ANN ARBOR—As the burning of Black churches makes headlines, University of Michigan author Lawrence A. Hirschfeld offers a provocative analysis of why people think about race as they do. In “Race in the Making,” just published by MIT Press, Hirschfeld, associate professor of anthropology and psychology at the U-M, argues that “our minds seem to be organized in a way that makes thinking that the human world can be segmented into discrete racial populations an almost automatic part of our mental repertoire.” The book contends that regardless of what our senses seem to tell us, race is not a biological reality. “There is as much genetic variation within racial groups as there is between them,” Hirschfeld points out. “Who is white and who is not is a matter of politics, not biology.”

Most surprisingly, Hirschfeld presents findings showing that not only adults but even young children believe that race is a fundamental aspect of the human world, an intrinsic and important part of each person’s identity. In the book, Hirschfeld insists that understanding race and combatting racism require that we understand how our innate mental conceptions combine with political systems of power and oppression.

“Race is not merely a bad idea, but a deeply rooted bad idea,” he says. As an example of how psychological, cultural and political forces combine, Hirschfeld presents studies exploring how and when children come to believe the “one-drop of blood rule,” the belief that a person is Black if he or she has any traceable Black ancestry. The question is of interest not only because the one-drop rule is rooted in racism, but because it has no basis in biology, Hirschfeld says.

“Dark skin doesn’t genetically dominate lighter shades. The absurdity of the biological reading of the one-drop rule is obvious if we rephrase it. How reasonable is it to say that a white woman can give birth to a Black baby, but a Black woman can’t give birth to a white baby?” Hirschfeld found that U.S. adults are firm believers in the one-drop rule, “despite the fact that most of these individuals would be mortified if it were suggested that they hold racist beliefs.” He also found that children hold a version of the one-drop rule, although little evidence suggests that they were explicitly taught it. Intriguingly, the children’s version of the one-drop rule differs substantially from the adults’ version, suggesting that they develop the belief in part on their own.

Hirschfeld concludes that beliefs as culturally and politically important as the one-drop rule are shaped by our mental conceptions. He argues that effectively challenging such beliefs requires that we begin by acknowledging how psychologically compelling these sorts of beliefs are.

University of Michigan