Can Skeletons Have a Racial Identity?

 

Catherine Berkery 

Mr. Ippolito 

10/21/21 

Current Event 5

 

Imbler, Sabrina. “Can Skeletons Have a Racial Identity?” The New York Times, The New York Times, 19 Oct. 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/19/science/anthropology-skeleton-race.html.   

 

            This article is about how a forensic anthropologist uses facial and skull bones to estimate one’s ancestry. The main job of anthropologists is to look at bones and find out the cause of people's death. Dr. Hrdlicka, an expert in the field, helped law enforcement identify human remains, laying the blueprint for the professional field. Forensic anthropologists thereafter were expected to produce a profile with the “Big Four” which is, age at death, sex, height and race. In this article they also address how the term race should be replaced with ancestry in the anthropologists findings. They hope to see this change in the years to come.  Lastly, the bones are often weathered, fragmenting the DNA. Estimating affinity or resemblance in bone structure can “help to provide a preponderance of evidence,” Dr. Spradley said.  

            This article is relevant in forensic science because it directly talks about a forensic anthropologist and the purpose of their job. We are able to learn from Dr. Hrdlicka is an anthropologist about the way the bones contribute to finding DNA. But most importantly we learn that anthropologists are trying to change the finding name of race in the bones to ancestry to not offend people.  

            In this article there are not many things the other needs to critique, but I think the author could have added in more information about how they get the bones, the kind analysis they do and how they study the bones. Lastly this article was enjoyable to read and taught me more about the true job of a forensic anthropologist.