Why do we still believe in race? There are two common answers, depending
on which side of the fence you stand on the meaning of race. Those who believe
that race is a biological reality argue that we still believe in it - well,
because it's a biological reality. Those who view race, not as a biological
entity but as a social construction, argue that science has disproved the
reality of race, and only prejudice gives it validity.
Ironically, the more we find out about human biology, the less certain scientists
appear to be about the meaning of race. For Craig Venter, one of the key figures
behind the unravelling of the human genome, 'The Human Genome Project shows
there is no such thing as race'. The equally distinguished geneticist Neil
Risch insists that 'A decade or more of population genetics have documented
biological differences between the races.'
Why such disagreement? Science provides us with data about differences between
human populations. But the question of how we interpret that data is beyond
its domain. To put it another way, science can neither confirm nor disconfirm
race as a biological reality, because race is a not scientific category.
To see this more clearly, let us look at both the traditional liberal arguments
against the biological idea of race and at the arguments of the so-called
race realists. Both sets of arguments, I want to suggest, are found wanting.
Is race a social construction?
Three main arguments are used to justify the belief that race is meaningless
as a biological category. First, most human genetic variation exists within
populations; 'racial' differences are tiny. Second, all human populations
merge into each other, making it difficult to divide humans into distinct
races. And third, Homo sapiens is too young a species for racial
differentiation to have biological meaning. Let us look at these arguments
in turn.
1 'Ninety per cent of variation exists within
populations'
All humans are genetically virtually identical. And virtually all the variation
that does exist, lies within populations, not between races. Imagine that
some nuclear nightmare wiped out the entire human race apart from one small
population - say, the Masai tribe in East Africa. Most of the genetic variation
that exists in the world today would still be present in that one small group.
That is a dramatic way of expressing the results of a landmark analysis conducted
by the geneticist Richard Lewontin in 1972. Lewontin showed that virtually
all human variety - 85 per cent - occurred between individuals within single
populations. A further 7 per cent differentiated populations within what we
call a race. Only 8 per cent of total variation distinguished the major races.
The results from a recent study by geneticist Noah Rosenberg are even more
striking. They show that differences among individuals account for a staggering
93-95 percent of all genetic variation, while racial differences account for
just 3-5 per cent.
At first sight such studies seem to demolish the biological idea of race.
Racial differences appear too small to be meaningful. Tiny genetic differences
can, however, have a huge impact. From a genetic point of view poodles and
greyhounds are almost identical, yet they are physically and behaviourally
distinct. Humans and chimpanzees share about 99.4 per cent of their functional
genes but are clearly different species. So the fact that race accounts for
only around four per cent of genetic variation among humans does not necessarily
mean that race has no biological validity. That four per cent could, theoretically,
make all the difference in the world.
2 'There are no sharp
distinctions between populations'
The people of China look different from those of Kenya. But there is no point
between Nairobi and Beijing at which the race to which Kenyans belong ends
and those to which Chinese belong begins. Every population shades imperceptibly
into another. Since there are no clearcut divisions between populations, many
suggest, so race cannot exist in any meaningful sense.
Even race realists acknowledge the problem. The journalist Jon Entine, a strong
advocate of the race concept, observes that dividing humans into races 'is
akin to wrestling an octopus into a shoe box: no matter how hard you fight
with it, you still have something dangling out somewhere. Modern typologists
cannot even agree whether it is more meaningful to lump races into large fuzzy
groups or split them into smaller units of dozens or even hundreds of populations.'
When even a strong proponent of the race concept has doubts perhaps it is
time to give up on the idea. But countless real categories have fuzzy boundaries.
Among many non-human animals, for instance, subspecies are often separated
by a continuous gradation rather than by a sharp boundary. The fuzziness of
boundaries does not necessarily deny the existence of races.
Recent genetic research suggests that it may indeed possible to divide up
humanity into racial groups. The same study by Noah Rosenberg that showed
that racial differences account for as little as four per cent of total human
variation, also showed that it is nevertheless feasible to distinguish between
races.
Rosenberg studied 377 DNA sequences from 1056 individuals across 52 populations
worldwide utilising a software programme called Structure, which
finds the most rational way of disaggregating any set of data into distinct
categories. When asked to break the data up into five groups, Structure
created clusters that correlated closely with what we call 'races': sub-Saharan
Africans, Caucasians, East Asians, Australasians and Native Americans. Rosenberg's
study seems to suggest that, however small the differences between races,
they are nevertheless sufficient to pick them out.
3 'Homo sapiens is too young species
for race to have any meaning'
Modern humans first evolved on the East African savannah some 150,000 years
ago, but did not begin migrating to the rest of the world for another 90,000
years. Any differences between races, therefore, would be at most 60,000 years
old. For many, there simply has not been sufficient time to develop deep divisions
between races.
We know, though, of many genetic mutations that have spread rapidly. The gene
for lactose tolerance, for example, which allows human adults to digest milk,
came to dominate in agricultural communities in the space of a few thousand
years. Today, lactose tolerance is widespread among people who come from areas
that have a long history of agriculture, including Europe, the Middle East
and South Asia. But people from other areas - such as East Asia - remain lactose
intolerant, and find it difficult to digest milk.
In any case, genetic differences between races are likely to have been the
result, not primarily of natural selection, but of two other evolutionary
forces, whose effects show up much more quickly - genetic drift and the founder
effect. Genetic drift refers to the random changes to gene frequencies that
occurs over time, especially in a small population. The most extreme case
of genetic drift is called the 'founder effect'. If a small number of people
leave one community to form another one, the two groups are, thanks to chance
differences, unlikely to have exactly the same genetic profiles.
Each band of people that moved out of Africa to populate the rest of the world
would have had a distinct genetic profile. Along the way, new genetic mutations
would have been picked up. And as a result of genetic drift, the genetic profiles
of the different populations would have continued to move apart. All this,
race realists argue, would be sufficient to explain major differences between
the races.
Is race a biological reality?
So, does science really tell us that race is a biological fact? It does not.
For while science does not absolutely close the door on the idea of race,
it certainly does not open it either.
The debate about race is not a debate about whether differences exist between
human populations - they do - but about the significance of such differences.
In the nineteenth century races were seen as fixed groups, almost akin to
distinct species, each with special behaviour and physical characteristics
that distinguished one from the other. The races could be ranked on an evolutionary
hierarchy, with whites at the top and blacks at the bottom.
Today, with a few exceptions, race realists reject the idea that there are
essential differences between human populations, or that differences signify
inferiority or superiority. But that has made race a highly flaky concept.
No one knows quite how to define it. We can see this if we look at the three
major claims as to what constitutes a race.
1 'Races are statistically distinct genetic
populations'
A race, the biologist Alice Brues writes, is 'a division of a species which
differs from other divisions by the frequency with which certain hereditary
traits appear among its members'. Races, in other words, are distinguished
from each other not because they possess unique, fixed genetic features, but
because one differs from another statistically in the frequencies of particular
genes. Europeans are more likely to have blue eyes, Africans less likely to
suffer from cystic fibrosis.
The trouble is, if we were to test for enough genes, we could find a statistical
difference between almost any two populations. 'If we look at enough genes',
the geneticist Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza observes, 'the genetic distance between
Pisa and Florence in Italy is most likely to be significant'.
If any population in the world can be defined as a distinct 'race', then the
concept becomes meaningless. As Cavalli-Sfroza puts it, 'classifying the world's
population into several hundreds of thousands or a million different races'
is 'impractical'. The anthropologist Vincent Sarich responds that 'it is for
Nature to tell us' what is a 'reasonable' number of races. But if the people
of Pisa and Florence are seen as distinct races, then Nature is probably telling
us to trash this particular definition of race.
2 'Different races come from different continents'
One attempt to overcome the problem of any population being potentially a
race is to link race to one's continent of origin. The world's inhabited continents
- Africa, Europe, Asia, Australia and the Americas - correspond roughly to
the five major races. And that's not surprising, say the race realists. Once
the first bands of humans coming out of Africa each with a slightly different
genetic signature, settled in their new homelands, geographical barriers ensured
greater population movements within continents than between them. Hence genetic
differences between continental populations were maintained and even sharpened.
The geneticist Neil Risch suggests that linking races and continents works
because 'genetic differentiation is greatest when defined on a continental
basis'. In fact, the greatest genetic differentiation is not between Continental
groups but between Africans and non-Africans. Caucasians, East Asians, Australians
and Native Americans are significantly closer to each other genetically than
any of these groups are to sub-Saharan Africans. If we defined races simply
according to the greatest degree of genetic difference, we would conclude
that there are just two races - Africans and non-Africans.
At the same time there is considerable genetic differentiation within Continental
groups. And in many, perhaps most, contexts, investigating these finer-grained
differences is far more useful than dividing up the world into broad Continental
groups.
Take, for instance, the study of sickle cell anaemia. We all know it is a
black disease. Except that it isn't. Sickle cell is a disease of populations
originating from areas with high incidence of malaria. West Africa is one
of those areas. African Americans, descended from West African slaves suffer
disproportionately from the trait. But South Africans do not. In fact the
majority of Africans don't suffer from sickle cell, but many non-Africans
- including southern Europeans and Indians - do. But given popular ideas about
race, most people automatically assume that what applies to black Americans
applies to all blacks and only to blacks. In this and other cases thinking
of race in Continental terms obscures rather than clarifies the importance
of genetic differences.
Continental groups represent neither the greatest degree of genetic differentiation
within humankind, nor necessarily the most useful way of dividing up human
populations. There is no rational reason to define race by continent.
3 'A race is an extended family'
As a result of these problems in defining a race, some race realists have
bitten the bullet and accepted that race is effectively genealogy. 'Roughly
defined', the philosopher Max Hocutt argues 'a member of race R is an individual
whose forebears were members of race R'. Just as 'an animal is a coyote if
it is descended from a coyote', so 'a human being is an Afro-American if she
is descended from Americans whose forebears were Africans'. Or as Steve Sailer,
founder of the self-styled Human Biodiversity Institute, puts it 'a race is
an extended family that is inbred to some degree'. There is, he claims, 'no
need to say just how big the extended family has to be or just how inbred'.
Africans, Icelanders, Basques, even Northern Irish Protestants and Northern
Ireland Catholics all constitute distinct races.
Of course, how one defines an 'African' or a 'Basque' is slightly more complicated
than how one defines a 'coyote'. Human populations and identities are not
natural phenomena but shaped by complex social and historical developments.
In any case, even if human populations were as easy to define as animal species,
we are still faced with the old problem: if any group can be a race, then
the concept of race becomes meaningless. The problem for race realists today
is the very opposite of that for nineteenth century racial scientists. Then,
racial scientists 'knew' the significance of race but could find no way of
truly defining differences. Today, we can define genetic differences between
populations with some precision. But the significance of such differences
no longer seems clear.
But, then, the question remains: if race is such a flaky concept, why do we
continue to believe in it? And why is it returning as a category in both scientific
research and medical practice? Those are questions that I will explore in
part two of this essay.