The Myth of Race and the Human Sciences

Bibliographic Data

ID4048365
AuthorsJohn H Stanfield (corresponding author)
Year1995
Volume64
Issue3
Pages218
Publication date1995-01-01
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe Journal of Negro Education (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0022-2984 • E-ISSN: 2167-6437
PublisherJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/2967204
OpenAlexW32577848
LanguageEN
Citations received12
References cited33

This article presents a critical assessment of two major schools of thought in the sciences relative to the mythology of race: logical positivism and social realism. In reviewing both, it maintains that while confronting and resisting the intellectual substance of racist arguments of scientists is essential, questioning the very nature of science as a way of knowing is even more necessary. It concludes with discussion of an alternative, emerging school of thought: science for the people as a means to facilitate the empowerment of the oppressed, who are usually viewed simply as human subjectsfor dominant-group analysis. The sciences are those paradigms, theories, methods, and substantive areas preoccupied with the empirical study of beings in their physical and social habitats. They include the social sciences and the concerns of the biological, genetic, and medical sciences. There are two ways of interpreting the history and the sociology of sciences that have great bearing on the ways in which we come to understand the place of persons of African descent in the intellectual and policy frameworks these sciences produce: logical positivism and social realism

Mythology · Race (biology · Sociology · Classics · Contemporary Sociological Theory and Practice · Critical Race Theory in Education · Gender Studies · History · Race, History, and American Society

Tools

Open DOISci-Hub