Race in a Genetic World
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Is race, then, purely a social construct? The fact that racial categories change from one society to another might suggest it is. But now, says [Donna] Fullwiley, assistant professor of anthropology and of African and African American studies, genetic methods, with their precision and implied accuracy, are being used in the same way that physical appearance has historically been used: “to build—to literally construct—certain ideas about why race matters.”
Genetic science has revolutionized biology and medicine, and even rewritten our understanding of human history. But the fact that human beings are 99.9 percent identical genetically, as Francis Collins and Craig Venter jointly announced at the White House on June 26, 2000, when the rough draft of the human genome was released, risks being lost, some scholars fear, in an emphasis on human genetic difference. Both in federally funded scientific research and in increasingly popular practice—such as ancestry testing, which often purports to prove or disprove membership in a particular race, group, or tribe—genetic testing has appeared to lend scientific credence to the idea that there is a biological basis for racial categories.
In fact, “There is no genetic basis for race,” says Fullwiley, who has studied the ethical, legal, and social implications of the human genome project with sociologist Troy Duster at UC, Berkeley. She sometimes quotes Richard Lewontin, now professor of biology and Agassiz professor of zoology emeritus, who said much the same thing in 1972, when he discovered that of all human genetic variation (which we now know to be just 0.1 percent of all genetic material), 85 percent occurs within geographically distinct groups, while 15 percent or less occurs between them. The issue today, Fullwiley says, is that many scientists are mining that 15 percent in search of human differences by continent.
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Nor can genetic tests verify a person’s race or ethnicity. Genes that affect skin pigmentation or blood proteins involved in malarial resistance, the authors note, may not measure direct and unique ancestry (for example, a founder effect), but reflect instead an evolutionary response to “shared environmental exposures.” Furthermore, the tests are based on comparisons to databases of DNA from living populations, and are therefore vulnerable to “systematic bias” because of “incomplete geographic sampling” or the fact that “present-day patterns of residence are rarely identical to what existed in the past.” One testing company even uses an underlying model that “reinforces the archaic racial view that four discrete ‘parental’ populations (Africans, Europeans, East Asians, and Native Americans) existed in the past” even though “there is little evidence that four biologically discrete groups of humans ever existed. . . .”
{snip}
Lost in the discussion about genes, [Fullwiley] fears, are “epigenetic” influences: factors that affect gene expression but are not part of one’s genetic code, such as prenatal nutrition (which may influence rates of heart disease late in life). Such biosocial factors—environmental, cultural, and economic—can sometimes be more influential than genes. Fullwiley questions, for example, if the prevalence of diabetes among Native Americans on reservations, or of asthma among U.S. Latinos, is only genetic. Her research in Senegal has reinforced that doubt. Scientists have long searched for a genetic difference that would explain why many Senegalese experience a relatively mild form of sickle cell disease. Fullwiley’s work suggests that many of them may instead be mitigating their symptoms with a widespread cultural practice: phytotherapy—the ingestion of roots from a plant that, preliminary studies suggest, triggers production of fetal hemoglobin, a blood-cell type that doesn’t sickle. “When environmental history, or evolutionary history, gets reduced to racial or ethnic difference,” she says, “that’s a big mistake.”
Not all genetics projects are so potentially divisive, however. In February, Spencer Wells, Ph.D. ‘94, a former Lewontin student, came to Harvard to tell a story of human connectedness. Wells, who heads the joint National Geographic Society-IBM nonprofit Genographic Project, spent an afternoon with student members of the Harvard Foundation, which represents 72 student organizations “from the Albanian Society to the Vietnamese Society,” says director S. Allen Counter. Wells had previously invited the students to participate in the Genographic Project by sending in cheek swabs with their DNA for analysis. “The idea,” says Counter, “was to show a diverse group of students how they connect to the rest of humanity.”
Wells has created a human family tree that traces “the journey of man” (as he titled his 2002 book) in populating the entire planet from a homeland in Africa. The project has used linguistic and genetic studies to guide its sampling of indigenous populations from around the globe—many of them isolated and remote—and now has the world’s largest and most representative anthropological database of human DNA.
At Harvard, a Pakistani-American student whose family had always told her they were originally from an area near the Arabian Sea had this confirmed by her DNA result. “Your family was part of the first migration out of Africa,” noted Wells. “You share that with the Australian aborigines.” An African-American student with ancestors from East Africa carried a genetic signature characteristic of that region. But an Asian-American student was surprised to find that she carried almost the same genetic markers as a Mexican-American student. Wells explained, “There is only one change, but you are fairly different because your lines diverged a long time ago. Still, you are part of the same branch of the tree”: the Native Americans who populated the Western Hemisphere originally came from Asia.
Fullwiley’s own ethnographic research among genetic scientists suggests that much of current medical genetics may reinforce ideas of racial difference. Because certain diseases occur at higher frequencies in some populations (sickle cell anemia in blacks, Tay-Sachs disease in Jews of eastern European ancestry), they have become linked to the idea of race, even when the disease does not result from common ancestry. Sickle cell trait, for example, has arisen independently in several populations as an evolutionary response to malaria. The genetic change appeared first in India and then in Africa; it is also found in Greeks and Italians. But in the United States, Fullwiley says, sickle cell trait is very much linked to African-American racial identity through the history of medicine.
She says the potential for racialization of medical genetics has been institutionalized because “you can’t get a grant from the NIH unless you recruit in racial groups, label people by census category, and then report back the data in terms of outcomes by racial type.” The original intent—to counter the widespread use of the white male body as the working research norm—is “fine and good,” she says, but there “ought to be some flexibility to these race categories, and some thinking about what they mean. This new construction of race . . . is socially inflected—but it is not solely a social construct because biology is front and center.”
(Posted on April 22, 2008)
Comments
Uh, not quite. Chimpanzees and humans have almost all the same genes too.
“99.4 percent of the most critical DNA sites are identical in the corresponding human and chimp genes …”
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn3744-chimps-are-human-gene-study-implies.html
Posted by Carlos at 5:09 PM on April 22
“Nor can genetic tests verify a person’s race or ethnicity.”
Is this woman an affirmative geneticist, an extra-terrestial from outer space, or is she simply mad? Genetics can now not only determine racial origin, but even distinguish Frenchmen from Italians!
http://dienekes.blogspot.com/2008_02_01_archive.html
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/data/319/5866/1100/DC1/1
“She sometimes quotes Richard Lewontin, now professor of biology and Agassiz professor of zoology emeritus, who said much the same thing in 1972, when he discovered that of all human genetic variation (which we now know to be just 0.1 percent of all genetic material), 85 percent occurs within geographically distinct groups, while 15 percent or less occurs between them. “
What about if you quoted similar data from other mammals, dear lady? What an irony that just this number is typical for animals divided into subspecies by biologists!
http://www.goodrumj.com/RFaqHTML.html
Posted by at 6:03 PM on April 22
Don’t even need to read very far into this.
Hes towing the usual line, and being black, he has all the more reason to, lest his kind be discovered as having certain innate traits that shine dimly upon them. Though it doesn’t matter. The truth is slowly coming to surface, people see reality with their own eyes, and all the multi cult lies in the world wont save them.
Posted by Stuck in No Mans Land at 6:24 PM on April 22
The edited out first paragraph of the article contains the “insecure mulatto fallacy:” that is, “people in Africa think I am white, people in the USA think I am black; therefore, race does not exist.”
I bring it up because it gives a clue to the methodology here. How can one test for a characteristic which has already been defined as a figment of the imagination? If you don’t know what you are looking for, how can you be surprised when you don’t find it?
Posted by Dave at 7:28 PM on April 22
Donkeys and horses can interbreed but that is not sufficient to claim there is no basis for genetic differences between the two.
Posted by at 7:29 PM on April 22
More wasted time and money trying to deny the obvious.
Posted by at 7:50 PM on April 22
Obviously wrong, and yet even if this were true, it wouldn’t matter. What is undeniable is that Blacks etc look and act like a different “people”. Whenever one people is pitted against another on the same turf, there is an issue.
Posted by at 7:54 PM on April 22
“But the fact that human beings are 99.9 percent identical”
Chimps are 99.4% genetically identical to humans but that doesn’t mean we’re the same. It’s that 0.6% differential that makes all the difference in the world.
Posted by at 7:57 PM on April 22
Only .01%? No wonder it’s so difficult telling the difference. I’ll bet this genius is highly respected, by her peers. She has undoubtedly taken genetic study to a new level. Perhaps she used her genes as a comparison.
Posted by The Old Sage at 8:00 PM on April 22
Ridiculously easy to debunk. A simple blood test will reveal a person’s race these days.
Posted by at 8:02 PM on April 22
You have got to be joking.
According to these academics, I am more similar to a Bantu African tribesman than my white next door neighbour?
This is the realm of junk science. Remember the article not too long ago boasting how black populations are more genetically diverse than white populations, the inference being whites are genetically less hardy and less able to stand massive environmental change?
Posted by ODDL at 8:08 PM on April 22
Quality > Quantity. Suppose it’s true and we’re all 99.9% alike. And furthermore, racial differences are only 15% of that remaining .1%. Who cares? Does that tell us what genes are different? Does that tell us how crucial or important those genes are at determining criminality, intelligence, honesty, beauty, or any other trait? No, it doesn’t. Therefore, these people have NO IDEA how much racial differences MATTER to humans, who don’t really care if we share the same genes for breathing, but care very deeply about things like law-abiding, upstanding, intelligent, beautiful, self-sufficient, and other virtues we want our neighbors and countrymen to embody.
There ARE genetic racial differences, they admit it themselves. The only question is WHAT are they and HOW MUCH do they matter to ordinary human values. If for instance, there’s a genetic IQ gap, which every study supports, and IQ is one of the most valuable goods/traits/qualities a human being can have, then necessarily race means quite a lot to people who prefer the superior to the inferior.
Posted by Diamed at 8:11 PM on April 22
Depending on what is their political objective of the moment, these same superstitious “intellectuals” who tell us that “Humans are 99.9% genetically similar regardless of race”, also tell us that the Chimpanzee is also 99.9% genetically similar to the various species of humans.
It would be interesting to learn the methodology they employ to cook up these figures.
Ronald
Posted by Ronald at 8:50 PM on April 22
Just an excuse to race mix with non blacks.
Posted by at 8:56 PM on April 22
Like Freddy Krueger, this absurd myth just keeps coming back. What Fullwiley is saying is that a dog breeder with two poodles is quitely likely to get schnauzer or dachsund puppies, since there the race of a couple’s offspring is not genetically determined by the race of the parents.
Did she get her diploma out of a vending machine?
Posted by Michael C. Scott at 9:00 PM on April 22
All computers are 99.9 percent identical. The difference is the CPU or central processor: the 0.1 percent responsible for the ability to acquire and work out information, and this tiny difference makes all the difference.
How is it possible to explain to an affirmative action ‘professor’, I don’t know?
Posted by alex at 9:29 PM on April 22
It is repulsive to see science used to deceitfully support sociological flim-flam, dressed up as Anthropology, etc. Whereas genetic study clearly shows to those who would see, that race is no “social construct,” no matter how similar human racial-types may be. They use statistics in such a was as to apprently presume we are all too stupid to see what is so obvious it is laughable. Men and woman are genetically 99.9% identical also - do we suggest that there are no “real” differences between the sexes?(well, I suppose some post-feminist types may indeed argue such nonsense) The Great Dane and the Chihuahua are also nearly identical genetically - are they the same creature, possessed of the same strengths, weaknesses, abilities, etc??
It could only be in a day and age as twisted and decadent as we live in today, that science is cynically used to “disprove” what is obviously true, and deceitfully “support” was is certainly false!
Posted by HH at 9:37 PM on April 22
There was a time that I would have read all this codswallop, sighed, and said, “Well, I guess I was wrong all along.” But I’ve learned a lot in the intervening years. This jumped-up mulatto wants us to believe that there is no such thing as race. But I’ll bet a dollar to a doughnut that she would turn right around and insist that affirmative action is a positive good, and should be continued for blacks indefinitely. My mother used to say that’s “wanting to have your cake and eat it too.” Of course there is such a thing as race — and all the over-educated morons in the world like this one, swearing on a stack of bibles, won’t change that.
Posted by Wayne Engle at 9:59 PM on April 22
All I can do is repeat myself - if there are no races, there is no need for affirmative action. The minorities always want something from whitey.
Posted by Lost in Paradise at 10:14 PM on April 22
All I can do is repeat myself - if there are no races, there is no need for affirmative action. The minorities always want something from whitey.
Posted by Lost in Paradise at 10:21 PM on April 22
“In fact, “There is no genetic basis for race,” says Fullwiley,”
Being black or mulatto disqualifies her to be taken seriously by anyone who isn’t a leftist boob, because 99.9% of blacks are unable to offer an untainted appraisal of anything of a racial nature.
And so far as her being perceived as a scientist is concerned, it would only be because that’s how she arrogantly describes herself, because I have no doubt any accreditation she has received has been awarded to her as an AA beneficiary with special privileges.
Her opinions are absolutely useless, and, like the poster above, I think it’s plain to see right away what she has to say is such nonsense it isn’t necessary to get too far into the article to understand it’s nothing but infantile observations.
Posted by w.r. at 10:28 PM on April 22
Nor can genetic tests verify a person’s race or ethnicity.
A lie. Forensic scientists can easily determine a suspect’s race from a sample of his DNA. One may as well try to argue that sex is social construct. (Actually, I’m sure there are some feminazis who do just that.)
But the fact that human beings are 99.9 percent identical genetically, as Francis Collins and Craig Venter jointly announced at the White House on June 26, 2000, when the rough draft of the human genome was released, risks being lost, some scholars fear, in an emphasis on human genetic difference.
We share 50% of our genes with bananas, thanks to our common eukaryotic heritage. We share 99% of our genes with chimpanzees, thanks to a common ancestry with them that diverged about 6 million years ago. The claimed average differences among races made by Amren are subtle, readily explained by a 0.1% difference in genes. The differences between one breed of dog and another are greater than the differences that race realists claim for human races, yet breeds of dogs are almost identical at the genetic level.
Posted by WR the elder at 10:41 PM on April 22
Race is a social construct? Only an educated idiot would buy this line of reasoning. Race is a biological and cultural reality. Unless you are blind you can tell different races apart from hundreds of yards away. These liberal scientific idealogues will always twist facts to tell lies in support of their Marxist utopianism. Something is only “true” to these people if it supports their pre-conceived notions.
Posted by Enough at 10:47 PM on April 22
That being the case, I’m sure she’ll gladly give up any benefits she’s gotten from affirmative action. She’ll also denounce the practice since it’s based on something with no substance.
Posted by jewamongyou at 10:56 PM on April 22
An anthroplogy prof. is not qualified to make these statements. It would take a geneticist or a biophysicist. This is like saying that all auto mechanics agree there is no difference in the races.Who would listen.
Posted by Superwhite at 10:59 PM on April 22
“Race matters” because race is real.
All these people give us is theory after theory after theory to explain what’s obvious to any honest human being.
A lie repeated a thousand times is still a lie. The difference between a race realists’ understanding of race and race deniers is that while they have theories, we have reality. Reality trumps theories.
Again we’re left with the Orwellian cognitive dissonance: we’re all the same but different.
Posted by sbuffalonative at 11:34 PM on April 22
I believe that from one man (Adam), God made every nation of men, and that there is only one “race”—the human race.
As sbuffalonative wrote, “A lie repeated a thousand times is still a lie.” Although the majority of scientists believe in the theory, there are many who are increasingly questioning Darwinian evolution.
Posted by Acts 17:26 at 12:33 AM on April 23
“Remember the article not too long ago boasting how black populations are more genetically diverse than white populations, the inference being whites are genetically less hardy and less able to stand massive environmental change?”
I read these enlightening and progressive articles every day. Of course had the lady dared write the opposite, that whites are superior, she would have lost her job. The left is more obsessed with race than Amren, and generally make it official, they’re just obsessed in different way. No matter how you slice it, they’re possessed in the wrong way.
Posted by LHathaway at 9:20 AM on April 23
The figure of 99.9% dates from 2000, and has recently been revised to 99.7%, tripling the number of genes with differences, by several scientists including Craig Venter. Of course no-one wants to get involved in serious discussion as to the implications of this, especially after the fate of Dr.James Watson.
Posted by Peter M. Clarke at 9:23 AM on April 23
Racism is a cultural phenomenom; not a genomic one. You can spot a racist by the fact that they initiate separatist talk and action as a starting point for all social issues. In this day in age, blacks and hispanics are the biggest racists in the US by far. They are all about separatism… with other people’s money, of course. Whites don’t think that way until threatened. And the blacks and hispanics are constantly engaging in threatening rhetoric and actions against whites.
Posted by AvgDude at 9:25 AM on April 23
If “race” is not real then “evolution” is not real. That idiot Gould was trying to propagate the new magic evolution that just happened no genetics involved, his only real taker seem to be Ben Stein who is lableing genetic science as “nazi science.” But we white men should only blame ourselves for allowing story tellers to claim they are scientists.
Posted by Simmons at 9:57 AM on April 23
Even the term “species” does not denote the black-and-white concept that many people think it does. If there are no races maybe species also do not exist.
http://terriermandotcom.blogspot.com/2006/05/inbred-thinking.html
(…)
Most people assume a Mallard duck is a Mallard duck. Aren’t all Mallards simply clones of each other?
Well, No. You see, ducks hybridize all the time. What appears to be a Mallard may, in fact, have a little Gadwall crossed into it, or a little Black Duck, or even a bit of Greenwinged duck tucked into its double-helix.
In the duck world, where success is defined in Darwinian terms, there are no closed registries. While animals within a species tend to mate with others of the species in the same area, new blood flies, walks or swims in all the time. In the case of ducks, it may even come from across the ocean — or from an entirely different duck species.
(…)
What is true for ducks is true for a lot of animals. Not only will individual animals often travel great distances to find unoccupied territories, they may also cross the species barrier as they do so. A wolf will mate with both a dog AND a coyote, while finches leap across the species barrier at the drop of a hat. A spotted owl will freely mate with a barred owl, while most amazon parrots freely cross breed. A lion can mate with a tiger and produce fertile offspring, and an African elephant can cross breed with an Asian elephant. A muskellunge will cross with a northern pike, and a sunfish will cross with a bluegill. Trout and salmon species readily hybridize. Many species of hawks and falcons will also cross the species line, while a buffalo will cross with a cow. Just last week a hunter in Alaska shot an animal that turned out to be a cross between a polar bear and a grizzly.
The point here is not that trans-species outcrosses are common, but that even between distinct species Mother Nature often runs her train “loose on the tracks,” and a considerable amount of genetic wobble is allowed.
(…)
Posted by at 10:20 AM on April 23
Here is Jared Taylor’s brilliant reply to ‘anti-racist activist’ Tim Wise’s contention that ‘race is a social construct.’”
“…The United States has no difficulty when it comes to affirmative action in determining who is black and who is not…”
http://www.amren.com/interviews/wisetaylor.htm
Bon
Posted by BonBon at 11:05 AM on April 23
Communists are atheists and watching them attempt to explain the “accidental” origins of the cosmos and human beings is always good for a laugh.
The Bible says that God created man in his own image. I do not believe that Adam and Eve were African black-skinned semi-human fur-covered semi-simian monstrosities, because I don’t believe that The Almighty is a black-skinned semi-human fur-covered semi-simian monstrosity…
Posted by at 11:08 AM on April 23
—In fact, “There is no genetic basis for race,” says Fullwiley, who has studied the ethical, legal, and social implications of the human genome project with sociologist Troy Duster at UC, Berkeley.—
An African American Studies professor filling a quota in the Anthropology department and a Berkeley sociologist issue their authoratative judgment on the science of genetics - is this academia or the Acme Comedy Club? There’s hardly a difference any more.
Posted by Civilized Neighbor at 12:59 PM on April 23
All humans may have 99.9 percent the same genes but what is left out of the equation here is gene frequency which can vary between differing populations.
Posted by Robert at 4:08 PM on April 23
You have to differ between genes that encode for proteins and regulator genes which determine how much of them there are. The difference between species in protein genes are much less than the difference in regulator genes, this also goes for human races. IIRC the difference between a black and a white regulator complex is around 10%. When Venter said that there were no race differences he was just showing his lack of personal morale.
Posted by Information Insurgent at 4:26 PM on April 23
She get applauded for her dubious research, and Dr. Watson, a true DNA authority, gets sternly rebuked.
Posted by at 5:07 PM on April 23
“……..there are many who are increasingly questioning Darwinian evolution.”
Posted by Acts 17:26 at 12:33 AM on April 23
> There may be in America, where the sciences are failing and the level of ignorance is growing.
NO, what they don’t understand is that the DNA stand is so huge that a small percentage of it is still a lot of space for differentiation of race and other individual characteristics as well.
Posted by Whiteplight at 10:14 PM on April 23
Great, then all racial preferences can be stopped now as there is no way to determine race, right?
Posted by at 5:03 AM on April 24
Time is a social construct too, yet we all know it is there.
Posted by A. Windaus at 6:47 AM on April 24
If there is no such thing as race, then this woman should give up her position as professor of African and African American studies.
Posted by ex-liberal at 7:21 AM on April 24
“NO, what they don’t understand is that the DNA stand is so huge that a small percentage of it is still a lot of space for differentiation of race and other individual characteristics as well.”
Posted by Whiteplight at 10:14 PM on April 23
These differentiations are something in the order of three million facets of the total DNA strand, I believe. Not, a figure that can be glibly dismissed as irrelevant like the Marxist controlled Human Genome Project movement has been attempting to do, to date.
Posted by A Swain at 10:11 AM on April 24