Share <Embed>

Buy New

$18.75

List Price: $20.50
Save: $1.75 (9%)

FREE Shipping on orders with at least $25 of books.

In Stock.

Ships from and sold by Amazon.com. Gift-wrap available.

Turn on 1-Click ordering for this browser

Want it Monday, April 25? Order within and choose One-Day Shipping at checkout. Details

Ship to:

Select a shipping address:

Buy Used

$1.60

+ $3.99 shipping

Used: Acceptable | Details

Sold by tacoma_goodwill

Condition: Used: Acceptable

Comment: An acceptable and readable copy. All pages are intact, and the spine and cover are also intact. May have significant usage wear, age discoloration, stains, soil, exposure to moisture, tape, stickers, cover creases, cocked spine, bent boards, missing or damaged dust jacket, bumped corners, bent, folded, dog-eared, or foxed pages, previous owner label or name, remainder mark, inscription, notes, underlining and/or highlighting that does not obscure the text. Book only; no CDs, InfoTrac, Access Codes, Activation Keys, or other inclusions, unless otherwise noted.

Turn on 1-Click ordering for this browser

Have one to sell? Sell on Amazon

Flip to back Flip to front

Listen Playing... Paused You're listening to a sample of the Audible audio edition.
Learn more

See all 2 images

The Myth of Race Paperback – November 27, 2012

by Jefferson M. Fish (Author)

10 customer reviews

See all 2 formats and editions Hide other formats and editions

Price

New from

Used from

Kindle

"Please retry"

$6.66

—

Paperback

"Please retry"

$18.75

$11.80

$1.60

The Myth of Race deals concisely with a wide range of topics, from how the concept of race differs in different cultures and race relations in the United States, to IQ tests and the census. It draws on scientific knowledge to topple a series of myths that pass as facts, correct false assumptions, and clarify cultural misunderstandings about the highly charged topic of race.

The book demonstrates that the apparently straightforward concept of race is actually a confused mixture of two different concepts; and the confusion often leads to miscommunication. The first concept, biological race, simply doesn’t exist in the human species. Instead, what exists is gradual variation in what people look like (e.g., skin color and facial features) and in their genes, as you travel around the planet--with more distant populations appearing more different than closer ones. If you travel in different directions, the populations look different in different ways. The second concept, social race, is a set of cultural categories for labeling people based on how their ancestors were classified, selected aspects of what they look like, or various combinations of both. These sets of categories vary widely from one culture to another.

The Myth of Race

$18.75 FREE Shipping on orders with at least $25 of books. In Stock. Ships from and sold by Amazon.com. Gift-wrap available.

Frequently Bought Together

Customers Who Viewed This Item Also Viewed

Page 1 of 1 Start overPage 1 of 1

This shopping feature will continue to load items. In order to navigate out of this carousel please use your heading shortcut key to navigate to the next or previous heading.

Robert Wald Sussman

47

Paperback
$19.95
Jacqueline Jones

11

Hardcover
$24.08
Ben J. Wattenberg

5

Paperback
Daniel J. Fairbanks

8

Paperback
$15.02
Joseph Graves

19

Hardcover

NO_CONTENT_IN_FEATURE

Product Details

Paperback: 154 pages
Publisher: Argo-Navis (November 27, 2012)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0786754362
ISBN-13: 978-0786754366
Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 0.4 x 8.2 inches
Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #886,467 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1828 in Books > Medical Books > Psychology > Social Psychology & Interactions
- #2302 in Books > Health, Fitness & Dieting > Psychology & Counseling > Social Psychology & Interactions

Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?

Customers Viewing This Page May Be Interested In These Sponsored Links

(What's this?)

Customer Reviews

4.4 out of 5 stars

5 star		80%
4 star		0%
3 star		10%
2 star		0%
1 star		10%

See all 10 customer reviews

Share your thoughts with other customers

Write a customer review

Top Customer Reviews

A Timely and Powerful Exploration of the Concept of Race

By Jennifer Fleisher, Ed.M. on March 29, 2013

Format: Paperback Verified Purchase

"The Myth of Race" by Jefferson M. Fish is a slender, modestly priced 140-page volume that will surprise you with its depth, erudition and power - qualities which are delivered in exceptionally clear prose. Even individuals who have worked assiduously to rid their minds of biased perceptions of human difference will find "ah hah" moments when reading Dr. Fish's work. There seems no better person to deliver this message and no better time for this important work to be taken up and shared with as many readers as possible. This book is invaluable to a wide audience, from academics in a multitude of fields, to school teachers and their advanced readers, to general readers who seek to challenge the received ideas of our culture.

As a recent graduate with an advanced degree in the learning and teaching of languages, I was delighted to discover that the model for human diversity which remains once Dr. Fish has carefully removed layers of stubborn untruths is similar to our model of language development. Just as language change throughout history resembles subtle webs of variation in human language use rather than socially-constructed hierarchies and discrete entities, the model which best describes human biological diversity is a "tangled lattice."

But why do such myths persist? Not only does Dr. Fish's work present key understandings about the differences between biological and cultural conceptions of human beings and how these conceptions surface in institutions such as the national census and education based on IQ testing, he also includes a final chapter which hypothesizes a plausible reason for the persistence of race based on the work of biologist, Richard Dawkins, and his concept of "the meme.Read more ›

Comment 5 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...

Thank you for your feedback.

Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again

Report abuse

A Must Read for Diversity Studies

By Greg Miller on April 13, 2013

Format: Paperback

Carrying all the typical baggage of a middle class white suburban male Baby Boomer, I had no idea what to expect when I picked up Jeff Fish's new book, "The Myth of Race." My first thought was that Jeff's PhD would have its fingerprints all over any sociological discussion of race and I would also have been shocked if the book had started out like Steve Martin's "The Jerk" claiming that he was "born a young black boy" who one day discovered Mantovani and was liberated from his southern sharecropper's hut and life.
Jeff's explanations are clear, and the book, for all the ominous possibilities of an academic text, is a very entertaining read. From the standpoint of diversity studies it well could be a game changer. If I were designing a curriculum and wanted to ease students into a thorough study of people's perceptions of race, "The Myth of Race" would be an excellent starting point.
But aside from the book being an explanation of the misconceptions of race, this is written in such a straightforward, logical style that it ought to be a must read for everyone in our society. Of course, the only way that practically happens is if it's on a core requirement reading list in school. If I was marketing this personally, I'd be rapping on every sociology department head's door in college and every school district adding diversity studies in high school.
Jeff's book goes a long way to explain that biological race simply doesn't exist and that race is a social way of creating a cultural category for labeling people that vary. His book goes a long way to understanding the concept of race and dispels the myths. Racism is a "socially learned response to socially defined races.Read more ›

Comment 3 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...

Thank you for your feedback.

Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again

Report abuse

An fascinating inquiry into the science behind our ideas of race

By William Courson VINE VOICE on February 21, 2013

Format: Paperback

Jefferson M. Fish, PhD is Professor Emeritus of psychology at Saint John's University, New York City, where he served as department chair and as director of the doctoral program in clinical psychology. He has authored or edited a dozen books dealing with race, culture, psychotherapy, and drug policy, and is as he writes "a white psychologist from the Bronx, married [to] an African American anthropologist from Brooklyn." The author writes succinctly on a wide range of topics, from divergent cultural conceptions of race, to race relations in the United States and other countries, to the impact seen in psychological measurements in assessing racial differences, both real and supposed.

Dr. Fish writes from the perspective of a partner to a racially mixed marriage, as the parent of a mixed race child and, having spent several years as a visiting professor in Brazil, one who has experienced a culture as racially mixed as that of his homeland but existing in a dramatically differing cultural milieu. He became fascinated with the ways in which Brazilians conceived of race, leading to an interest in the differing biological, sociocultural and psychological perspectives on the phenomenon.

The author draws on scientific data to overthrow longstanding and widely held misconceptions about the contentious subject illustrating the fact that the seemingly straightforward concept of race is actually a conflation of two divergent notions, viz., the concept of biological race and that of social race. This is a misapprehension that often breeds miscommunication, and engenders social friction, mistrust and enmity among and between the groups these concepts define.Read more ›

Comment 3 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...

Thank you for your feedback.

Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again

Report abuse

See all 10 customer reviews (newest first)

Write a customer review

Most Recent Customer Reviews

A must-read!

This is a book which proves scientifically to the world that all humans, no matter what color they are or what they look like on the outside are all biologically the same. Read more

Published 5 months ago by Cathy

The usual soft-left counter-reality crap. There really is a difference...

The usual soft-left counter-reality crap. There really is a difference in races, IQ is at the top of the pile of mind-bendingly big differences. Read more

Published 18 months ago by Phil T. Tipp

A Doctor's Perspective

As an academic physician working in the field of pharmacogenetics I found the message of this thought-stimulating book, as having specific bearing on the current enthusiasm for... Read more

Published on November 13, 2013 by Hillel Halkin MD

A Sociocultural Invention

I agree with the scientists that there is no such thing as race, only trivial biological variations, and that it is a term that society came up with long ago. Read more

Published on June 27, 2013 by Markus Youssef

Interesting perspective on what race is really about

Jefferson Fish provides a perspective on race that most don't consider. For example, how is the biology of race so much different than the culture of race, and why has our society... Read more

Published on March 10, 2013 by Leigh Harris

Race May Be a Myth, but Racism is Real

Jefferson Fish's "The Myth of Race" deserves a wide audience. He reminds us that the term "race" has no biological meaning and is simply a sociocultural concept. Read more

Published on December 21, 2012 by LF, Ph.D.

Great book

I really enjoyed The Myth of Race. I find the author's comparison of race in the US and Brazil especially interesting. Read more

Published on December 5, 2012 by M.R.Adam

Set up an Amazon Giveaway

Amazon Giveaway allows you to run promotional giveaways in order to create buzz, reward your audience, and attract new followers and customers. Learn more

This item: The Myth of Race

Set up a giveaway