racism | Forthright Radio

This edition of Forthright Radio features Princeton University Anthropology Professor, Agustín Fuentes. His research focuses on the biocultural, delving into the entanglement of biological systems and the social and cultural lives of humans, our ancestors, and a few of the other animals with whom humanity shares close relations. Trained in both zoology and anthropology, his early work looked at the behavior and ecology of humans and other primates, and their patterns and trends in social organization. In the early 2000s, he added a focus on human biological variation, and the use – and misuse – of those patterns and processes in the context of race/racism and sex/gender.

Among his books, which we discuss in our interview with him, are his most recently published in 2025, SEX IS A SPECTRUM: THE BIOLOGICAL LIMITS OF THE BINARY; as well as his earlier, RACE, MONOGAMY, AND OTHER LIES THEY TOLD YOU; and THE CREATIVE SPARK: HOW IMAGINATION MADE HUMANS EXCEPTIONAL.

Illustration: Gender sexuality sex symbols – AnonMoos, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Articles, etc. pertinent to this conversation:

Politics, Not Biology, Is Driving Legal Efforts to Classify Sex https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-trump-administrations-legal-argument-to-classify-sex-is-bad-biology/

This is not the time to step back from diversity, equity, and inclusion https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adz9026

Sex, Biology, And Sports: Data And Context Matter https://americananthro.org/present-tense/sex-biology-and-sports-data-and-context-matter/

An initial report of circa 241,000- to 335,000-year-old rock engravings and their relation to Homo naledi in the Rising Star cave system, South Africa https://elifesciences.org/articles/89102

Human rights court says Caster Semenya did not get fair hearing in seven-year sex eligibility rules fight https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6485335/2025/07/10/caster-semenya-trial-athletics/?searchResultPosition=1

Caster Semenya: ‘I’m Still a Woman’ https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/31/books/review/caster-semenya-the-race-to-be-myself.html?searchResultPosition=8

19 States Sue to Block White House Plan to End Gender-Related Care for Minors https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/23/us/states-lawsuit-kennedy-gender-care-hospitals.html

Health workers decry hasty House bills to ban gender-affirming care for children: ‘They hurt people’ https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/17/house-bills-ban-gender-affirming-care-children

3 Democrats Signed on to Marjorie Taylor Green’s Bill Criminalizing Trans Youth Care https://www.them.us/story/marjorie-taylor-greene-trans-gender-youth-care-bill-pass-criminalize

They’re doing to America what they did to Christianity https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2025/nov/23/america-christian-evangelical-discrimination-immigration excerpt from this essay by Bill McKibben:

…Doug Wilson, the self-taught pastor who co-founded Pete Hegseth’s denomination has insisted that it was a mistake to let women vote. (He also teaches that sex “cannot be made into an egalitarian pleasuring party”, because “a man penetrates, conquers, colonizes, plants. A woman receives, surrenders, accepts.”)….

Judge orders Montana DMV to issue driver’s license to youth who applied as nonbinary https://montanafreepress.org/2025/12/05/judge-orders-montana-dmv-to-issue-drivers-license-to-youth-who-applied-as-nonbinary/

How Monogamous Are Humans Actually? https://nautil.us/how-monogamous-are-humans-actually-1253734/?utm_source=firefox-newtab-en-us

Humans rank above meerkats but below beavers in monogamy league table https://www.theguardian.com/science/2025/dec/10/humans-rank-among-leading-monogamous-mammals-study-finds

BRYAN STEVENSON is the executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Alabama, and a professor of law at New York University School of Law. He has won relief for dozens of condemned prisoners, argued five times before the US Supreme Court , and won national acclaim for his work challenging bias against the poor and people of color. He has received numerous awards, including the MacArthur Foundation “Genius” Grant.

He will be delivering the Convocation Speech to the incoming Freshman Class at MSU Bozeman on August 24, 2017.

Great-grandson of slaves, he attended “colored” schools. As a young attorney, he created The Equal Justice Initiative to address the hierarchies of inequality in the criminal justice system. He says, “America is a post-genocide society.” “The great evil of American slavery was not the involuntary servitude and forced labor, the great evil was how we created this ideology of white supremacy.”

Professor MARC BEKOFF

Marc Bekoff is professor emeritus of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and co-founder with Jane Goodall of Ethologists for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. He has published more than 1000 essays (popular, scientific, and book chapters), 30 books, and has edited three encyclopedias. His latest book is THE ANIMALS’ AGENDA: FREEDOM, COMPASSION AND COEXISTENCE IN THE HUMAN AGE, co-written with Jessica Pierce, and published by Beacon Press (2017). http://www.beacon.org/The-Animals-Agenda-P1250.aspx

This interview was prompted by his recent interview with Brooks Fahy of Predator Defense (predatordefense.org), whose investigative work exposes shocking activity at the US Dept of Agriculture, as well as the complicity of wildlife organizations, such as Defenders of Wildlife and The Humane Society of the US, in the “Administrative Removal”, i.e. killing, of wolves in national forests.

There is a separate posting for our full interview with only Professor Bekoff and more specific citations referenced here:

https://forthrightradio.wordpress.com/2017/08/16/marc-bekoff-the-animals-agenda-freedom-compassion-and-coexistence-in-the-human-age/

THE PROFANITY PEAK PACK: SET UP & SOLD OUT

http://www.predatordefense.org/profanity/

EXPOSED: THE USDA’S SECRET WAR ON WILDLIFE

http://www.predatordefense.org/exposed/

Wolves and Cows: Individual and Organizational Conflicts

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/animal-emotions/201708/wolves-and-cows-individual-and-organizational-conflicts