Are there differences between the races?
Don Quixote on Jul 06 2008 at 6:39 pm | Filed under: African-Americans, Race, Uncategorized
It is the height of political incorrectness to even speculate that there could be any differences among the races. And, of course, the variations between individuals within races are far greater than any possible differences between the races on average. But, still, this is dangerous territory. For example, one is not even allowed to suggest that blacks might be, on average, more physically gifted than whites, for fear that could be viewed as a backhanded suggestion that blacks are intellectually inferior to whites. (As an aside, this never made sense to me. Why should there be an inverse relationship between physical and intellectual prowess?)
Anyway, I’ve been watching the Olympic trials this week and the self-selection of the races is striking. All of the top sprinters are black and all of the top swimmers are white. Okay, once you stretch out to 400 meters white faces start to appear and the one black swimmer I saw managed a couple of third places. But, still . . . The obvious question is – why? I suppose there are more swimming pools and swimming teams in white neighborhoods than in black neighborhoods, but to this extent?
Perhaps even a better question is why, the longer the track and field race, the whiter the field. It takes no more or less equipment or opportunity to run the hundred meters than to run the 5,000. And it’s not as if blacks can’t run distance races. A bunch of Kenyans and other African marathoners amply prove that. So why the self-selection? As usual, I have more questions than answers, but the results could hardly happen by chance. Why are most great basketball players black and most great volleyball players white? Height and jumping ability are just as advantageous in volleyball as in basketball. The whole thing is a complete mystery to me, but something is going on here. Anybody have any idea what?
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I had a Kenyan friend in college who was a great track star, headed for the Olympics (which Carter boycotted). He told me that he got his training by running 5-miles to the mission school every day. Tough to beat that kind of training regimen, don’t you think?
Why should there be an inverse relationship between physical and intellectual prowess?)
The same reason why there’s an inverse relationship between rich and poor. It’s called zero sum, DQ.
Danny — Yep, that would do it. I’ve also heard the Kenyans train up hill a lot.
Y-man — But one cannot be rich and poor at the same time. One can certainly be both physically and intellectually gifted at the same time.
Danny: I was about to say, “You ever need to run from lions?” but you put it in a much more rational fashion
DQ: Being Chinese, I am not only allowed to be racist, but almost required to be. But in this case, we’re not necessarily talking about ‘race’ but circumstances.
It is a known fact that
“Although the brain accounts for less than 2% of a person’s weight, it consumes 20% of the body’s energy.”
(taken from http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2001/JacquelineLing.shtml)
This is the body at rest; a significant number of resources are also taken up in digestive, respiratory as well as cardiac activity.
IOW, the brain uses up 1/5 of the body’s energy needs while you’re vegging out on the couch…
Because there is a practical limit to the amount of energy your body can output, naturally there is a trade-off between cerebral activity and muscular activity (think comparative advantage). And, of course, there is the tendency to think that chess players are smarter than outdoorsmen when in fact, your old-time Maasai hunter at 60 is a wise, canny, cunning, and yes, intelligent old fogey. It’s just that his smarts lie in different directions.
You may well find that smart, athletic people simply have a much larger amount of energy their bodies can output (i.e. their absolute advantage is huge). Or, they have managed to reduce their per-activity energy usage.
It’s a question of economics applied to metabolism is all. And the good thing about economics is that in a free market, you trade based on your leveraging your comparative advantage to the mutual benefit and gain of both parties, which is why rich old men can get hitched up with young hot blonde trophies. Although whose is the intelligence and whose is the athleticism is perhaps undefined…
Y-man
DQ is quite right that your analogy of zero sum from rich and poor does not hold on a conceptual level.
Ultimately it comes down to some combination of nature vs. nurture, how you define “gifted” (capability vs. results); and that is the tangled thicket of snares and delusions recognized by DQ.
If, for the sake of example, you think more in terms of potential (say ratio of fast to slow twitch muscles for running; some measure of IQ for intellect), then there is no reason why they should be inversely correlated. E.g., let’s define gifted as being in the 90th percentile. Then the chance of being both athletic and intellectual is 1% (.10x.10), assuming that they are independent attributes.
However, if you look at the results of actual races and academic honors then it is simply a fact that there are few nobelist-gold medal winners, only a handful of professional athletes who were Rhodes Scholars. To excel you must specialize, and there are only 24 hours a day, so in that sense it is a zero sum, creating a negative correlation. Equating prowess with practice implicily leans towards the “nurture” side.
The world record in the mile seems to migrate from one continent to the next: it is usually the case that a group of compatriots chase it. First it was the americans, then the swedes, then the british, then the north africans. That would seem to indicate it is more a matter of a matter of motivation, new training methods, and in-group emulation — all on the nurture side — rather than a genetic component specific to an ethnic group.
I have great faith in genetics. Quarter horses don’t win the Kentucky Derby (and wouldn’t even if they were allowed to enter!)
I also think Darwin’s theory of survival of the fittest is applicable. The “fittest” is different in different physical settings.
Put these together, and it’s no surprise that in the primitive harsh surroundings of Africe, that people have developed a superior ability to run - fast and long. As for intelligence, we favor one type in our culture, theirs benefits by a different kind. The potential of intelligence of either type is there - but it may take generations for it to change from one favored type to another. In the meantime, nature in Africa is pretty harsh in its means of selection, in western culture, not so much. In fact, sometimes it seems as if we’re deliberately nurturing the least fit among us. A reverse eugenics, as it were.
Black athletes dominate two of the major American sports– 80% of NBA players are black, 65% of NFL players are black. The only “under-represented” sport is Baseball, where 8% are black, but 40% are non-white.
Does this mean that blacks are just more athletic than whites?
Possibly. But I do know there is a black kid somewhere in Chicago that hits the basketball court in the morning and plays until he can’t see the hoop, while my son is sitting on the couch, either playing video games or watching TV.
Might have to do with motivation. And specialization.
In my son’s defense– he has a broken foot.
One can certainly be both physically and intellectually gifted at the same time.
Rich and poor are just arbitrary categories people have created that rely on comparative relativity. To take a category that is just as arbitrary but not mutually exclusive, you can look at the confluence between power and technological wealth and status.
The West, being Colonial powers and advanced technologically, are morally inferior to the Palestinians, who being primitive, are morally more advanced.
Zero sum is not about the reality of whether you can have two qualities in one place and time, zero sum is the philosophy that says, when you become better in one field, technology and rule of law, you become inferior in another field, moral high ground and vigor on principle. Meaning, it must be true. And that’s why people believe there should be an inverse ratio between one thing or another. Because if it wasn’t true, then how do people excuse their lack of success? How do people justify their inability to have both? They cannot blame it on other people if they recognize that the potential to having it both is already inherent in themselves. It is better to say “it’s not going to happen, cause of zero sum, so I’m not even going to try”.
Zero sum doesn’t stop at the categories, however, since it can also be an active philosophy to make things as it is described.
People don’t like recognizing or hearing that “potentially” they could have been better at this or that. Most people tend to prefer looking into the future and improving on what they see as their strengths, rather than trying to excel in everything and ending up as a failure on all points. And primarily, even if they had the human potential to excel in all things, the reality is that they can’t. Specialization, whether it is just a human psychological defect resulting from our hierarchical structures, or because it is a simple matter of limited lifespans, attention spans, and limited resources in life, still demonstrates to be true. This phenomenon can be explained by causality and the consequences of action-reaction, instead of zero sum. If you go into the military, obviously there will be a reaction in your life to your decisions. Zero sum says instead that those that go into the military naturally forgo intellectual or spiritual or ethical developments. Zero sum doesn’t particularly care about the “why” of things, so much as making them subtractive from other things. Causality, however, simply explains why things happen, for good or bad. And causality can be used to acquire specializations in mental and physical fields.
The Olympics and the Doctorate fields are mutually exclusive because of causality. Because the Olympics is not a matter of survival, but a matter of fine tuning things to beat the competition; specialization and the devotion of all time to the craft will render those that split their time at a competitive disadvantage. Compare this to the doctorate program which requires intense focus, research, and writing. Thus nature eliminates people that excel in mental and physical crafts, such as the US military, who does what they do for survival, not for sports, out of the field of competition.
It is survival that rewards jack of all trades philosophy, and it is civilization that produces the philosophy of zero sum, which many socialists and Leftists adhere to, because civilization excels in specialization.
Also, the fact that you have rules also makes it easier to specialize. When you don’t have rules, the generalist generally takes advantage by using his other skills to great advantage.
Now, concerning the subject of motivation, obviously less civilized countries may be able to exploit their natural human manpower resources more effectively than say, a decadent nation that allows every luxury and privilege available to be accessed by their citizens. If a citizen has everything they need right now, right then, why would they try so hard to win against international competition? You’re just not going to have a lot of people devoting their energies into the sports as a way of social uplift. Basketball for blacks serves as their national sport since it is both entertainment, culture, and social mobility.
Actually, to generalize about Africa is pretty difficult.
According to my spouse (a geneticist turned teacher who is far smarter than I), Africa is by far the most genetically diverse region of human origin.
From an evolutionary perspective, this makes perfect sense, since this is where humanity began (we are all African-Americans, here, Helen).
So, when we speak about “blacks” or “Africans”, what exactly do we mean?
>>According to my spouse (a geneticist turned teacher who is far smarter than I), Africa is by far the most genetically diverse region of human origin.>>
Is she referring specifically to the tribes we consider to be native to the area? Or has the world’s traffic brought the genetic diversity??? And is it a diversity among or between? That is, within tribes, or between tribes?
>>when we speak about “blacks” or “Africans”, what exactly do we mean?>>
Which of course raises the humorous situation of the white person born in Africa, migrated to the US who is now African-American and white as the snow fields of Alaska…!
Personally, I mean the tribes we consider to be native to Africa.
Am I about to be informed once more about a history I never specifically studied???
Suek, my wife was talking about indigenous peoples. People tend not to appreciate just how huge and diverse Africa is.
Here’s a real cool illustration:
http://bp2.blogger.com/_3QqO8EXd-II/SG9FUpgbD4I/AAAAAAAAVpI/k5dFBzQi0EU/s1600-h/DML(.jpg
That’s a pretty amazing map…! It doesn’t show “diverse” but it certainly shows _huge_!
gkong3 — I suspect that the less intelligent brain uses up just as much energy as the more intelligent brain. I think gpc31 is closer to the truth.
gpc31 — specialization probably does have quite a lot to do with it. Although physical fitness helps mental alertness and intelligence does play some role in sports success, to truly excel in either requires a high degree of commitment of time and energy.
Danny and suek — that is a cool illustration. I like the comment that we are all African-Americans and the comment about the white “African-American.” It reminds me of something I wanted to blog about.
BrianE — all the best to your son.
(This review is from 2000)
http://fig.cox.miami.edu/~ddiresta/bil101/Bornbetter.htm
That statement comes from a review of this book.
Like the 800 pound gorilla, I wanted to bring this up, but not wanting to be labeled a racist, I’ll let this person do it for me.
The problem with information like this, is that the wrong conclusions are often drawn. Being genetically superior physically, says nothing about intelligence.
And I don’t even know if its true, as I haven’t read the book. But I can’t be the only person that notices the dominance of certain sports by persons of African-American descent. And if anyone thinks that I think basketball and football players aren’t the smartest kids on the block, I’ve seen plenty of interviews of white baseball players that would qualify them for Darwin Awards. Being able to hit a 100 mph fastball with a 3″ diameter stick will never be a measure of intellect.
These things don’t show that races are superior or inferior innately. They just show that they are different. DNA for blacks have as many advantages as disadvantages. Nature knows that to stay the same is to stagnate, which is why genetic diversity is the key to superiority, not staying in one geography or gene zone.
Plus, there are many different kinds of “intelligence”. I am not sure that we have found a good way to measure all of them.
The question of why basketball players are black and volleyball players are white is pretty simple. No offense intended, but for the most part volleyball is a girl’s sport. Outside of California and the Midwest, volleyball isn’t offered as a boy’s high school sport. And you can’t make $100 million playing volleyball.
Our Liberian son doesn’t think much of American professional soccer and I explained to him that the premier athletes don’t play soccer– there’s no money in soccer (at least compared to the other sports).
If there were, America would probably dominate international soccer.
While running events offer a glimpse of a person’s raw physical ability, I think the hurdles require more athleticism.
There’s only one kind of intelligence to me, the ability to solve problems.
The various other components that are related are knowledge, skill, and natural aptitude.
I can think of many kinds of intelligence:
There’s “book smarts” versus “street smarts.
Some people are excellent at memorization, other people at connecting dots.
Some people excel at understanding and managing complex psychologies - other people have zero people skills.
Some people are quick thinkers, others are ponderers.
Some people excel at abstract thought, but lack any and all practical applications skills.
There’s intelligence…and there’s wisdom.
I don’t think physical agilty and intelligence are related, but I think that for someone to excel in various sports, they must have both physical ability and intelligence. Well, maybe not for individual sports like track or swimming, but definitely for the team sports. Too much strategy needed not to require intelligence. Even if much of the strategy depends on the coach, I think the players themselves have to have the ability to instantly solve the problems that arise during play, and change strategies if necessary.
Think I’m with Ymar on this one…though the individual components that go into the problem solving vary almost without limitation. Still, it’s the ability to integrate the many facets of sensory input with learned input to solve a particular problem. There are people - idiot savants ? - who for some reason have some remarkable skill…memory, numbers, dates (some one I remember reading about had a complete and total plan of the NY subway system in his mind, and could give detailed directions to anywhere from anywhere within the system - before computers) but still are unable to solve simple problems.
I do believe that different groups have married with an eye to the qualities that will most ensure that group’s survival. Or perhaps nature simply killed off those that didn’t have the qualities to advance that group’s survival. Skin color is actually the most obvious trait that relates to survival. Dark skin doesn’t get enough Vitamin D in northern climates and light skin gets too much sun in southern climates. I don’t think I’m wrong in my facts here, nor do I think there is anything particularly controversial about what I just said.
When it gets controversial is when you suggest that people who lived in environments where you had to chase their food might have intermarried (or died off) based on their ability to run (or lack thereof). Or that people who lived in situations in which they were forced to rely on their wits — such as Jews — might have intermarried (or died off) based on their intellectual quickness (or lack thereof). The same would go for strength, ability to withstand famine, altruism, etc — whatever optimized survival in that group’s environment — assuming that they were stuck in that environment for a long, long time, would be traits that would strengthen or vanish in ensuing generations.
Of course, even assuming that’s true (and why wouldn’t it be), it all goes out the window in so much of America because of genetic mixing. Because of the miserable slave practices of the pre-War South, there are almost no “pure” blacks in America. They all have white blood. And while that may be a cultural insult, genetically, it’s probably a fabulous thing, since African-Americans get a genetic smorgasbord, something nature likes.
When I lived in England, I used to boast to my purebred Brit friends that I, like so many of my fellow Americans, am a genuine Heinz 57. Even if you don’t have what’s deemed “ethnic” blood in you (such as Black, or Hispanic, or Asian, or something else), I bet you, as an American, are not “pure” anything. Even if your skin is white, you’re a mixture of European peoples. In other words, you’re probably a mutt too — which, to my Amero-centric way of thinking is a good thing.
So yes, I do believe in differences between races, although I attach no moral virtue to those differences — but I think that, in America, those differences have much less weight than in other parts of the world.
It’s interesting, and I don’t know any answers, but I’ve heard a lot of theories.
I’ve heard that if you look at two ten year old kids, one black, one white, the white one will have arms and legs like pipestems, the black one will show some muscle definition, and it’s because there is a natural difference in muscle mass. (This presupposes that both are in a state of nature, and neither has spent time with a Total Gym!)
I don’t know if it’s true or not, I just report what I’ve heard advanced by some fairly (allegedly) knowledgable people.
Certainly some of us have “fast-twitch” muscles, most of us don’t. Thus Ron Guidry, who weighed about 140 lbs soaking wet, with pipe-stem arms, could throw a baseball 100 mph. Most of us, no matter what color, can’t.
I’m a bit of an anomaly in your American Heinz 57 story: I am pure northerm islander: Welsh, Scottish, Irish. My second toe is half an inch longer than my big toe. They tell me this is because my ancestors spent time climbing around wet cliffs by the shores. I don’t know: I wasn’t there - but it seems reasonable. (Or at least it makes a good story.)
I do think there are racial differences: if there weren’t, there wouldn’t be different races. I suspect you evolve to where you are, to do what you need to do there.
But in this day and age I’m uncertain what - if anything - it means. Robert Parrish and Dennis Johnson admitted freely that Larry Bird was a better shot than they were, but I have no idea what than means in real terms. Probably nothing.
Before talking about “racial differences”, read What It Means To Be 98% Chimpanzee……the book that convinced me (against my will) that “race”, as commonly used, is meaningless.
It’s a fascinating book to read, as well. Check it out at:
http://www.amazon.com/What-Means-Be-98%25-Chimpanzee/dp/0520240642/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1215728326&sr=8-3
Earl,
I completely disagree that the concept of race is meaningless. Otherwise, why would different ethnic groups suffer from different diseases and respond differently to drugs and treatment?
Without having read the book it sounds like a case of Lewontin’s Fallacy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewontin’s_Fallacy
For a clear and fascinating article from the NYT:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/14/opinion/14leroi.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
Read the whole thing, as instapundit would say. Here are some excerpts:
**************************
“If modern anthropologists mention the concept of race, it is invariably only to warn against and dismiss it. Likewise many geneticists. “Race is social concept, not a scientific one,” according to Dr. Craig Venter - and he should know, since he was first to sequence the human genome. 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 -
The dominance of the social construct theory can be traced to a 1972 article by Dr. Richard Lewontin, a Harvard geneticist, who wrote that most human genetic variation can be found within any given “race.” If one looked at genes rather than faces, he claimed, the difference between an African and a European would be scarcely greater than the difference between any two Europeans. A few years later he wrote that the continued popularity of race as an idea was an “indication of the power of socioeconomically based ideology over the supposed objectivity of knowledge.” Most scientists are thoughtful, liberal-minded and socially aware people. It was just what they wanted to hear.
Three decades later, it seems that Dr. Lewontin’s facts were correct, and have been abundantly confirmed by ever better techniques of detecting genetic variety. His reasoning, however, was wrong. His error was an elementary one, but such was the appeal of his argument that it was only a couple of years ago that a Cambridge University statistician, A. W. F. Edwards, put his finger on it.
The error is easily illustrated. If one were asked to judge the ancestry of 100 New Yorkers, one could look at the color of their skin. That would do much to single out the Europeans, but little to distinguish the Senegalese from the Solomon Islanders. The same is true for any other feature of our bodies. The shapes of our eyes, noses and skulls; the color of our eyes and our hair; the heaviness, height and hairiness of our bodies are all, individually, poor guides to ancestry.
But this is not true when the features are taken together. 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.
Genetic variants that aren’t written on our faces, but that can be detected only in the genome, show similar correlations. It is these correlations that Dr. Lewontin seems to have ignored. In essence, he looked at one gene at a time and failed to see races. But if many - a few hundred - variable genes are considered simultaneously, then it is very easy to do so. Indeed, a 2002 study by scientists at the University of Southern California and Stanford showed that if a sample of people from around the world are sorted by computer into five groups on the basis of genetic similarity, the groups that emerge are native to Europe, East Asia, Africa, America and Australasia - more or less the major races of traditional anthropology.
Yet there is nothing very fundamental about the concept of the major continental races; they’re just the easiest way to divide things up. Study enough genes in enough people and one could sort the world’s population into 10, 100, perhaps 1,000 groups, each located somewhere on the map.
The identification of racial origins is not a search for purity. The human species is irredeemably promiscuous. We have always seduced or coerced our neighbors even when they have a foreign look about them and we don’t understand a word. If Hispanics, for example, are composed of a recent and evolving blend of European, American Indian and African genes, then the Uighurs of Central Asia can be seen as a 3,000-year-old mix of West European and East Asian genes. Even homogenous groups like native Swedes bear the genetic imprint of successive nameless migrations.
Some critics believe that these ambiguities render the very notion of race worthless. I disagree. The physical topography of our world cannot be accurately described in words. To navigate it, you need a map with elevations, contour lines and reference grids. But it is hard to talk in numbers, and so we give the world’s more prominent features - the mountain ranges and plateaus and plains - names. We do so despite the inherent ambiguity of words. The Pennines of northern England are about one-tenth as high and long as the Himalayas, yet both are intelligibly described as mountain ranges.
So, too, it is with the genetic topography of our species. The billion or so of the world’s people of largely European descent have a set of genetic variants in common that are collectively rare in everyone else; they are a race. At a smaller scale, three million Basques do as well; so they are a race as well. Race is merely a shorthand that enables us to speak sensibly, though with no great precision, about genetic rather than cultural or political differences.
Indeed, the recognition that races are real should have several benefits. To begin with, it would remove the disjunction in which the government and public alike defiantly embrace categories that many, perhaps most, scholars and scientists say do not exist.
Second, the recognition of race may improve medical care. Different races are prone to different diseases. The risk that an African-American man will be afflicted with hypertensive heart disease or prostate cancer is nearly three times greater than that for a European-American man. On the other hand, the former’s risk of multiple sclerosis is only half as great. Such differences could be due to socioeconomic factors. Even so, geneticists have started searching for racial differences in the frequencies of genetic variants that cause diseases. They seem to be finding them.
Race can also affect treatment. African-Americans respond poorly to some of the main drugs used to treat heart conditions - notably beta blockers and angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors. Pharmaceutical corporations are paying attention. Many new drugs now come labeled with warnings that they may not work in some ethnic or racial groups. Here, as so often, the mere prospect of litigation has concentrated minds.
Such differences are, of course, just differences in average. Everyone agrees that race is a crude way of predicting who gets some disease or responds to some treatment. Ideally, we would all have our genomes sequenced before swallowing so much as an aspirin. Yet until that is technically feasible, we can expect racial classifications to play an increasing part in health care.
The argument for the importance of race, however, does not rest
There is a final reason race matters. It gives us reason - if there were not reason enough already - to value and protect some of the world’s most obscure and marginalized people. When the Times of India article referred to the Andaman Islanders as being of ancient Negrito racial stock, the terminology was correct. Negrito is the name given by anthropologists to a people who once lived throughout Southeast Asia. They are very small, very dark, and have peppercorn hair. They look like African pygmies who have wandered away from Congo’s jungles to take up life on a tropical isle. But they are not.
The latest genetic data suggest that the Negritos are descended from the first modern humans to have invaded Asia, some 100,000 years ago. In time they were overrun or absorbed by waves of Neolithic agriculturalists, and later nearly wiped out by British, Spanish and Indian colonialists. Now they are confined to the Malay Peninsula, a few islands in the Philippines and the Andamans.
Armand Marie Leroi, an evolutionary developmental biologist at Imperial College in London, is the author of “Mutants: On Genetic Variety and the Human Body.”
*************************
>>the book that convinced me (against my will) that “race”, as commonly used, is meaningless.>>
Two thoughts come to mind:
Who are you going to believe…that book or your lying eyes!
It depends on what you mean by “meaningless”…!
I posted an earlier response that did not go through.
I do not believe that the concept of race is meaningless; otherwise, why would different ethnic groups (and races) suffer from different diseases and respond differently to treatment?
Earl, without having read the book, it sounds like it has succumbed to “Lewontin’s Fallacy”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewontin’s_Fallacy
There was a great oped piece about this fallacy in the NYT (no, really!)
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/14/opinion/14leroi.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
Read the whole thing, as instapundit says!
Here are a few excerpts:
*******************
If modern anthropologists mention the concept of race, it is invariably only to warn against and dismiss it. Likewise many geneticists. “Race is social concept, not a scientific one,” according to Dr. Craig Venter - and he should know, since he was first to sequence the human genome. 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. In the supplement, some two dozen geneticists offered their views. 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.
The dominance of the social construct theory can be traced to a 1972 article by Dr. Richard Lewontin, a Harvard geneticist, who wrote that most human genetic variation can be found within any given “race.” If one looked at genes rather than faces, he claimed, the difference between an African and a European would be scarcely greater than the difference between any two Europeans. A few years later he wrote that the continued popularity of race as an idea was an “indication of the power of socioeconomically based ideology over the supposed objectivity of knowledge.” Most scientists are thoughtful, liberal-minded and socially aware people. It was just what they wanted to hear.
Three decades later, it seems that Dr. Lewontin’s facts were correct, and have been abundantly confirmed by ever better techniques of detecting genetic variety. His reasoning, however, was wrong. His error was an elementary one, but such was the appeal of his argument that it was only a couple of years ago that a Cambridge University statistician, A. W. F. Edwards, put his finger on it.
The error is easily illustrated. If one were asked to judge the ancestry of 100 New Yorkers, one could look at the color of their skin. That would do much to single out the Europeans, but little to distinguish the Senegalese from the Solomon Islanders. The same is true for any other feature of our bodies. The shapes of our eyes, noses and skulls; the color of our eyes and our hair; the heaviness, height and hairiness of our bodies are all, individually, poor guides to ancestry.
But this is not true when the features are taken together. 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.
Genetic variants that aren’t written on our faces, but that can be detected only in the genome, show similar correlations. It is these correlations that Dr. Lewontin seems to have ignored. In essence, he looked at one gene at a time and failed to see races. But if many - a few hundred - variable genes are considered simultaneously, then it is very easy to do so. Indeed, a 2002 study by scientists at the University of Southern California and Stanford showed that if a sample of people from around the world are sorted by computer into five groups on the basis of genetic similarity, the groups that emerge are native to Europe, East Asia, Africa, America and Australasia - more or less the major races of traditional anthropology.
Indeed, the recognition that races are real should have several benefits. To begin with, it would remove the disjunction in which the government and public alike defiantly embrace categories that many, perhaps most, scholars and scientists say do not exist.
Second, the recognition of race may improve medical care. Different races are prone to different diseases. The risk that an African-American man will be afflicted with hypertensive heart disease or prostate cancer is nearly three times greater than that for a European-American man. On the other hand, the former’s risk of multiple sclerosis is only half as great. Such differences could be due to socioeconomic factors. Even so, geneticists have started searching for racial differences in the frequencies of genetic variants that cause diseases. They seem to be finding them.
Race can also affect treatment. African-Americans respond poorly to some of the main drugs used to treat heart conditions - notably beta blockers and angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors. Pharmaceutical corporations are paying attention. Many new drugs now come labeled with warnings that they may not work in some ethnic or racial groups. Here, as so often, the mere prospect of litigation has concentrated minds.
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Sorry, gpc. Akismet got ‘em.
>>Race can also affect treatment. African-Americans respond poorly to some of the main drugs used to treat heart conditions>>
Heh. So if we treat the black person and the white person with the same disease exactly the same way…we’re being racist???