Posts by Agustín Fuentes

Engage race and racism or more people will die and many will continue to suffer While nine Americans lay dead on the floor of a famous church in Charleston, South Carolina, thousands of Americans were making racist jokes, crossing the street to avoid a young black man, bemoaning how governmental handouts favored minorities, and/or assuming…

Ignorance underlies most claims about the conflict between science and religion Christians are against evolution, scientists are against God (or gods), and the worlds of science and religion are locked in battle. Right? Wrong.  Even a small bit of homework shows that there is no inherent conflict between most religions and science, but that does not stop some…

Film & TV media sell females short Boys will be boys and girls will be girls, right? Not exactly. There is a wide range of ways to do gender right, to be successfully female and male, but this knowledge does not prevent much of society from forcing restrictive gender stereotypes on us ad nauseum. What young boys and girls…

It’s not entirely, or even mostly, about the evolution of the species. We’re often told that how or why we have sex is the result of an evolved strategy. Such assertions seek to inform us of the real reason why we have sex the way we do—and most people equate “evolved” with “natural.” This is…

Are racism, rage, and violence inevitable? What happened in Ferguson is not a surprise. It was predictable and some would argue inevitable. But these events are not just about what happened between Darren Wilson and Michael Brown. They are not just about being Black or White. And they are not due to something innate in our…

Why do we always blame either nature or nurture for what we do? Dump nature/nurture  Why do we always blame either nature or nurture for what we do? My genes made me do it. My upbringing made me do it. My culture made me do it. My biology made me do it. No matter what “it” is, we always seem…

Nicholas Wade has taken to The Huffington Post to respond to criticism of his book. In his response to comments by me, Jon Marks (also here) and Jennifer Raff, he does not take on any substantive aspect of the debate; rather, he misrepresents the science again and takes a shot at our credentials as scholars.…

An anthropologist challenges the idea that we’re no better than animals. It is believed by some — given those responsible for the recent violence perpetrated in today’s news — that most rapists are men, most sexual harassers are men, and most incidents of domestic abuse resulting in injury are caused by men. Some would argue that men…

On May 5, one day before Nicholas Wade’s new book A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race and Human History came out, I appeared with him in a webinar sponsored by the American Anthropological Association. It was a striking experience. I expected there to be a strong back-and-forth debate about the research on human genetics and how…

Do genetic data prove that there are multiple biological races in humans today? This post is in response to Welcome to Genetic Crossroads by Jesse Reynolds On May 5th, 2014, I shared the platform in a webinar debate with Nicholas Wade (former NYTimes Science Writer) about his new book “A Troublesome Inheritance – A discussion…