More on race from Eric Olsen — who draws on the work of Stanford population geneticist Dr. Neil Risch to argue that “race” is indeed biologically determinable (“Race Is Seen as Real Guide to Track Roots of Disease,” The New York Times) — concluding that “to accept objective differences between groups without yielding to the temptation to stigmatize ‘difference’ as inherently inferior […]” is a worthy new social mandate.

…All of which would be interesting were it not so dangerously misleading. Because accepting objective differences as empirical fact is one thing; but labeling one of any number of perspective-driven objective groupings as “racial” is something else entirely — drawing as it does on an already overdetermined (and socially charged) term.

What Risch is talking about here is an evolutionary issue — “race” as revealed through genetics that in their “purest” forms can be tied to ancient geography and then (theoretically, though not practically) “tracked” via historical dispersal patterns. To conflate this idea of race with the concept of “race” as we’ve come to use it is simply a wrongheaded polemical attempt to reinvigorate “race” as a viable political concept.

From the Times article:

[…] a proposal for avoiding racial labels, at least for drug trials, has recently been made by Dr. David Goldstein, a population geneticist at University College, London. He has suggested that patients be assigned to different genetic groups by analyzing their DNA. The process gives much the same result as asking people to identify their ethnicity, but yields a more accurate division in terms of how people respond to drugs, Dr. Goldstein says. He adds that the expense of the genetic testing will be affordable in drug trials.

In asserting that race is a valid concept for medical research, Dr. Risch has plunged into an arena where many fear to tread. He also takes issue with Dr. Goldstein’s race-sidestepping proposal, saying it will lead to confusing results.

When modern humans spread out of Africa and across the globe, these early populations bred for many generations in substantial isolation from one another, allowing genetic differences to build up between groups. These five geographically isolated groups, in Dr. Risch’s description, are sub-Saharan Africans; Caucasians, including people from Europe, the Indian subcontinent and the Middle East; Asians, including people from China, Japan, the Philippines and Siberia; Pacific Islanders; and Native Americans.

There are also many peoples who are genetic admixtures of the major groups. Somalis and Ethiopians, on the boundary between Caucasians and Africans, are an admixture of the two, Dr. Risch said, as are African-Americans.

Dr. Risch believes that race, when self-defined by continent of ancestry, is a true reflection of these genetic differences, including those important for understanding disease. ‘There is great validity in racial/ ethnic self-categorizations, both from the research and public policy points of view,’ he says. [My emphasis]

Goldstein’s idea is eminently sensible — relying as it does on hard science and DNA groupings while avoiding the socially overdetermined term “race”; Risch, on the other hand, seems less interested in DNA groupings than he is in “ethnic self-categorization” (how people choose to label themselves) and the effects of such procedures on “public policy.” Where he accuses Goldstein of racial sidestepping, he himself is guilty of semantic conflation for political purposes.

When a geneticist would rather conflate two clearly distinct ideas than use the more exact idea of genetic groupings peculiar to his own area of expertise, one has every right to question that geneticist’s motives.

So consider this post just that.

[For more on the idea of “race” as a socially operative term, see here]

[update: Eric Olsen responds by way of elaboration:

Jeff is understandably reluctant to allow “race” back in the lexicon as a legitimate biological entity. But his primary objection would appear to be linguistic […]

Of course ‘race’ is a socially charged term — that is why it is worthwhile to try to rescue it as a concept from the pseudoscience, the twisted social science, and most of all, the disingenuous deterministic political philosophizing of the past.

Determinism is the greatest danger now if ‘race’ is once again accepted as scientifically legit. We must emphasize that characteristics of the individual can never be interpolated from those of an aggregate. But this doesn’t mean it is meaningless to extrapolate from individuals to collective entities. If, in fact as Risch asserts, there are broad genetic similarities within meta-groupings that meaningfully separate them from other meta-groupings, then this is legitimate knowledge and should be admitted as such.

If we need a new, more porous word than ‘race’ to take these meanings into account, then let us coin one. But to deny knowledge in the name of past linguistic sins is little different from saying my mother is as likely to be a terrorist as a young Middle Eastern male.

My reply (most of which I posted in Eric’s comments section):

You note: “We must emphasize that characteristics of the individual can never be interpolated from those of an aggregate. But this doesn’t mean it is meaningless to extrapolate from individuals to collective entities. If, in fact as Risch asserts, there are broad genetic similarities within meta-groupings that meaningfully separate them from other meta-groupings, then this is legitimate knowledge and should be admitted as such.”

Of course. I’m clearly not opposed to “groupings” or categorization. I’m opposed to grouping or categorization tied to the overdetermined signifier “race.” Identifiable genetic clusters tied to a hypothetical state of geographical purity at a pre-nomadic stage in human history is not “race” as we know it.

It’s fine and dandy to wish to save the signifier “race” from pseudo-science by redefining it in accordance with certain genetic discoveries — though one wonders what possible purpose such a mission can ultimately hope to serve; because from a pragmatic perspective, it’s silly to think that by reintroducing the notion of “racial” genetics we’ll be doing anybody any favors — particularly when more exact descriptions are available to us.

You’re absolutely correct to point out that my objection is linguistic. But that’s because Risch’s maneuver is itself linguistic. There is no objective category of “race” to which he is appealing — only genetic difference based on any number of hypothetical factors (and seen from a particular perspective — in this case, geographical) that he’s choosing to call “racial.” And this despite the weight such a conscious semantic decision assumes.

In short, his is a political / linguistic decision, and should be countered on those terms.

“Race” is no more scientifically legit than it ever was. And I would argue that far from furthering knowledge, tethering genetic distinctions to a long semantic history of confused commingling between blood and politics would only worry whatever useful progress might otherwise be made in the science of population genetics.]