NEWSFLASH: WE'RE ALL THE SAME I recommend the whole article, but here's a taste: "'I am an African American,' says Duana Fullwiley [professor of anthropology and of African and African American studies at Harvard], 'but in parts of Africa, I am white.' To do fieldwork as a medical anthropologist in Senegal, she says, 'I take a plane to France, a seven- to eight-hour ride. My race changes as I cross the Atlantic. There, I say, Je suis noire, and they say, Oh, okay—métisse—you are mixed. Then I fly another six to seven hours to Senegal, and I am white. … Is race, then, purely a social construct? The fact that racial categories change from one society to another might suggest it is. … Genetic science has revolutionized biology and medicine, and even rewritten our understanding of human history. But the fact that human beings are 99.9 percent identical genetically, as Francis Collins and Craig Venter jointly announced at the White House on June 26, 2000, when the rough draft of the human genome was released, risks being lost, some scholars fear, in an emphasis on human genetic difference. Both in federally funded scientific research and in increasingly popular practice—such as ancestry testing, which often purports to prove or disprove membership in a particular race, group, or tribe—genetic testing has appeared to lend scientific credence to the idea that there is a biological basis for racial categories. In fact, 'There is no genetic basis for race,' says Fullwiley, who has studied the ethical, legal, and social implications of the human genome project with sociologist Troy Duster at UC, Berkeley."