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Bill Nye is a scientist who has created a television personality known as "Bill Nye, the Science Guy;" for six seasons, in the mid 1990s, he hosted a show of that same name aimed at elementary school kids.
In 2005, he wrote and hosted a thirteen-episode program aimed at older teens and young adults, where he focused on one socially relevant issue, and the scientific ramifications of the same, per episode, called The Eyes of Nye.
Last Friday night (or early Saturday morning), I watched his episode on "Race," and the things we've learned about it since the mapping of the human genome.
Conclusion: biologically speaking, "race" has no basis to exist; there's as the same level of genetic variation between two random people of the "same" race as there is between two random people of "different" races.
Therefore, Nye reasoned, in his little Op-ed monologue at the end, "Race" is only a cultural construct. And so we should be able, culturally, to deconstruct it.
Which leaves me wondering: How? How, exactly, do you deconstruct a cultural bias (especially one that has lead to extreme violence and exploitation as "race" has), without sidelining the voices of people who've suffered the most under that construct?
I don't have the answers. But I felt the need to get that question out there.
(It's also a bit problematic, at least in perception, when the person voicing this conclusion was born into the class of White Priveledge.)
In 2005, he wrote and hosted a thirteen-episode program aimed at older teens and young adults, where he focused on one socially relevant issue, and the scientific ramifications of the same, per episode, called The Eyes of Nye.
Last Friday night (or early Saturday morning), I watched his episode on "Race," and the things we've learned about it since the mapping of the human genome.
Conclusion: biologically speaking, "race" has no basis to exist; there's as the same level of genetic variation between two random people of the "same" race as there is between two random people of "different" races.
Therefore, Nye reasoned, in his little Op-ed monologue at the end, "Race" is only a cultural construct. And so we should be able, culturally, to deconstruct it.
Which leaves me wondering: How? How, exactly, do you deconstruct a cultural bias (especially one that has lead to extreme violence and exploitation as "race" has), without sidelining the voices of people who've suffered the most under that construct?
I don't have the answers. But I felt the need to get that question out there.
(It's also a bit problematic, at least in perception, when the person voicing this conclusion was born into the class of White Priveledge.)
