Sex is Etched in Our DNA, But Race Is All in Our Heads

Townhall.com ^ | March 21, 2016 | Jeff Jacoby

[Kaslin]

At Milton Academy, the tony Massachusetts prep school, the longstanding "one boy, one girl" rule requiring equal representation on the student council has been scrapped. The student government voted this month to move beyond what the council's cochairman refers to as the "archaic norms" of male and female, and instead "accept the world and the people within it the way they are now."

To which I say: Out of the mouth of babes.

To be sure, there is nothing archaic about the labeling of human beings as either male or female. The distinction between the sexes is objective and fixed, and written into the DNA of every individual. (In rare cases, congenital irregularities can cause an infant to be born with intersex ambiguity.) Nevertheless, Milton's well-intentioned student leaders want to be as accommodating as possible toward students who are transgender or "grappling with their identities." Hence the vote to repeal the student council's gender-based quota proviso.

In practical terms, nothing will change at Milton, where the student body is divided equally between boys and girls, and no one has much difficulty telling one from the other. But let's give the kids credit for a sound insight: As a matter of fundamental fairness, quotas should not be tied to rigid classifications that cannot be clearly defined.

Do gender quotas pose that problem? No. But racial quotas certainly do.

American society is awash with race-based quotas, check-offs, preferences, and diversity policies. In countless settings — from college admissions to workplace hiring, from government contracts to legislative redistricting — opportunities and benefits are tied to racial percentages. Twelve decades after Plessy v. Ferguson, the notorious Supreme Court decision in which eight justices upheld the constitutionality of racial segregation, Americans are labeled and sorted by race more obsessively than ever. It was in Plessy that Justice John Harlan delivered his ringing dissent: "Our Constitution is colorblind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. . . . The law regards man as man and takes no account of his surroundings or of his color."

Harlan's fierce insistence that Americans are not to be treated differently on the basis of race became the great objective of the Civil Rights movement in the 20th century. "Racial criteria are irrational, irrelevant, [and] odious to our way of life," argued Thurgood Marshall on behalf of the NAACP in 1950. "There is no understandable factual basis for classification by race."

Marshall's statement was even truer than he could have imagined. Today we know for a fact what scientists in the 1950s could only have surmised: Race is not biological. It is a social construct, not a genetic reality. The DNA of blacks cannot be distinguished from the DNA of Asians or the DNA of whites. Unlike our sex, which is stamped in our chromosomes, our racial and ethnic identities are purely subjective.

"I am an African American, but in parts of Africa, I am white," says Stanford professor Duana Fullwiley, an anthropologist of science and medicine. When research in West Africa requires her to fly from California to France to Senegal, she told Harvard Magazine in a 2008 interview, "My race changes as I cross the Atlantic." In the United States she is black; in France she is considered métisse, or mixed-race; in Senegal, everyone regards her as white.

Of course human beings vary widely in their appearance. Populations from different parts of the world differ notably in their skin color, facial features, and hair texture. But those distinctions are superficial, not racial. They have no immutable significance. They contribute no more to "diversity" than right- and left-handedness do. To rely on such criteria when hiring employees or drawing electoral maps or assessing a corporate board is about as sensible as consulting a Magic 8 Ball.

Racial definitions change constantly. The US Census Bureau has regularly revised the categories it uses to measure race. In 1890, census enumerators divided Americans into eight racial groups: "White," "Black," "Mulatto," "Quadroon," "Octoroon," "Chinese," "Japanese," and "Indian." The most recent census, in 2010, generated data for 63 racial categories — "six single-race categories and 57 different combinations of two or more races," as a government press release announced at the time. Orlando Patterson, the prominent sociologist, has observed that federal immigration authorities used to classify Irish, Italians, and Jews as separate races.

With millions of Americans marrying across the color lineand raising biracial or multiracial children, our ubiquitous affirmative-action check-offs and diversity quotas become more nonsensical — and unjust — by the day. The present fashion for treating "Hispanic" as a quasi-racial category exacerbates the problem. Hispanic identity is not a distinctive and heritable characteristic; it's an ancestral affiliation that fades over time. That is why immigrants from Latin America commonly describe their identity with reference to their Hispanic origin, while a majority of their grandchildren call themselves simply . . . American.

What is true of Hispanics is true of other racial/ethnic groups. A study published last month by the National Bureau of Economic Research finds that when respondents are asked to specify their race, 96 percent immigrants from Asia self-identify as Asian. But that rate falls to 79 percent for their children, and only 58 percent for their grandchildren.

In the ways that matter most — how they label themselves, whom they marry — tens of millions of Americans have no use for racial pigeonholes. To turn those pigeonholes into litmus tests for employment or voting rights or college admissions is, as Thurgood Marshall said of Jim Crow, "irrational, irrelevant, [and] odious to our way of life."

In a nation that aspires to meritocracy, quotas of any kind are an embarrassment. Racial quotas should be unthinkable. Our DNA has always known that race is only a delusion. When will our law and public policy catch up

[Ultima]

>>>Marshall’s statement was even truer than he could have imagined. Today we know for a fact what scientists in the 1950s could only have surmised: Race is not biological. It is a social construct, not a genetic reality. The DNA of blacks cannot be distinguished from the DNA of Asians or the DNA of whites.

This is a denial that there is a biological thing called race. It is however true that racial definitions do change over time and that a black person in America (who on average are around twenty percent European) may be labelled as white in parts of Africa where Africans are one hundred percent African DNA.

[Mrs. Don-o]

I'll concede you that, Toad, with this caveat: it depends on what criteria you use to measure functionality. There are probably dozens of distinguishable sets of criteria that could be defended by some "survival fitness" argument.

There are tribal societies which have passed into extinction, others that have persisted for thousands of years.

Never saw a tribe create new technology for killing people. Seem them wage war over and over again, but not end up with a continent-wide genocide.

[Mrs. Don-o]

Same thing seems to be true of satellite temperature readings.

[CodeToad]

If you read The Bell Curve, they get into the various areas of functionality, tribalism, anthropology, intelligence, education, etc. They break it down ten ways to Sunday.

An interesting conclusion the book gets into is that the education is not very educational at all.

“but not end up with a continent-wide genocide.”

Actually, they did. All throughout the Americas there were genocidal wars. They weren’t bright enough to create new technologies but they sure used the ones they had with great prejudice.

[Ultima]

One thing people need to understand is that “science” is POLITICIZED. Ideally scientists do experiments, do them right and write down whatever happens. In the real world there is pressure not to write or say things which would be considered “racist”. That’s why James Watson who has a Nobel Prize for his work in DNA was fired from his job for suggesting that Africans do not have the same level of intelligence as Europeans. Most scientists are well aware they will get fired or come under heavy pressure for saying things liberals don’t like whether it is true or not. Probably even more pressure if it is true. Scientists are well aware there are major incentives to saying “man made climate change is real” and major disincentives to saying “man made climate change is not real”. A lot of scientists are either going to lie or say nothing if they really think man made climate change is not real because they know what will happen if they say it out loud.

[Mrs. Don-o]

Gotta agree that tribal warfare can be as savagely merciless (in intent, if not in extent) as anything developed by the civilized brutes of 20th century Europe.

[Does so]

Forensic anthropologists can disclose the race of a person from a glance of their skulls. (Though one has to be dead first, to see the obvious).

[Ultima]

“Forensic anthropologists can disclose the race of a person from a glance of their skulls. (Though one has to be dead first, to see the obvious).”

Right. I believe dentists in Africa can do the same thing.

[Boogieman]

Yes, a lot of people are fond of saying “race is a social construct” nowadays, but that doesn’t mean that is all that race is. Forensic pathologists can look at a skull and tell you the person’s race because it is a real, physical thing, not just a “social construct”.

[Trillian]

Society is never gonna make any progress until we all learn to pretend to like each other ;)

[Let's Roll]

Mankind has always been suspicious of and uncomfortable around “the other”.

AmerIndians are a good example of that. Tribes traditionally battled with each other. All regions and continents have similar hostilities.

Chinese/Japanese etc.

[BroJoeK]

PghBaldy: "The DNA of blacks cannot be distinguished from the DNA of Asians or the DNA of whites” -— That is not true."

We're told that DNA of all humans is 99.9% the same, but that is still four million "base pairs" with differences (alleles).
So, in terms of today's biological classifications, human "races" fall into the same category as "breeds" of animals and "varieties" of plants -- all closely enough related to have no problems with interbreeding.
In other words, scientifically, we are not "races", we are "breeds".

A useful contrast to consider is the new data on Neanderthals.
They, we are now told, were only 99% the same DNA as us -- iow, instead of 4 million potential differences in "base pairs", Neanderthals had about 40 million.
That makes them the same species, homo-sapiens, but a different sub-species, Neanderthals.
So Neanderthals could still interbreed with humans, but not so readily or successfully as other human "races" = breeds.

Actually, most dog or cat breeds are much newer than major human "races", so DNA differences amongst humans are doubtless greater than amongst breeds of dogs or cats.

So, bottom line: three words which biologically mean pretty much the same things: breeds in animals, varieties in plants and races in human beings.
All signify visible differences, sometimes dramatic (i.e., chihuahuas vs Great Dane), but in terms of underlying genetics, pretty much the same creation.

[RipSawyer]

“I am an African American, but in parts of Africa, I am white,” says Stanford professor Duana Fullwiley, an anthropologist of science and medicine.”

This is one of the most idiotic sentences I have ever read.

[Vigilanteman]

This WOULD be true if there was scientific and objective criteria used to define race, but there is not. If you limited it to the traditional three, maybe there would be. But that wouldn’t serve the race hustler agenda which insists that “Hispanic” is a separate race.

[RipSawyer]

Actually only imbeciles deny the existence of race, mostly because they never bother to understand the meaning of the word.

[bert]

No one argued that races were different species nor of a different genus.

race is the result of adaptation to different habitat over a long period of time coupled with some interbreeding at the margins that escaped into a habitat of it’s own. race is an evolutionary result

[BroJoeK]

bert: "No one argued that races were different species nor of a different genus."

Of course, but some do argue "there's no such thing as race".
I am merely saying that human "race" is equivalent to animal "breed" and plant "variety".
They do indeed signify differences in appearance, though very little difference in terms of underlying DNA.

[Vigilanteman]

No, it isn't. Fullwiley is merely stating the fact as to how difference societies define race.

In the EU, for instance, there is no such race as "Hispanic" but they do distinguish between "Asian" (Indian subcontinent/west Asia) and "Oriental" (China, Japan/east Asia).

[Jim Noble]

Race is not biological. It is a social construct, not a genetic reality. The DNA of blacks cannot be distinguished from the DNA of Asians or the DNA of whites

Completely, totally false in all particulars, and the foundation of the worst possible social policy, which has already almost destroyed the nation.

[Toespi]

There are significant physical differences, not just skin color. Fortunately, for the African-AMERICAN blacks, the slave merchants created a genetically, superior physical race.