In Research Involving Genome Analysis, Some See A 'New Racism'
In Research Involving Genome Analysis, Some See A 'New Racism'
1/17/2016
segments that traveled across several continents, not just one. Far better to speak in terms of genetic
ancestry, he says. (That's the language used by Barnes, Hernandez, and other researchers mentioned in
the accompanying article.) A concept like that does not carry race's baggage, and points toward productive
areas of biological research.
You can go even further, (http://stx.sagepub.com.ezproxy.lib.vt.edu/content/30/2/67.abstract) says Jiannbin
L. Shiao, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Oregon, in Sociological Theory. The social
sciences should replace their biology-based rejection of race "with a version of the feminist distinction
between biological sex and socially constructed gender," he writes. With several co-authors, he has
developed a concept called "clines," adapted from how economists talk about social class, which reflects
the continuous nature of human variation while allowing loose clusters to develop, depending on how you
zoom into the data.
Recognizing any biological notion of race is a risk, he adds, because it could present a back door to
biological racism. But it's one worth taking to explore the "thoroughly entangled" nature of culture and
biology.
Perhaps most helpful is a paper
(http://perspectivesinmedicine.cshlp.org.ezproxy.lib.vt.edu/content/3/11/a008573.short) in Cold Spring
Harbor Perspectives in Medicine by Richard S. Cooper, a professor of community and family medicine at
Loyola University Medical School, detailing how the narrative of race has wandered "the border territory
between what we call science and what we recognize as history and politics." Africa, he reminds the reader,
is the source of all human genetic diversity; it is the reference population. All of humanity is a subset.
"Variation among geographic populations is real, and study of its origins can yield important biological
insights," he writes. "But there are no categories of race that segment human populations, and there are no
mysterious qualities 'in the blood' that justify the belief in racial superiority."
By Paul Voosen
Full Text: COPYRIGHT 2014 Chronicle of Higher Education, Inc.
http://www.chronicle.com.ezproxy.lib.vt.edu
Source Citation
Voosen, Paul. "In Research Involving Genome Analysis, Some See a 'New Racism'." The
Chronicle of Higher Education 60.28 (2014). Biography in Context. Web. 17 Jan.
2016.
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