Sign-In
Cart
The Uses of Diversity: How Race Has Become Entangled in Law, Politics, and Biology
Paperback
Series: Race, Inequality, and Health, Book 16
Sports GeneralGeneral Racism & Ethnic StudiesSocial Movements
ISBN13: 9780231220132
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: Jun 10 2025
Pages: 432
Weight: 1.27
Height: 0.96 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
Race, it is widely understood, is a social category that has no genetic basis, yet biological notions of race keep reemerging. Attempts to redress disparities in biomedical research emphasize recruiting racially representative trial participants. Forensic use of DNA evidence purports to pinpoint the race of a potential suspect. Genetic ancestry tracing companies explain test results to customers using racial categories. The makers of genomic databases seek to ensure racial inclusivity.
Jonathan Kahn argues that this predicament arises from a surprising source: the concept of diversity. Ranging across law, politics, science, and medicine, he examines the blurring of the distinction between social understandings of race and biological understandings of genetic variation. Because diversity has become such a central concept across domains, Kahn contends, it enables slippage between these contradictory ideas, entangling biological and social views of race. Tracing the parallel histories of the Human Genome Project, workforce diversification efforts, U. S. Supreme Court cases over affirmative action, the rise of precision medicine, and the COVID-19 vaccine trials, among others, he shows why diversity is often deployed in ways that threaten to biologize race or undermine efforts to address racial injustice. Combining incisive critique and interdisciplinary insight, The Uses of Diversity offers bracing new perspective on one of today's most vexed concepts.1 different editions
Also available
The Uses of Diversity: How Race Has Become Entangled in Law, Politics, and Biology
Kahn, Jonathan
Hardcover
Also from
Kahn, Jonathan
The Uses of Diversity: How Race Has Become Entangled in Law, Politics, and Biology
Kahn, Jonathan
Hardcover
Also in
General Racism & Ethnic Studies
Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America
Kendi, Ibram X.
Paperback
The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures
Fadiman, Anne
Paperback
In Search of the Black Fantastic: Politics and Popular Culture in the Post-Civil Rights Era
Iton, Richard
Paperback
Born of Lakes and Plains: Mixed-Descent Peoples and the Making of the American West
Hyde, Anne F.
Hardcover
Homosexuality in Cold War America: Resistance and the Crisis of Masculinity
Corber, Robert J.
Paperback
How to Be Less Stupid about Race: On Racism, White Supremacy, and the Racial Divide
Fleming, Crystal M.
Hardcover
Scandinavians in the State House: How Nordic Immigrants Shaped Minnesota Politics
Bergman, Klas
Paperback
The Token: Common Sense Ideas for Increasing Diversity in Your Organization
Farmer, Crystal Byrd
Paperback
Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome: America's Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing
Degruy, Joy a.
Paperback
The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America
Rothstein, Richard
Paperback
The Yahoo Boys: Love, Deception, and the Real Lives of Nigeria's Romance Scammers
Barragán, Carlos
Hardcover
1,000 Days in America: An Illustrated History of the Moments That Defined a Nation
National Geographic
Hardcover
The Zorg: A Tale of Greed and Murder That Inspired the Abolition of Slavery
Kara, Siddharth
Hardcover
Fear and Fury: The Reagan Eighties, the Bernie Goetz Shootings, and the Rebirth of White Rage
Thompson, Heather Ann
Hardcover
P Fkn R: How Bad Bunny Became the Global Voice of Puerto Rican Resistance
Díaz, Vanessa
Rivera-Rideau, Petra R.
Paperback
The Chosen and the Damned: Native Americans and the Making of Race in the United States
Silverman, David J.
Hardcover
My Grandmother's Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies
Menakem, Resmaa
Paperback
Five Bullets: The Story of Bernie Goetz, New York's Explosive '80s, and the Subway Vigilante Trial That Divided the Nation
Williams, Elliot
Hardcover
Miracle Children: Race, Education, and a True Story of False Promises
Green, Erica L.
Benner, Katie
Hardcover
American Reich: A Murder in Orange County, Neo-Nazis, and a New Age of Hate
Lichtblau, Eric
Hardcover
The Humanity Archive: Recovering the Soul of Black History from a Whitewashed American Myth
Fowler, Jermaine
Paperback
The Iceman Inheritance: Prehistoric Sources of Western Man's Racism, Sexism and Aggression
Bradley, Michael
Paperback
Redeem a Nation: The Century-Long Battle to Restore the Soul of America
Solomon-Simmons, Damario
Hardcover
Chocolate City: A History of Race and Democracy in the Nation's Capital
Musgrove, George Derek
Asch, Chris Myers
Paperback
Mother Emanuel: Two Centuries of Race, Resistance, and Forgiveness in One Charleston Church
Sack, Kevin
Hardcover
Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome, Revised Edition: America's Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing
Degruy, Joy a.
Hardcover
The American Way of Killing: The Invention of an Epidemic (Large Print Edition)
Gladwell, Malcolm
Paperback
The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures
Fadiman, Anne
Paperback
Crime Fictions: How Racist Lies Built a System of Mass Wrongful Conviction
Gonzalez Van Cleve, Nicole
Hardcover
The Japanese Way of Parenting: And What It Taught Me about Raising (Mostly) Calm, Caring, Capable Kids
Katayama, Lisa
Paperback
Are White Men Smarter Than Everybody Else?: Playing Offense in the Fight for Racial Justice in America
Phillips, Steve
Hardcover
Biography of a Dangerous Idea: A New History of Race from Louis XIV to Thomas Jefferson
Curran, Andrew S.
Hardcover
Original Sins: The (Mis)Education of Black and Native Children and the Construction of American Racism
Ewing, Eve L.
Paperback
Getting to Reparations: How Building a Different America Requires a Reckoning with Our Past
Brown, Dorothy A.
Hardcover
They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South
Jones-Rogers, Stephanie E.
Paperback
How the South Won the Civil War: Oligarchy, Democracy, and the Continuing Fight for the Soul of America
Richardson, Heather Cox
Paperback
Midnight on the Potomac: The Last Year of the Civil War, the Lincoln Assassination, and the Rebirth of America
Ellsworth, Scott
Hardcover
Born in Flames: The Business of Arson and the Remaking of the American City
Ansfield, Bench
Hardcover
Man-Made: How We Designed a World That Leaves Women Out, and How We Can Make It Right
Reuther, Karen Korellis
Hardcover
The Crown's Silence: The Hidden History of the British Monarchy and Slavery in the Americas
Newman, Brooke N.
Hardcover
Daring to Be Free: Rebellion and Resistance of the Enslaved in the Atlantic World
Hazareesingh, Sudhir
Hardcover
We've Been Here Before: How Rebellion and Activism Have Always Sustained America
Days, Michael I.
Dodson, Angela P.
Hardcover
A High Price for Freedom: Raising Hidden Voices from the African American Past
Ford, Clyde W.
Hardcover
Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America
Kendi, Ibram X.
Paperback
Was That Racist?: How to Detect, Interrupt, and Unlearn Bias in Everyday Life
Carter, Evelyn R.
Hardcover
Read These Banned Books: A Journal and 52-Week Reading Challenge from the American Library Association
American Library Association (ALA)
Paperback
For Brown Girls with Sharp Edges and Tender Hearts: A Love Letter to Women of Color
Dorcas Mojica Rodríguez, Prisca
Paperback
When It's Darkness on the Delta: How America's Richest Soil Became Its Poorest Land
Eubanks, W. Ralph
Hardcover
Morningside: The 1979 Greensboro Massacre and the Struggle for an American City's Soul
Shetterly, Aran
Hardcover
Black Marxism, Revised and Updated Third Edition: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition
Robinson, Cedric J.
Paperback
White Women: Everything You Already Know about Your Own Racism and How to Do Better
Jackson, Regina
Rao, Saira
Paperback
Pink Crime: Fighting Against the Criminalization of Motherhood, Pregnancy, and Queer Identity
Beety, Valena
Hardcover
Antiracism and Universal Design for Learning: Building Expressways to Success
Fritzgerald, Andratesha
Paperback
The Priest Who Stayed in Gaza: A Witness to Hope in the Ruins
Romanelli, Fr Gabriel
de Dieuleveult, Guillaume
Paperback
The Talmud Unmasked: The Secret Rabbinical Teachings Concerning Christians
Pranaitis, I. B.
Paperback
Black Against Empire: The History and Politics of the Black Panther Party
Bloom, Joshua
Martin, Waldo E., Jr.
Paperback
As We Have Always Done: Indigenous Freedom Through Radical Resistance
Simpson, Leanne Betasamosake
Paperback
Blackinese: Reflections on Race and Ethnicity from a Biracial Millennial
Moore, Patricia Bradby
Hardcover
Rolling Stone and the Rise of Hip Capitalism: How a Magazine Born in the 1960s Changed America
Ponce de Leon, Charles L.
Hardcover
Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome: America's Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing
Degruy, Joy Angela
Paperback
John Doe Chinaman: A Forgotten History of Chinese Life Under American Racial Law
Lew-Williams, Beth
Hardcover
Voices of Freedom: An Oral History of the Civil Rights Movement from the 1950s Through the 1980s
Fayer, Steve
Hampton, Henry
Paperback
Stamped from the Beginning [Graphic Edition]: A Graphic History of Racist Ideas in America
Christian Gill, Joel
Kendi, Ibram X.
Paperback
Be a Revolution: How Everyday People Are Fighting Oppression and Changing the World--And How You Can, Too
Oluo, Ijeoma
Paperback
The White Pedestal: How White Nationalists Use Ancient Greece and Rome to Justify Hate
Dozier, Curtis
Hardcover
Ruin Their Crops on the Ground: The Politics of Food in the United States, from the Trail of Tears to School Lunch
Freeman, Andrea
Paperback
Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?: And Other Conversations about Race
Tatum, Beverly Daniel
Paperback
Languages of Home: Essays on Writing, Hoop, and American Lives 1975-2025
Wideman, John Edgar
Hardcover
Black, White, Colored: The Hidden Story of an Insurrection, a Family, a Southern Town, and Identity in America
Noble, Lauretta Malloy
Noble, Leeanet
Hardcover
Immigration Detention Inc.: The Big Business of Locking Up Migrants in America
Conlon, Deirdre
Hiemstra, Nancy
Paperback
A History of the World in Six Plagues: How Contagion, Class, and Captivity Shaped Us, from Cholera to Covid-19
Bonhomme, Edna
Paperback
Elite Capture: How the Powerful Took Over Identity Politics (and Everything Else)
Táíwò, Olúfẹ́mi O.
Paperback
Not "A Nation of Immigrants": Settler Colonialism, White Supremacy, and a History of Erasure and Exclusion
Dunbar-Ortiz, Roxanne
Paperback