The Confounding of Race in High School Biology Textbooks, 2014–2019

Abstract

Following on earlier examinations of biology high school textbooks’ handling of race, this study examines eleven biology textbooks, intended for US high school use and published between 2014 and 2019. It offers a close reading of these textbooks’ treatment of four topics that have been associated with race: genetic disorders, human origins, skin color, and eugenics, as well as the topic of race itself. While only one textbook has a section on “human races,” another nine refer directly or indirectly to race across these five topics. The textbooks’ treatment of genetic disorders gives a marked, if uneven, prominence to race and ethnicity. Their coverage of human origins and skin color largely undermines concepts of race essentialism and racial classification. At other points, the same textbooks introduce studies, questions, and concepts that reinforce the biological reality of race, much as was done by the textbooks of two and three generations ago. The study draws parallels between these textbooks’ decidedly mixed message on race and a similar stance present in the current biomedical research literature. In the face of this mixed message, three sets of pedagogical strategies—fact-checking, historical, and meta-scientific—are proposed that teachers might use with current biology textbooks to raise awareness of the varied positions that scientists have taken in the past and continue to take on questions of race and biology.