Lies About Race: Dorothy Roberts and Fatal Invention

Lies About Race: Dorothy Roberts and Fatal Invention: There's a reason we'll never come to a consensus on the most accurate racial classifications for Barack Obama or Tiger Woods. There's a reason questions about ethnicity on the census and college applications feel impossible to an increasing number of Americans. There's a reason you can be black in the United States, colored in South Africa and something else entirely in Brazil.

According to Dorothy Roberts, author of Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-Create Race in the Twenty-First Century, it's because, despite centuries of efforts to treat race as if it's a biological category, it is no more than social construction -- created to oppress people -- that changes with place, time and perspective.

The Root talked to Roberts about the profit that's behind the re-emergence of myths about race, the impact for African Americans and health, and how we can continue to talk about it, minus the long-standing lies.