Reasoning Through Race: Exploring College Students’ Use of Biology as Racial Authority

• In Event: Race and Contemporary Contexts

Abstract

This study examines how college students reason through the biological concept of race, and explores the roles of various types of authority in influencing this reasoning. Based on interviews with 40 undergraduate students recruited from two large, public, research universities on the U.S. West Coast, the study outlines three distinct forms of racial authority influencing students’ reasoning through complex racial issues. Experiential, scholarly, and scientific authority get used by students to back up their claims about the nature of race, and in particular, to reason through biological conceptions of race. Implications suggest that if higher education is not helping students to develop their own level of expertise, students will defer to authorities to reason through whether and how race matters.

Author

• Marc P. Johnston-Guerrero, The Ohio State University