Using “genomic thinking” to ‘re-think’ human races is a mistake: Part 1 - history

Using “genomic thinking” to ‘re-think’ human races is a mistake: Part 1 - history

Emeritus Prof. Tim Crowe

Human races rejected

In UNESCO’s 1952 historic and “revolutionary” document, The Race Concept, the world’s foremost biologists, physical anthropologists, psychologists and social scientists rejected a role for the concept of race in investigating humanity – from any perspective.  Participants included UCT’s Lancelot Hogben  - sociobiologist - and social anthropologist Monica Wilson. 

Medical geneticist L.S. Penrose summarized this rejection succinctly. 

“Use of the term ‘race’ must be discontinued altogether.  The concept of the races of man is inexact and archaic. It belongs to an unscientific epoch and it cannot be used without perpetuating confusion and engendering discord. The objects of study in scientific anthropology are collections of people or populations. These can be precisely defined geographically, genealogically, linguistically or culturally according to the needs of any particular investigation which is to be carried out.”

In 1953, Harvard taxonomist E.O. Wilson co-authored a scathing critique of the formalized race (subspecies) as a taxonomic category for animals sensu lato.  His criticized the “diagnostic” reliability of characteristics employed in discovering “concrete units” and the “artificiality of quantitative methods of defining the formal lower limits of subspecies”.  He did not mince his words: “its [the subspecies’] assumed function as a formal means of registering geographical variation within the species tends to be both illusory and superfluous”, because “subspecific names not only imply discontinuity where none may exist, but also unity where there may, in fact, be discontinuity”.  In deference, he also quoted Ernst Mayr (also a participant in the UNESCO ‘race concept’ convention and the REAL “20^th Century Darwin”) who supported the responsible use of the subspecies category.  But, this was only if candidates were “built on the greatest possible number of clues” that show “concordant” trends in variation. 

In 1972, evolutionary theorist Stephen Jay Gould reviewed how geographical variation within biological species should be studied.  He emphasized multivariate biometrics and molecular genetics as the primary evidence, and only mentioned subspecies with a strong negative connotation:

“There was virtually no alternative to the formal establishment of subspecies and the enumeration of differences among them. This had a host of unfortunate consequences. It buried some of the most fascinating cases of dynamic adaptation under a thicket of names. It allocated the study of a central phenomenon in evolutionary theory to men more adept at cataloguing than analyzing. It partitioned continuity into more or less arbitrary packages of convenience. It imposed an inherently static nomenclature upon the most dynamic aspect of evolution.”

Also in 1972, The apportionment of human diversity by mathematical evolutionary geneticist Richard Lewontin provided molecular genetic results that strongly supported the rejection of race as applied to humans.  He demonstrated that more than 85% of the total genetic variation within Homo sapiens is due to individual differences within populations and perhaps as little as 6% to differences between populations or ethnic groups.   

He concluded that: “Human racial classification is of no social value and is positively destructive of social and human relations. Since such racial classification is now seen to be of virtually no genetic or taxonomic significance either, no justification can be offered for its continuance’’.

For the following three decades, a plethora of new molecular, anatomical and physiological studies of human populations reinforced Lewontin’s findings. 

So, at the end of the 20^th Century, it was accepted that some, even many, non-human animals warranted recognition as subspecies.  But, human races did not make the grade.

A change of heart

Some advocates of university decolonization may be in a very disturbing ‘boat’ (with scientific racists) when they attempt to reify human races.  I illustrate this with quotes from decolonist philosopher, Achille Mbembe, who focuses on genomic evidence (i.e. based on an organism’s complete set of DNA):

“Race has once again re-entered the domain of biological truth, viewed now through a molecular gaze. A new molecular deployment of race has emerged out of genomic thinking.”

“Worldwide, we witness a renewed interest in the identification of biological differences.”

“Genomics, for instance, has produced new complexity into the figure of humanity.”

 “We now realize that there is probably more to race than we ever imagined.”

If Mbembe believes that comprehensive investigations of human genomes can allow races to be revisited or reified, he is seriously mistaken.  But, because he cites no supporting research for his views, it is not possible to track down the ‘evidence’ for his stance.

Nevertheless, some eminent geneticists, statisticians and public intellectuals (e.g. R.A. Fisher, A.W.F. Edwards, Richard Dawkins and James Watson) defend the biological reality of races, and 21^st Century ‘scientific’ racists use their conclusions to promote racism.

I refute this view here.

Fisher

Sir Ronald Fisher is regarded as the ‘father’ of modern statistics and perhaps even the most influential statistician of the 20^th Century.   He is also one of the geneticist ‘architects’ of  the neo-Darwinian, “Modern Synthesis” of evolution.   Dawkins even describes him as "the greatest biologist since Darwin". 

Fisher was an ardent supporter of race as applied to humans, and of the value of eugenics to “improve the quality” of Homo sapiens.   He formed Cambridge University’s Eugenics Society and was the head of the Department of Eugenics at University College London.  

Fisher’s most famous pro-race quotes are:

“When a large number of individuals [of any kind of organism] are measured in respect of physical dimensions, weight, colour, density, etc., it may be possible to distinguish it from other populations differing in their genetic origin, or in environmental circumstances. Thus, local races may be very different as populations, although individuals may overlap in all characters.”

“Human groups differ profoundly in their innate capacity for intellectual and emotional development."

"The practical international problem is that of learning to share the resources of this planet amicably with persons of materially different nature is being obscured by entirely well-intentioned efforts to minimize the real differences that exist.”

The latter two quotes are from his formal objection to The Race Concept.

Edwards

Anthony W.F. Edwards is also a Cambridge-educated, British statistician, geneticist, and evolutionary biologist.  He was mentored by Fisher.  In his 2003 paper Human genetic diversity: Lewontin’s fallacy, he criticized Lewontin, arguing that, if one pools enough information from many correlated polymorphic genetic loci that differ statistically between them, it is possible to discriminate between populations of humans with a high statistical probability.  He maintained that such analyses reveal “genetic affinities that have unsurprising geographic, linguistic and cultural parallels”.  The abovementioned Rosenberg et al. study, also supported Edwards in claiming that model-based phenetic, cluster analyses of multilocus genotypes, “loosely speaking”, can detect “relatively homogeneous”, quasi-racial groups that “correspond pretty well with continental ancestry” without relying on a priori information about sampling locations of individuals.

Indeed, for less than 100$US, there are now gene-genealogical companies that claim that their analyses of selected bits of evolutionarily selectively neutral DNA can help “discover what makes you uniquely you” and “reveal your ethnic mix and [geographic provenance of] ancestors”. 

Watson
James D. Watson is an American molecular biologist, zoologist and scientific administrator.  He is best known for research done at Cambridge in the co-discovery of the structure of DNA, for which he shared a Nobel Prize. Watson joined Harvard University and, eventually, became director and ultimately chancellor of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL), shifting his research emphasis to the study of cancer.  He was also associated with the National Institutes of Health, helping to establish the Human Genome Project. He was forced to resign from CSHL in 2007 after making controversial comments attributing differences in human intelligence to racial status.

Watson has a controversial reputation going back to his ‘DNA days’ when he made use of essential data from Rosalind Franklin without her knowledge or permission to finalize the model of the structure of DNA.  He retrospectively apologized for this and for his uncomplimentary comments on her as a woman and on her role in the discovery (“She blew it.”) in his popular account The Double Helix.  In 1997, he revealed his eugenics bent when he suggested it would be acceptable to terminate a foetus if it carried a gene that might mean the adult that grows from it was “gay” or “stupid”. He also suggested a link between sunlight and libido. “That is why you have Latin lovers and you've never heard of an English lover.”

His career collapsed with his statement that he was "inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa" because "all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours – whereas all the testing says not really", and that this "hot potato" is going to be difficult to address. He had hoped that everyone was equal, but had come to realize that "people who have to deal with black employees find this not true".

Dawkins

Oxford’s Richard Dawkins is an English ethologist, evolutionary geneticist, public author/intellectual, ‘professional anti-creationist and atheist’, debater and ‘twitterer’.   In his The Ancestor's Tale, he takes Edwards’ position:  "The ‘taxonomic significance’ of genetic data in fact often arises from correlations amongst the different loci, for it is these that may contain the information which enables a stable classification to be uncovered. However small the racial partition of the total variation may be, if such racial characteristics are highly correlated with other racial characteristics, they are by definition informative, and therefore of taxonomic significance.” 

He offers a “test” to confirm this. “Suppose we took full-face photographs of 20 randomly chosen natives of each of the following countries: Japan, Uganda, Iceland, Sri Lanka, Papua New Guinea and Egypt. If we presented 120 people with all 120 photographs, my guess is that every single one of them would achieve 100 per cent success in sorting them into six different categories.

Interobserver agreement suggests that racial classification is not totally uninformative.” 

In one article, he surmises: “Humans, it seems, were predisposed to make sharp distinctions between in-group and out-group before there were any races at all—indeed, races may have evolved partly as a response to that predisposition.”

So, human racial taxonomy is ‘hard-wired’ into a human’s ‘being’.

Phylogenetic ‘subspecies’

If one abandons the Biological Species Concept of Ernst Mayr, which regards species as the end products of an evolutionary chain of events lead to the establishment of reproductively isolated populations, human races become a real biological possibility.  One legitimate alternative to the BSC is the Phylogenetic Species Concept (PSC) which sees species as being defined in terms of evolutionary diagnosable lineages.  Implementation of an extreme version of the PSC using a combination of morphological, physiological, medical, behavioural, social and genetic characteristics could result in the recognition of a large number of ‘least inclusive’, race-like entities.  Indeed, it has been suggested by Wheeler and Platnick that, prior to the advent of intercontinental travel, character distributions would have suggested the existence of a lineage-polytypic Homo sapiens.  Even when racial groups are living in close proximity to one another, Frank Salter maintains that admixture between racial groups is a function of the degree of genetic similarity, resulting in mate preferences restricting large-scale admixture.  The implication of this is that racial and sub-racial populations will continue to remain distinct, despite increases in demographic mobility, to make them diagnosable as phylogenetic ‘subspecies’.

Reified racism

‘Scientific’ racist Nicholas Wade in his book A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race and Human History uses Edwards’, Rosenberg’s, Wheeler/Platnick’s, Salter’s and genetic-genealogy results to conclude that human evolution has been recent, copious and regional, and that this has important implications for society.  Wade attributes ‘racial’ differences in behaviour and economic and other measures of competitive ‘success’ between forensically-delineated whites, blacks, Asians, and others as consequences genetic differences amplified by culture.

Neo-black ‘consciousness-ists’, Black nationalists  and decolonists seem to be using the same biological information to justify their colonial and decolonial “Dasein”, a “primal nature of being”, a self-identity based on a “shared history and destiny”.