PHILADELPHIA -- Every day the public is served a steady diet of news stories that have one thing in common: racial statistics. From African-American test scores to Asian-American mobility, to Latino migration trends, the media reports study after study based on race-related numbers.

Tukufu Zuberi, a sociology professor and director of the African American Studies Program at the University of Pennsylvania argues that when statistics are interpreted in a racist manner, no matter how inadvertent the racism may be, the public is misled.

"By employing racial statistics and interpreting race as a cause, well-intentioned scholars often legitimate the use of methodologies that perpetuate the problems they seek to solve," Zuberi said.

In his new book, "Thicker Than Blood: Why Racial Statistics Lie," he describes the way race-differentiated data is misinterpreted in the social sciences and asks essential questions about the way racial statistics are used: What is the value of knowing the income disparities or differences in crime and incarceration rates, differences in test scores, infant mortality rates, abortion frequencies or choices of sexual partner between different racial groups? How does the availability of this information shape public discourse, alter scientific research agendas, inform political decision making and ultimately influence the very social meaning of racial difference?

Zuberi will address how the social meaning of race affects the way we interpret quantitative representations of racial reality in a series of public talks, readings and book signings at Penn, Rutgers University and Columbia University.