
Purpose
To help students understand the ways that we have classified and defined groups, and to help students understand basic genetic traits that we have inherited from our common ancestors.
Context
This lesson is part of a group of lessons that focus on the social, behavioral, and economic sciences. These lessons are developed by AAAS and funded by the National Science Foundation Grant No. SES-0549096. For more lessons and activities that take a closer look at the social, behavioral, and economic sciences, be sure to check out the SBE Project page.
Our laws, social policies, even our scientific discoveries have all been shaped by shifting political priorities often informed by using race to define other humans. Race is one of those classifications that has been more recently used in the history of humans but cannot be clearly defined, and is often used to elevate one group to the disadvantage of other groups.
In middle school, students begin to learn about the construct of race, and how we go about identifying others and ourselves by groups, ancestry, common culture, and genetic factors. The idea of race is a controversial one, often considered an artificial means of human classification. We want students to learn about the very recent idea of race, how human beings’ patterns of migration may have affected physical characteristics necessary to adapt to different environments, and how these characteristics are changeable over time.
Planning Ahead
We suggest that you consult these resources before guiding your students through this lesson:
- Genetics, Human Migration, and the Sociology of Race teacher sheet
- Managing the Conversation Effectively teacher sheet
- RACE—The Power of an Illusion
- The Real Eve, Dir. Andrew Piddington. Narr. Danny Glover. 2002. DVD. Discovery Channel.
- Jones-Brown, Dolores. Race, Crime, and Punishment. Chelsea House Publications, 2000.
- Wells, Spencer. The Journey of Man: A Genetic Odyssey. Random House, 2004.
Motivation
As a way to stimulate discussion, get students thinking about the idea of classification based on a random assignment such as month of birth date. You can pick a random way to divide students into categories. For instance, you could divide students according to where their birthdays fall in the year—fall, winter, spring, or summer months. Then you should choose one particular group—students with spring birthdays for instance—to receive special privileges for the day while the rest of the class would be left out or ineligible.
Once you’ve conducted this exercise, lead students in a class discussion using questions like these:
- How did it feel to be overlooked or not have the special privileges that the spring birthday students had?
- Did it seem unfair to you? If so, in what way? (Ask students to list or describe their reactions.)
- Was the decision to give the students with spring birthdays extra privileges and attention based on merit? Did they do anything to deserve this?
- How would you correct the situation so that everyone would be included?
- How does this reflect the special privileges and racism that some groups in our society experience?
Development
Begin this section by having students take the Race Literacy Quiz from the California Newsreel site. You can provide each student with the print out of this quiz. Ask students to record their answers on the print out you’ve provided. Once students have finished the quiz, hold a class discussion about their answers and their thoughts about the quiz in general. Ask students these questions:
- What do we know about race?
- What do we want to learn about race?
Write students’ answers on the blackboard or on large paper, with three columns, one for what we know, one for what we want to learn, and one for what we have learned. Leave the third column blank. At the end of the lesson, have students retake the quiz and compare their answers from the first quiz and the re-taken quiz and then fill in the third column.
In this section of the lesson, students should make extensive use of the PBS resource, RACE—The Power of an Illusion.
First, have students use their The Illusion of Race student esheet to go to and read Human Diversity–Go Deeper. Once students read this resource, they should answer these questions on The Illusion of Race student sheet:
- What do we each think of when we say the word “race”? (Answers may vary.)
- What race/races do we identify with? (Answers may vary.)
- What if you were told that you were actually a different race or had racial characteristics that matched another group than your own? (Answers may vary.)
- What identifies us scientifically as being of a specific race? (The human species is all one race as identified by our DNA.)
- Why can’t we map one gene, trait, or characteristic that tells us how to recognize one member of a race from another? (Modern humans haven't been around long enough to evolve into different subspecies and we've always moved, mated, and mixed our genes. Beneath the skin, we are one of the most genetically similar of all species.)
- Why have other animal species been able to accumulate more gene variants than humans? (They’ve been around longer or they have shorter life spans, allowing them more opportunity to accumulate genetic variants.)
- How long do you think it takes to accumulate gene variants? (Answers may vary.)
- Why do we talk in terms of ancestry instead of race when we discuss genetic differences in humans? (Not everyone who looks alike or lives in the same region shares a common ancestry, so using "race" as a shorthand for ancestry can be misleading.)
- Can you think of any biological consequences of the social reality of race? (Answers may include higher rates of certain diseases among certain groups of people, i.e., African Americans or Native Americans.)
Assessment
To assess student understanding, divide students into groups and assign each group a question from Ask the Experts on the Race–Power of an Illusion site. Each group can summarize the response from the expert and present it to the class. As part of its presentation, have each group develop a few questions that the audience needs to answer from the presentation–this encourages students to have guidelines for the presentation and to ensure responsibility on the part of the audience to listen and pay attention to their peers.
Finally, have students take the Race Literacy Quiz again. Collect the individual answer sheets from the first and second times. Have them write down three sentences per question on paper regarding their own thoughts:
- What do we know about race?
- What do we want to learn about race?
- What have we learned?
Hold a class discussion about the students’ thoughts and answers.
Extensions
To extend the ideas in this lesson, you can lead students through the Science NetLinks lesson, Understanding Stereotypes.
Using a digital camera or video camera supplied by the school, have students take individual portraits of themselves talking about their own identities—their families and where their ancestors came from. They should talk about their own perceptions and how others perceive them—their friends, teachers, neighbors, the media.
What analysis can be done of racism in sports? Students can apply both science and sociology to the reality of sports and determine if racism exists. What perceptions do we have that black people are better at sports than white people? Encourage students to be action researchers and bring their own data. What do the statistics tell us? Refer the students back to the genetics, geographic place of origin, and the societal aspects that they learned in the content instruction and in the website.
Students can view the online exhibit, All of Us Are Related, Each of Us Is Unique, which explores how alike all humans are and how our differences are not biologically “racial.”
A lot of good reading for both you and students can be found at Is Race "Real"?
Have students read Scientific and Folk Ideas About Heredity, a very simple article by Jonathan Marks that questions the assumptions that race as a category is built upon.
Have students view the online exhibit World Against Racism Memorial and answer the questions.