Long Division
December 19, 2022 1:14 PM Subscribe
The Persistence of Race Science: Science built up the idea of race. Can it ever be torn down? A well-written and deep investigative series from UnDark Magazine. Their navigation is a little awkward and breaks the back-button, so links to each of the articles in the series are after the jump.
*A Field at the Crossroads: As their research is twisted to fuel racist claims, many geneticists are weighing the societal risks of their work.
*What’s in a Genome? The Quest to Decipher Human Difference: Racial categories are crude maps imposed on human biological variation. How do scientists square them with genetics?
*Q&A: Jonathan Kahn on New Frontiers in Racial Profiling: The author of “Race in a Bottle” discusses the risks and pitfalls of a technology that uses genetic samples to create virtual mugshots.
*Born of Eugenics, Can Standardized Testing Escape Its Past? High-stakes testing has struggled with overt and implicit biases. Should it still have a place in modern education?
*A Crude Tool: How Race Has Influenced Breast Cancer Research: Researchers are grappling with the question whether it’s possible to separate race from our understanding of cancer.
*Video: How Difference Became Destiny, with Evelynn Hammonds, Harvard University.
*Ghosts of Science Past Still Haunt Us. We Can Put Them to Rest. Conversations about famed scientists who held troubling views on race should center not on cancellation but on progress.
*Race Is a Biological Fiction, and Potent Social Reality: Science showed decades ago that race was a fiction. Has that changed anything?
*Draper’s Millions: The Philanthropic Wellspring of Modern Race Science: Wickliffe Draper spent his inheritance helping to skew the science of human difference. That mission continues.
*A Field at the Crossroads: As their research is twisted to fuel racist claims, many geneticists are weighing the societal risks of their work.
*What’s in a Genome? The Quest to Decipher Human Difference: Racial categories are crude maps imposed on human biological variation. How do scientists square them with genetics?
*Q&A: Jonathan Kahn on New Frontiers in Racial Profiling: The author of “Race in a Bottle” discusses the risks and pitfalls of a technology that uses genetic samples to create virtual mugshots.
*Born of Eugenics, Can Standardized Testing Escape Its Past? High-stakes testing has struggled with overt and implicit biases. Should it still have a place in modern education?
*A Crude Tool: How Race Has Influenced Breast Cancer Research: Researchers are grappling with the question whether it’s possible to separate race from our understanding of cancer.
*Video: How Difference Became Destiny, with Evelynn Hammonds, Harvard University.
*Ghosts of Science Past Still Haunt Us. We Can Put Them to Rest. Conversations about famed scientists who held troubling views on race should center not on cancellation but on progress.
*Race Is a Biological Fiction, and Potent Social Reality: Science showed decades ago that race was a fiction. Has that changed anything?
*Draper’s Millions: The Philanthropic Wellspring of Modern Race Science: Wickliffe Draper spent his inheritance helping to skew the science of human difference. That mission continues.
Obviously haven’t had time to read all of this, but looks like great information. I will probably have more to say later.
posted by TedW at 2:20 PM on December 19, 2022
posted by TedW at 2:20 PM on December 19, 2022
I recall tavella's comment and link:
posted by away for regrooving at 7:52 PM on December 19, 2022 [11 favorites]
I've always loved this particular chart, from a Current Biology paper. Diversity of the human race? Well, actually, outside of Africa, we are all fairly closely related clades of just one tiny branch of the human genetic tree. There are groups living within a few miles of each other in Africa that have more genetic difference than a Norwegian does from a native Australian.Funny how the folks Just Very Interested In Human Genetic Diversity don't know where it is.
posted by away for regrooving at 7:52 PM on December 19, 2022 [11 favorites]
I have often thought about genetics-based medicine and what a mindfuck it must be to navigate this field of science.
Fortunately, every article I've read about genetics-based medical treatments have shown that it has to be based on a particular person's genetics, certainly nothing so broad or poorly defined as race. A genetic based cancer treatment might work for you but not for your brother, since his genes may not have the right factors to allow the medicine to be effective.
posted by eye of newt at 8:47 PM on December 19, 2022 [5 favorites]
Fortunately, every article I've read about genetics-based medical treatments have shown that it has to be based on a particular person's genetics, certainly nothing so broad or poorly defined as race. A genetic based cancer treatment might work for you but not for your brother, since his genes may not have the right factors to allow the medicine to be effective.
posted by eye of newt at 8:47 PM on December 19, 2022 [5 favorites]
Fortunately, every article I've read about genetics-based medical treatments have shown that it has to be based on a particular person's genetics, certainly nothing so broad or poorly defined as race.
And yet sickle-cell anemia is definitely a real thing, and while there are surely sickle-cell patients who could otherwise "pass," being one definitively identifies you as a person with sub-Saharan African heritage.
How many times have we seen feature articles about this or that disease that disproportionately kills African Americans who get treatment, because the treatments were designed for white people and don't work as effectively on blacks?
I mean yes, I once trained as a biologist and understand that if we were to really attempt a scientific definition of "race," almost all the "races" would be in Africa and everybody else would be in some mix of maybe 3 categories none of which match the typical person's idea of a "race." And yet there are broad correlations which are really important, and given that these broad correlations are all we've got, it's a bit silly to get so hung up on the social construction part of it that you're unwilling to use them.
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 6:52 AM on December 20, 2022 [1 favorite]
And yet sickle-cell anemia is definitely a real thing, and while there are surely sickle-cell patients who could otherwise "pass," being one definitively identifies you as a person with sub-Saharan African heritage.
How many times have we seen feature articles about this or that disease that disproportionately kills African Americans who get treatment, because the treatments were designed for white people and don't work as effectively on blacks?
I mean yes, I once trained as a biologist and understand that if we were to really attempt a scientific definition of "race," almost all the "races" would be in Africa and everybody else would be in some mix of maybe 3 categories none of which match the typical person's idea of a "race." And yet there are broad correlations which are really important, and given that these broad correlations are all we've got, it's a bit silly to get so hung up on the social construction part of it that you're unwilling to use them.
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 6:52 AM on December 20, 2022 [1 favorite]
Sickle cell anemia also shows up in, e.g., Italians: https://www.sicklecellsociety.org/resource/sickle-cell-anemia-s-thalassemia-sicilian-children/
posted by LizardBreath at 7:40 AM on December 20, 2022
posted by LizardBreath at 7:40 AM on December 20, 2022
Yes, sickle cell is also common in people whose ancestry is from southern Europe, the Arabian peninsula, and the Indian sub-continent. This is not about "passing". Ancestral sickle cell occurrence corresponds with the native range of malaria, in particular Plasmodium falciparum, not skin color. And "race" as it is defined commonly in the English speaking world, is based almost entirely on skin color plus a few other phenotypic traits, not ancestral parasitic burden.
posted by hydropsyche at 7:56 AM on December 20, 2022 [7 favorites]
posted by hydropsyche at 7:56 AM on December 20, 2022 [7 favorites]
And yet sickle-cell anemia is definitely a real thing, and while there are surely sickle-cell patients who could otherwise "pass," being one definitively identifies you as a person with sub-Saharan African heritage.
From the CDC: “Sickle cell disease (SCD) affects millions of people throughout the world and is particularly common among those whose ancestors came from sub-Saharan Africa; Spanish-speaking regions in the Western Hemisphere (South America, the Caribbean, and Central America); Saudi Arabia; India; and Mediterranean countries such as Turkey, Greece, and Italy.” But to make things more complicated, many of those groups have a less-severe form of the disease, generally due to a tendency to continue producing fetal hemoglobin into adulthood.
Fortunately, every article I've read about genetics-based medical treatments have shown that it has to be based on a particular person's genetics, certainly nothing so broad or poorly defined as race.
There is a lot of medical literature, such as this article, that seems to me to lump “blacks” together in one group when it come to hypertension. “Black” is of course never precisely defined, and I am suspicious that at least some of the impetus came from drug trials in the 1980s and 1990s that used data mining to show that otherwise unremarkable antihypertensive drugs might be more effective in black people. But there is some pushback to the idea that race-based prescribing is helpful.
So as the articles in the FPP show, race is deeply intertwined with science (and medicine). For an in-depth look at how this has been the case in the U.S. I recommend the book Medical Apartheid by Harriet Washington; it has been mentioned in a number of comments here previously.
posted by TedW at 8:01 AM on December 20, 2022 [2 favorites]
From the CDC: “Sickle cell disease (SCD) affects millions of people throughout the world and is particularly common among those whose ancestors came from sub-Saharan Africa; Spanish-speaking regions in the Western Hemisphere (South America, the Caribbean, and Central America); Saudi Arabia; India; and Mediterranean countries such as Turkey, Greece, and Italy.” But to make things more complicated, many of those groups have a less-severe form of the disease, generally due to a tendency to continue producing fetal hemoglobin into adulthood.
Fortunately, every article I've read about genetics-based medical treatments have shown that it has to be based on a particular person's genetics, certainly nothing so broad or poorly defined as race.
There is a lot of medical literature, such as this article, that seems to me to lump “blacks” together in one group when it come to hypertension. “Black” is of course never precisely defined, and I am suspicious that at least some of the impetus came from drug trials in the 1980s and 1990s that used data mining to show that otherwise unremarkable antihypertensive drugs might be more effective in black people. But there is some pushback to the idea that race-based prescribing is helpful.
So as the articles in the FPP show, race is deeply intertwined with science (and medicine). For an in-depth look at how this has been the case in the U.S. I recommend the book Medical Apartheid by Harriet Washington; it has been mentioned in a number of comments here previously.
posted by TedW at 8:01 AM on December 20, 2022 [2 favorites]
TedW, the hypertension article you linked is extra frustrating because the only genotype actually cited for the Liddle phenotype is a variant found only in South Africa thought to derive from the San population. The article specifically notes it is not found in West Africa (so not really relevant to African-Americans), though it does kind of vaguely gesture towards genotypes in that area without being specific. Then it makes a cursory nod to the Atlantic Slave Trade hypothesis, something that is far from settled.
So, in addition to recklessly lumping a hugely generally diverse continent under a singular getting geographic rubric, it engages in a lot of the same motivated reasoning that a lot of gene-based medicine does by granting genome primacy over social determinants of health. This so often occurs in these sorts of conversations because, well, finding The GeneTM for a disorder feels very certain, even if the actual condition is multifactorial with an almost incomprehensible amount of confounders. If something is caused by a disease, we can invent some kind of intervention to "solve" it. Addressing a complicated disease state profoundly rooted in the foundation of our societal structure is a much bigger pill to swallow.
In the best case scenario, this leads to the use of continental labels for genetic data basically (as the links in the OP note) out of convention and convenience. In the worst case scenario, it leads to racist ignoring 24 page FAQs in order to spread propaganda that gets people killed.
posted by Panjandrum at 2:59 AM on December 23, 2022 [1 favorite]
So, in addition to recklessly lumping a hugely generally diverse continent under a singular getting geographic rubric, it engages in a lot of the same motivated reasoning that a lot of gene-based medicine does by granting genome primacy over social determinants of health. This so often occurs in these sorts of conversations because, well, finding The GeneTM for a disorder feels very certain, even if the actual condition is multifactorial with an almost incomprehensible amount of confounders. If something is caused by a disease, we can invent some kind of intervention to "solve" it. Addressing a complicated disease state profoundly rooted in the foundation of our societal structure is a much bigger pill to swallow.
In the best case scenario, this leads to the use of continental labels for genetic data basically (as the links in the OP note) out of convention and convenience. In the worst case scenario, it leads to racist ignoring 24 page FAQs in order to spread propaganda that gets people killed.
posted by Panjandrum at 2:59 AM on December 23, 2022 [1 favorite]
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I would mark off Asian as my race but that does not tell you much when it comes to my culture or genetic history because my genetics can be traced to a very particular country and region extremely different from another random Asian country. I know certain medicines affect me more than other medicines and make it a point to follow medical literature from my heritage country (where my parents were born and where I can trace my ancestry to the 12th century). Thankfully, my heritage country has done a ton of medical and genomic research and it gives me a solid basis to work from to check against medications prescribed by doctors here on the "average" (i.e. white ) Americans.
Unfortunately, this type of heritage genomic based research which is such a blessing for me could be termed racist for people with darker skin because the medicine or treatment could be different than medicines given to white people and thus construed racist even though it would provide better health outcomes and possibly save lives. Mindfuck.
posted by ichimunki at 1:58 PM on December 19, 2022 [4 favorites]