Determinants of Genetic Essentialist Beliefs about Race: A Comparison of Canada and the United States
Wendy D. Roth, Professor of Sociology, University of Pennsylvania
Derek J. Robey, PhD Student, Department of Sociology, Harvard University
Moderator: Cat O'Donnell, PhD Student, Department of Sociology, Harvard University
Cosponsored by Culture and Social Analysis Workshop
Wendy D. Roth is a Professor of Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research focuses primarily on how social processes challenge racial and ethnic boundaries and transform classification systems, as well as how these processes change conceptions of the nature of race. Her book, Race Migrations: Latinos and the Cultural Transformation of Race (Stanford University Press 2012) examines how immigration changes cultural concepts of race, not only for the migrants themselves, but also for their host society, and for the societies they left behind. Her current work focuses on how genetic ancestry testing influences racial and ethnic identities, conceptions of race, racial attitudes, and racial interactions.
Derek J. Robey is a PhD student in Sociology at Harvard University studying how people in multicultural and diverse societies define cultural membership, adjudicate social worth, and distribute symbolic resources. His dissertation analyzes how people in the United States and Canada make sense of their nation’s historical legacy of racism, race, and ethnicity and project their nation’s future in these domains. He has also analyzed the impact of discrimination on decision-making processes and how cultural producers understand their professional obligations in relation to their moral values.