Graves to speak on The Race Myth
Dr. Joseph L. Graves, Jr., Dean of University Studies and a professor of Biological Sciences at NC A&T, will speak on his latest book, The Race Myth: Why We Pretend Race Exists in America, on February 21, 2006 at 7:00 p.m. in Science 101 at UNCG.
Graves, who received his Ph.D. in Environmental, Evolutionary and Systematic Biology from Wayne State University in 1988, has research interests in the evolutionary genetics of postponed aging as well as the biological concepts of race in humans, which The Race Myth describes.
In his book, Graves argues that the racial distinctions that define American society actually have no biological basis at all. In other words, Graves insists that there is no such thing as race in the human population, and it is a fallacy to suppose that physical appearance, performance in sports, and medical profiles are determined by some sort of racial divide. Graves will present his fascinating research at the African American Studies Program-sponsored talk at UNCG on February 21.
In 1994, Graves was elected a Fellow of the Council of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS.) In 2004 he served as University Core Director and Professor of Biological Sciences at Fairleigh Dickinson University. From 1994 to 2004 he was Professor of Evolutionary Biology at Arizona State University –West, holding a joint appointment in African American Studies at ASU – Main. He has been Secretary for the Division on Integrating and Comparative Issues in the Society of Integrative and Comparative Biologists, as well as a member of the external advisory board for the National Human Genome Center at Howard University, amongst other distinctions.
Graves has published his work in over fifty papers and book chapters and has appeared in six documentary films. He has been a Principal Investigator on grants from the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation and the Arizona Disease Research Commission. In addition to The Race Myth, he has also published another book on the biological theories of race, The Emperor's New Clothes: Biological Theories of Race at the Millennium, Rutgers University Press, 2001, 2 nd Printing in 2005. In April 2002, Graves received the ASU-West award for Scholarly Research and Creative Activity.
