Race Classification and Asian Americans

Join us for an evening of provocative discussion with bestselling science writer Angela Saini as she discusses her latest book, Other: Race, Sex, and the Hidden Harms of Human Categories, with Sharmila Sen, Editorial Director of Harvard University Press. We often take racial categories as given. The truth is that each has its own historical backstory, sometimes more recent than we might imagine. Drawing from her new book, Saini illustrates the volatile and contested nature of human classification by sharing the remarkable story of how Indian immigrants, who were once categorized by US census officials as White, eventually came to be counted as Asian American. As their story shows, race is far from a biological category. How do scientists and researchers then handle race data when the categories and their meaning are always shifting? In the wake of the US Supreme Court’s decision to strike down race-conscious university admissions in 2023, Saini and Sen also ask how long any system built on the scaffolding of race classification can last, and what it means now for Asian Americans to be so heavily represented among university students at MIT and across the Ivy League. Copies of Other will be available for purchase and signing after the talk, courtesy of the MIT Press Bookstore. Refreshments will be served. We have a limited number of free tickets available for full-time students with ID. Please reach out to museumregadmin@mit.edu. Session info: February 18th 2027 6:00 - 7:30pm Admission- $5