Does race have a biological basis after all?
AUM (a new MMW contributor!)
In this article from the NY Times Opinion pages, Armand Marie Leroi argues that the concept of race as a genetic reality, a concept which we had all replaced with the easier-to swallow “race as a social construct” model, may actually have biological basis.
“The idea that human races are only social constructs has been the consensus for at least 30 years.
But now, perhaps, that is about to change. Last fall, the prestigious journal Nature Genetics devoted a large supplement to the question of whether human races exist and, if so, what they mean. The journal did this in part because various American health agencies are making race an important part of their policies to best protect the public - often over the protests of scientists. . . Beneath the jargon, cautious phrases and academic courtesies, one thing was clear: the consensus about social constructs was unraveling. Some even argued that, looked at the right way, genetic data show that races clearly do exist. . .
Certain skin colors tend to go with certain kinds of eyes, noses, skulls and bodies. When we glance at a stranger’s face we use those associations to infer what continent, or even what country, he or his ancestors came from - and we usually get it right. To put it more abstractly, human physical variation is correlated; and correlations contain information.”
Somewhat surprisingly, Leroi suggests studying mixed people in order to best understand why we each look the way we do:
“We are a physically variable species. Yet for all the triumphs of modern genetics, we know next to nothing about what makes us so. . .
One way to find out would be to study people of mixed race ancestry. In part, this is because racial differences in looks are the most striking that we see. But there is also a more subtle technical reason. When geneticists map genes, they rely on the fact that they can follow our ancestors’ chromosomes as they get passed from one generation to the next, dividing and mixing in unpredictable combinations. That, it turns out, is much easier to do in people whose ancestors came from very different places.”
chris wrote:
this article has faded out of free viewing on NYTimes’ site, but you can still get it through fair-use as part of this Berkeley genetics class here: http://mcb.berkeley.edu/courses/mcb140/Urnov/leroi.pdf
Posted 22 Mar 2005 at 2:59 pm ¶
Lyonside wrote:
This is long - apologies.
Here’s the real issue I see. Humans have physical diversity that has evolved based on environmental pressures and sexual selection, like any species. Of course certain traits tend to be genetically “linked” (although not exclusively). Current theories cite a lack of an epicanthic fold as being helpful in avoiding eye damage on windy/sandy steppes (i.e. central/north/east Asia). Broader noses release heat faster, thinner noses lose less heat. Lighter skin allows for more vitamin D production in areas with weak annual sunlight, darker skin allows for more melanin protection in areas with near constant sun exposure. And so on…
The difference I see is that it is nearly impossible to show where one set of “racial” features leaves off and another begins. Since many/most of these traits are NOT absolutely linked to each other, the different “categories” have a wide range of variation and are not always found together (not surprisingly considering homo sapiens’ fairly rapid evolution). Dark skin is not always tied to tightly curled hair; epicanthic folds are not always tied to straight hair; fair skin is not always linked to blue eyes. Many groups of people have mixtures of these traits, many groups have recessives of these traits in their gene pool.
Therefore, people have tended to “socially construct” racial boundaries, that have a large element of subjectivity and variability based on history, social issues, immigration and geographical origin, politics, and individual perception.
It’s not that genetic “races” and socially constructed “races” are an either/or option. It’s more that the genetic “race” observation (i.e. people originating from certain parts of the world tend to exhibit distinct physical traits) has been used to construct false “stories” of different groups of people that relies on assumption, generalization, and sometimes attribution of non-physical traits to the group. That is the social construct.
Bottom line, I really see the entire issue as not much different than my pets at home. I have 4 Norway rats of 4 different breeds (i.e. color pattern, size, coat texture, eye color). The different breeds have a tendency towards different medical issues because of their physical traits. But they have the same physical needs, interact in similar ways to me and to each other, and have individual temperaments that have nothing to do with the physical.
Posted 23 Mar 2005 at 9:35 am ¶
Damie wrote:
You’re a woman who has 4 rats as pets, huh? My mom and sisters scream in fear when they see a mouse.
Posted 25 Mar 2005 at 5:44 am ¶
kbow wrote:
I agree that it is not about phonotype, race, or color, but rather about the individual who comprises humanity as a whole. Your article spoke the truth loud & clear: It ain’t about the race…it’s about them rats!! Are you outta your damn mind?!? To each his/her own…haha.
Posted 27 Mar 2005 at 7:07 pm ¶
Lyonside wrote:
>>Are you outta your damn mind?!?
LOL! They’re guinea pigs with tails, and have great personalities to boot.
And to keep this on-topic, I think the scientific race = rat breed variation analogy actually works pretty well. Esp since, like humans, trait expression (who inherits what) in offspring can be very random and unpredictable, with lots of little variables.
Posted 28 Mar 2005 at 10:36 am ¶
George Winkel wrote:
Does race have a biological basis after all?
Lyonside
wrote (March 23rd, 2005 at 9:35 am) an outstanding short discussion of our “races” notion. No apologies needed. I know it is hard to explain in a few words.
And I think there are additional important ideas about our alleged “different races” that help to shed light. Is a blog focused on watching media handling of “mixed” not maybe an appropriate place to ask, “Mixed what?”
Lyonside offered the example his/her own pet rats — “Norway rats of 4 different breeds” — said Lyonside. Are our “different” human “races” analogous to domesticated animal breeds? If we are not, then might world individuals feel more pride in themselves as progeny of wild, natural evolution? (I.e., each uniquely expressing natural selection that is not “artificial” somehow?) If we are “domesticated,” on the other hand, into “breeds” does this give salience to our alleged “different races”? This idea of domesticated human “breeds” for our “races” came up circa 1900. It roughly tracks the former “one drop law” (now social ODR “rule” of endogamous caste) of invisible Negrohood. In fact the ODR undoubtedly is part of the breeding-pen lexicon of “races” since about 1900. Today our talk of “races” spins these animal (e.g., rat, dog, horse, sheep, mule, pig, cow) domestication thoughts — including “purebred,” “pure,” “mixed,” “hybrid,” “mut,” “mongrel,” and many more.
Also around and after 1900 came theories of how “white” people became “purebred,” implying “superior.” These involved stories of Europe’s Ice Age cutting off “stock,” honing racial fitness on rigorous, icy northern climate. Modernly, our “races” are increasingly ascribed “difference” on their original continents. But this handy classifying individuals is hardly taller than the ink lines on paper maps arbitrarily naming “continents.” Moreover, the historical Blumenbach “race-lines” oddly cut through mid-continents (1795). His racial “Caucasia,” for instance, vacuums North Africa, together with the Middle Eastern Holy Lands, Aryan India, and more into the bag of his own “white race.” As a land-grab for the roots of literate Western civilization, some might see a very political map of the “Caucasian race.” Anyway, does it matter if ancient isolations “pure bred” (working as if domesticating) our “races” prehistorically? This lamented lost “purity” (crooned by “white supremacists/preservationists) was the centerpiece of Armand Marie Leroi’s March 14 Op-Ed entitled “A Family Tree In Every Gene” — which started this blog-thread, I think?
Is it right to apply animal husbandry to our human racial (physical) diversity if we do not have absolute certainty this theory is true of our apparently micro-adaptive racial phenotype origins? If animal husbandry reflects something of the competitive market place of skilled breeders inculcating dollar value in their work product (work that might be spoilt by “one drop” of stray “blood” in the pedigree), then might such talk not bias values put on human lives? Again, even if we had absolute certainty, would it mean true “difference” in the typology that we classify in “races”? Why?
Supposing a National Socialist Worker’s (i.e., Nazi) Party returned to power bent on eugenically restoring integrity (”purity”) of one or more “different races.” Would this threaten our liberty? Our own antebellum America had full chattel slavery, with chains, shackles, and more, that sometimes was human breeding in the full animal husbandry sense of four domesticated breeds of Norway rats (& many other crying creatures forcibly bred in captivity). Is there any legal, governmental classification of all individuals in “races” today that breaks clean from this talisman of slavery that reduced human beings to farm animals, bred forcibly in chains in America as recently as 140 years ago? Is there any way to have “races” booked in the salience of government classification of individuals (e.g., prosecutable E.E.O.C. laws; American Indian tribal rolls, compulsory census disclosures, etc.) that is not conceptually only a few degrees of separation away from forced breeding of humans in slavery’s pre-Nazi chains?
Lyonside observed the social construction of racial boundaries “…. nearly impossible to show where one set of ‘racial’ features leaves off and another begins.” Blumenbach in 1795, sketching the bases of our census “races,” used nearly these words. He wrote how our seemingly different varieties of widely separated mankind do “so sensibly pass into the other, that you cannot mark out the limits between them.” He made it clear we are all one species notwithstanding our diverse “looks.” If our human race is so diversely naturally decorated this way, then doesn’t it beg the question proposing another number of alleged human “races”? Mr. Leroi insinuates existence of two human “races” — many before him have tried this. His challenge is defining two.
Lastly, I suggest perhaps it is not human racial diversity that torments our eyes, minds, or minds eyes. It is only the adjective “different.” “Different” would not apply without the government-named “races” that all individuals are compelled to be classified in. The parts of speech that are named “races” are nouns. I suggest it is the semantic work of these made-up nouns circumscribing peoples on various theories (skin “color,” continent, “blood,” record ancestry on govt. vital statistics classifications, etc.) that seem hypnotically to breath “different” salience into socially constructed, arbitrary human groups. As Lyonside understands, I think, these picked-out features of phenotype, or sets of a few, have been categorically associated with the mutually exclusive noun classifications called “races.” Mr. Frank Sweet finds historical evidence that the eyeballed phenotype features varied much over the years. Americans of earlier centuries might not agree with our commonplace understanding of who belongs in which “race” — relying on visual — without the immortal government “pedigree” records classifying generations of individuals in castes — social equivalent of endogamous breeding-kennels.
Posted 28 Mar 2005 at 4:38 pm ¶
lyonside wrote:
Um… *blink*… word…
Seriously, the husbandry analogy is probably muffed up in regards to this, for a few reasons. Domestic animals are purposely bred for certain traits that are already in their genetic bag of tricks, but are in the natural world surpressed, unexpressed, or not passed on to the next generation (because the animal wouldn’t survive to adulthood). They’ve shown, I think in wild foxes, that strange coat color, texture, and babyish behaviors start appearing a few generations into captivity, indicating that wild dogs/wolves could have done the same to give us the basic breeds humans have had since the neolithic.
I really didn’t intend to literally say that human genetic variation = an animal breed (in the way of a dog - the result of intense human-led selective breeding). Actually, for rats, there are no strict “breeds,” but categories for the expressed phenotype. Often 2 parents of similar appearance end up with a litter of many different types, depending on their own genetic variations.
Posted 28 Mar 2005 at 11:07 pm ¶
Joe wrote:
From my own life experience, I have seen a tendency for physical and well as cognitive differences between races. For example, orientals are very smart, blacks are athletically minded, whites are creative.
It is silly to say it is a “social construct”. “Social construct” is mere rhetorical grabage.
To use the words “social construct” is the real social construct. Race is biology.
Posted 12 May 2005 at 2:49 am ¶
mimi wrote:
well to say that asian’s are smart,black’s are athletically minded,and that whites are creative are stero-types. I am black and is considered to be creative…my white friend is athletically minded..and my black friend is a geinus…so that has to be false.
Posted 15 Jul 2005 at 5:01 pm ¶
Ess-Aye wrote:
I agree with mimi. i’m black. i’m one creative mothasucka. i’m smart. what does that mean?
Posted 23 Oct 2005 at 11:35 pm ¶
Lib Denial wrote:
Duh. A race is just as much a “social construct” as a breed of dog or cat is. These liberal racial denialists are really f’n stupid. And them speaking on biological issues is like the church teaching science or my waiter performing surgery on me.
W-T-F?
On the one hand they preach “diversity.” But on the other, they absolutely refuse to ADMIT any real racial genetic diversity.
W-T-F?
Posted 15 Dec 2005 at 3:29 pm ¶