consider how they think about ‘other folk’.”

Race and Reality is Harrison’s second book. His first, 50 Reasons People Give for Believing in a God, achieved a number-one ranking in its category on Amazon in the United States, France, Canada, Germany and Japan.