Who drives academic ‘decolonization’ at the University of Cape Town (UCT), how and why?

Who drives academic ‘decolonization’ at the University of Cape Town (UCT), how and why?

https://rationalstandard.com/drives-academic-decolonization-uct/

Emeritus Prof. Tim Crowe

UCT is ranked 191 in the world, and 19^th if the search is restricted to BRICS countries.  However, it has dropped by 40 and 10 places respectively since the ‘rise’ of Fallism.  Nevertheless, it’s still number 1 in Africa.  But, closest rival, Stellenbosch University (361^st), has climbed by 31 places since last year, and meteorically since the 1990s.   Within UCT, ornithology has risen steadily, and now ranks at 3^rd worldwide and 4^th  in African Studies.  UCT researchers are still highly rated by South Africa’s National Research Foundation, and attract considerable research funds and publish innovative papers and books.   But, more than half or her A-rated researchers are emeritus professors or 60+ years old, two-thirds of them are from the Faculties of Science and Health Sciences, and A-ratings and published research ‘fruits’ are efforts decades in the making. 

So, with noteworthy exceptions, UCT is in overall academic decline as a research university.

Despite this bad news, Fallists, the Black Academic Caucus (BAC) and UCT’s Vice-Chancellor, DVCs and Executive Directors are determined to pursue Fallists’ evidence-free demands for her further “decolonization”, believing that it will reverse this trajectory.  They maintain that decolonization is also essential because UCT remains institutionally racist and colonialist.   This is in sharp contrast to the recollections of past VCs Saunders  and Ramphele, and my history: Was/Is UCT an institutionally colonialist/sexist/racist institution?  (Parts 1 and 2 on my Blog Site timguineacrowe.blogspot.co.za).  These scholarly publications demonstrate that UCT became non-racial in principle from 1950 and, certainly from +-1980, has striven to eliminate any vestiges of institutional (or individual acts of) racism and dealt aggressively with alleged acts of colonialism and sexism.   

There is no documented, evidence-based Fallist history of UCT that supports the persistence of racism and/or colonialism at UCT, institutional of otherwise. 

The one high-profile case of alleged racism in the public domain involved a Sociology decolonist academic who accused colleagues of racism.  His complaint was reviewed (with the approval of all concerned) by DVC (and NRF-A-rated professor of law) Danie Visser.  Visser dismissed the case, found that the accuser had defamed the alleged racists and instructed him to apologize publicly for this defamation. 

He refused to comply.

Another recent racism ‘story’ at UCT relates to the pioneer Fallist and decolonist who “reprehensively” defaced (without being held accountable) Rhodes’ statue with human excrement. Subsequently, he was accused of psychologically and racially abusing a woman lecturer.  During the incident, he is quoted saying: “it's time for all whites to go" and “whites have to be killed". That case remains unresolved, and the lecturer has had virtually no support from the UCT Management for more than a year.  Still later, the same multi-amnestied Fallist was accused of a assaulting another woman (this time a ‘black’, lesbian protester) and of arson during the Shackville ‘Protest’.  For the latter, he was effectively expelled.  Yet, after being once again ‘clemencied’ for this law-breaking, and allowed access to UCT via the November Agreement for non-violence, he violated that let-off a month later by invading the AGM of the UCT Convocation and defaming a member of the Convocation. Most recently, in August 2017 at the T.B. Davie Memorial Lecture, he defamed VC Price saying: “Dr Price protects white racists” (naming the alleged ones in Sociology) “who have not apologized for questioning the actions of a ‘black’ professor” (naming the defamer). “Dr Price has no courage, regard, wisdom and no vision to say to you I apologize for this institutional racism.  He is morally bankrupt.”

Yet, this multi-lawbreaking, multi-amnestied, unrepentant Fallist/decolonist whom VC Price has repeatedly ‘consoled’ and described as “outraged” [rather than outrageous], apparently will re-register for his 10^th year as a UCT undergraduate student in 2018, despite failing many (most?) of his courses.

Moving from lawbreaking and defamation back to decolonization, Fallists and their supporters claim that “particular identities and scholarly traditions and perspectives” - especially from Africa and the global south - are marginalised and excluded at UCT within a static and rigid academic climate that does not easily allow for alternative perspectives, and is not responsive to society and public debate.  Particular blame is focused on the cultural views of “collectively dominant Western ‘dead-white-men’” that are “lodged at the heart of UCT’s curriculum and attempt to perpetuate negative stereotypes in curricula and pedagogy”. 

However, what is missing in Fallist statements is a fact-filled, rational explication of what is “marginalized and excluded” and documented evidence of resolute pursuit of an obstructive status quo.  What arguments they present refer to “subtle”, nuanced, even “invisible” hegemonic Western influences and global thinking; “internalised ‘white’ superiority”, “other exclusionary practices”, “masked and cumulative and institutional racism”; and “also-invisible culturally-linked, symbolic, structural, epistemological and psychological violence”.  All of these ghost-like actions are unsupported by documented evidence.

Nevertheless, Fallists and ‘decolonists’ claim that these invisible influences, violence et al. justify their overt violence and other lawbreaking.  They claim to be alienated, and call for the creation of more opportunities to expose students to alternative “ways of thinking” associated with disciplines beyond their primary areas of specialisation.

But, once again, what are these “ways of thinking” and new “areas”?

Fallist decolonists also call for the meaningful interrogation of these subtle/invisible influences, and insist that all members of the university make a commitment to participate in “winnable” debates within “safe spaces” to enable change that addresses the challenges of transformation.

But, there are such “spaces”: Jameson Hall, lecture theatres, seminar rooms, even the UCT Club.  Yet, when Fallists deem it necessary, they disrupt sessions where such debate could occur.  Just who amongst the UCT Community uncompromisingly opposes change and refuses to participate in debate, other than Fallists?   Please provide a list of names of ‘opposers’ and document this reticence.

In short, the academic decolonization of UCT requires creating enabling environment that will promote debate, and “critical reflection” on the politics of the production, application and distribution of knowledge.  This includes what counts as academic excellence in teaching, learning and academic research towards a socially responsive society.  

Yet, until 2017, Fallists and their supporters failed to explain just what the mean by “critical reflection”.

Reaction by the UCT Executive

Rather than requiring faculties and departments to get their ‘decolonization acts together’ and giving them the authority and resources to do so, since the turn of the millennium, a large, increasingly powerful, centralized management has taken control of “transformation” leadership at UCT, at the expense of academics.  There is even a DVC post created to facilitate the process.  The shift in academic power downhill to Bremner/Azania House is well-documented in the “Moran Report” (available on page 4 of my Blog Site) commissioned in 2007 by VC Ndebele.  The report strongly recommended that academic authority, decision-making and accountability be returned to faculties and departments, and UCT’s administrative sector revert to its original role as a small, effective support structure that must continuingly “justify its existence”. 

These recommendations were not implemented.

Rather than let academics and students take the lead, the Price-led leadership created commission after commission, committee after committee, working group after working group and task team after task team, and ‘negotiated’ with unrepentant law-breakers to determine UCT’s policies and how they are to be implemented.

Recent examples of this ‘strategy’ relating to decolonization are Price and Price-Team’s creation of the:

1.       the Curriculum Change Working Group (CCWG) to work with him and Prof. Loretta Feris (DVC for Transformation) to facilitate the engagement in decolonization by the “whole” UCT community, and

2.       the Internal Reconciliation and Transformation Commission Steering Committee (IRTC-SC) set up according to the November Agreement to deal with past, current and future protest and chart UCT’s decolonization.

VC Price even supported the release of one of the Shackville ‘expelees’ from jail so he could negotiate and sign the Agreement. [He, like the faeces flinger, was subsequently ‘clemencied’, but was later accused of breaking through the door into the offices of the Campus Protection Services and of sexual harassment.]

After many meetings over many months, the IRTC-SC has reached no consensus, let alone agreement, concerning what constitutes illegitimate protest or how UCT’s management may deal with it.  There have been no discussions about what decolonization is, let alone how to put it into effect.  Currently, it is in deadlock because of boycotts by representatives of pro-Fallist “constituencies”.

Curriculum Change Working Group

By design, the CCWG is led by black scholars (mostly from the Faculties of Humanities and Health Sciences).  CCWG members maintain that the “notion of blackness in this context extends beyond simply a racial category”.  It embraces those who have a particular consciousness around coloniality.   According to VC Price, the group has considerable experience, knowledge and expertise related to the development of contextually and socially relevant curricula, and are well versed in the use of inclusive approaches to teaching and learning.

CCWG members developed a concept paper and terms of reference, collaborating closely with faculty academic representatives, student representatives from faculty councils and those academics and students “who wanted to get involved”.  Price urged the CCWG to engage with Fallists after it because there was deadlock between them and management.

The CCWG Terms of Reference sets out membership, reporting lines, accountability, timeframes and deliverables of the working group.  Its  Preliminary Conceptual Framework was strongly influenced by student and staff protests of 2015.  It was scheduled to complete a curriculum change academic planning framework by October 2017. 
I have seen no such published “framework”.
CCWG members contributed to an article in The Conversation that purports to give a “clear and practical example” of the group’s work.  This involved getting the Dean of Health Sciences to capitulate to Fallists’ demands when they occupied his offices, provided that they resumed attending classes. 
The protesting Health Sciences students did not return to class.

Thereafter, DVC Feris and the CCWG used a theoretical framework based “critical realism” (CR) to get to work. 

The only major Feris/CCWG decolonization effort to date was to recruit decolonist mathematician Prof. C.K. Raju to epistemically challenge science in general at UCT and “dogmatic” mathematical science in particular. 

Raju’s actions at UCT had highly controversial consequences to say the least, potentially disastrous ones at worse.  For the ‘short story’ of the Raju ‘Affair’, see the article in GroundUp.  For the 100+-page ‘long story’, see the three-part commentary “Decolonizing Maths at UCT” in my Blog Site.

I deal with CR in another piece.

How can transformation and/or decolonization build excellence at the University of Cape Town?

https://rationalstandard.com/drives-academic-decolonization-uct/ 

Emeritus Prof.  Tim Crowe

Mamokgethi Phakeng, a professor of Mathematics Education, a National Research Foundation (NRF) B-rated researcher, UCT’s DVC for Research and highly touted contender for the post of vice-chancellor says: Now’s the time for transformation to build excellence in higher education.  This is because: ”The old certainties – good and bad – are unravelling.  What we thought we knew, we no longer know. We can be confident only that in the coming decades we will encounter a world of rapid and almost unimaginably profound change.”

What the research DVC doesn’t say, at least initially, is what constitutes “transformation” other than “thinking differently”.  

Phakeng tellingly does not use the word “decolonization” in connection with currently excellent, research-led South African universities like the University of Cape Town (UCT), scoring highly in international ranking systems.  This is because its researchers are NRF-ranked, highly cited, global leaders in their fields of study; produce postgraduates who become new leaders; and collaborate with equally eminent colleagues in reputable institutions across the globe.

But, DVC Phakeng suggests that continuing to follow this strategy will not guarantee a high university ranking in the future. 

She may be right on this score since, in October 2017, the NRF announced the effective termination of annual incentive (’curiosity’-driven) funding for rated researchers; something Phakeng knew about (but didn’t reveal) several months earlier.  There is also a rumour that the NRF will cease using international peers in the researcher-rating process.

What the DVC doesn’t suggest is a long-term viable alternative strategy for maintaining excellence.  All she offers is that there is a need to develop an “ability to manage change and master adaptability”.

Perhaps this “change/ability” is a component of her vision for “transformation”?
Phakeng next states that UCT’s” excellence is not innocent and always has a context”, because of its “history of discrimination and oppression”.

What the DVC (nor anyone else for that matter) also doesn’t do is provide evidence of this alleged tainted “history” at UCT.  This is because there is none.  In principle, since at least 1950, and certainly from the late 1970s in aggressive practice, UCT has a history of eradicating discrimination and resisting oppression in general, and that related to Apartheid in particular.  Noteworthy exceptions to this are the Mafeje, Cruise-O’Brien and Mamdani ‘Affairs’ which it weathered.  This is documented in detail in a two-part history of UCT Was/Is UCT an institutionally colonialist/sexist/racist institution? accessible on my Blog Site – timguineacrowe.blogspot.co.za

Instead, DVC Phakeng speaks personally, stating that she as: “an African woman – will never be excellent, no matter how hard I work, simply because the only way to be excellent in that context is to move away from who one is”.

First, I wish that she and other advocates of “profound change” at UCT would clarify how their views reinforce its existence as a non-racial institution.  Second, could UCT’s leaders please distinguish between the meanings (and continued use of) “African”, “Black”, “Coloured” and “Indian/Asian” to describe members of its community.  Why is this necessary, and who qualifies as an “African”?

Third, although DVC Phakeng is excellent, she reveals some disturbing “context”.  It came at a price – she had “to move away” from her ‘being’. 

She has still to provide an account of that “move”.  What did it involve?  Did it occur at her previous educational institutions, the Universities of North-West, Witwatersrand or South Africa?  Or did it occur after she joined UCT?

Back to excellence
DVC Phakeng then writes that we need to celebrate “all kinds of excellence” because it’s currently “defined too rigidly”, devaluing “certain stories over others” … “assimilating instead of reaching towards newer and better ways of being”.   

Excellence is normally understood as A talent or quality which is unusually good, surpassing specified standards - the knowledge and skills that a society expects that a student, educator and researcher should possess with proficiency to a high degree.  The BlitzBokke are excellent. The Springboks are not.

How can there be many “kinds” of excellence and, if so, what are they and what are their standards?
If the current definition is too “rigid”, please provide a more ‘relaxed’ one for evaluation?
What is being devaluated and who is being assimilated at UCT, and what role do these processes play in moving anyone away from his/her ‘being’?  One certainly does not get this impression reading UCT IN THE NEWS.  For decades, UCT has produced value-added graduates and staff who have embraced and enhanced Afro-relevance and excellence, locally and internationally.

Does DVC Phakeng have a personal vision for transformation at UCT?  Or do we need to simply apply the ‘pluriversity’ one proposed by Transformation DVC Prof. Loretta Feris and fellow critical realists on the Price-appointed  Curriculum Change Working Group?   This resulted in the highly controversial (if not disastrous) invitation to decolonist mathematician Prof. C.K. Raju to propose how internationally leading Mathematics at UCT might be ‘decolonized’. 

In order to have more women and black Africans at the professorial rank, do UCT’s faculties need to transform their longstanding, criterion-based policies relating to ad hominem promotion because they are discriminatory?   Yet, on 24 June 2017, UCT’s internationally acclaimed sociologist and educationalist Prof. Robert Morrell (currently heading UCT’s Next Generation Professorate Programme) announced the results of research conducted under of his supervision that demonstrates that there is no institutional racism in UCT’s ad hominem promotion process.  That announcement has been not made public.  Why?

DVC Phakeng, maintains that “mutually supporting” transformation and excellence are “sustainable over the long term” and will maintain “high levels of research productivity” with black African and women researchers taking the lead.  This transformation strategy is epitomized in her twitter of 20 December 2017:

“Amazing ceremony this morning for the Commerce Faculty.  We had 18 Ph.D. graduates and only three are white. Little by little transformation is happening!”

One might have preferred more emphasis on gender- rather than race-ratios.
But all this requires the right philosophy.

What is Phakeng’s philosophy

Given that Phakeng was forced to abandon her ‘being’ to become excellent, her focal philosopher could be Martin Heidegger.  This dead, old, white European man (DOWEM) is famous for coining the concept of “Dasein”, a “primal nature of being”, a self-identity based on a “shared history and destiny” underpinned by the anti-Cartesian ontology-based belief: “I think BECAUSE I AM”.  This exclusionary ethos ‘worked’ for a few years for Hitler and his Nazis, who were bent (with Heidegger’s explicit support) on wiping out Jewry and achieving world domination via war. 

However, a Dasein for the jig-saw puzzle of peoples in South Africa, including the ‘Coloureds’ (arguably the most morphologically, culturally, religiously and genetically complex and diverse ethnic group on Earth), might be a bit of a hard-sell.

Given her fascination with UCT’s heinous history and context, Phakeng’s next favourite philosopher could be to be another DOWEM, Michel Foucault, for whom truth is elusive and inseparable from historical context.   The underlying theme of Foucault's work is that “power”, rather than restricting “knowledge”, ubiquitously controls, defines and develops it relationally, past and present.  Like neo-Marxist, DOWEM Antonio Gramsci before him, he viewed 'power-knowledge' as the primary means of social controlling the masses.  Where they differed in detail, Gramsci favoured the development of “public intellectuals” (whose ideas are derived from the oppressed masses) to replace “traditional” Ph.D.-educated scholars at universities.

In her capacity of host of the 2017 dinner for the Fellows of UCT, Phakeng showed her Heideggerian colours by asking all the newly inducted Fellows to focus their inaugural addresses on the theme “Power”.  Tellingly, in her address, new Fellow Law Prof Chuma Himonga referred to Lord Acton’s famous quote: “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

Then there is Foucault-rival DOWEM, Jacques Derrida, best known for developing a form of analysis known as deconstruction.   Deconstruction is the key tool that the CCWG and DVC Feris use to expose flaws and instability in normative structures or universally accepted views in order to render them untenable.  Like Derrida, Phakeng takes the view, "there is no out-of-context".  For Derrida, there are no solutions; there is never a moment when meaning is complete and total, even in the short term. There is just endless deconstruction, described by some as “agnogenesis” — the intentional manufacture of ignorance.

The final, Phakeng and/or Fallist philosopher might be Frantz Fanon, who adds the remaining essential weapons to the Fallists’ ‘toolkit’: violence and destruction. According to Fanon, everything colonialist must collapse, because colonization is an inherently violent process.  Living in a colonized racist space is violence in itself, even if the racism is subtle, nuanced and “invisible” (which currently Davos-situated VC Price maintains is the case at UCT). An overtly violent response to such racism isn’t violence. “The native’s work is to imagine all possible methods for destroying the settler. For the native, life can only spring up again out of the rotting corpse of the settler … for the colonized people, this violence, because it constitutes their only work, invests their character with positive and creative qualities.”

In short, the practice of violence binds them (and Phakeng?) together as a whole (Dasein?).

I close with a quote from my favourite US gridiron coach Vince Lombardi:

 “Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection we can catch excellence.”

Using “genomic thinking” to ‘re-think’ human races is a mistake: Part 2 - praxis

Using “genomic thinking” to ‘re-think’ human races is a mistake: Part 2 - praxis

Emeritus Prof. Tim Crowe

So why resurrect/reify human races?

Does genomic racial ‘diagnosability’ demonstrate that human races have ontological, evolutionary, or any other, status?  Does it detect evolutionarily significant units?
No.
Like species, races/subspecies in taxonomy are discovered.  They are species in limbo; self-defined by consilient, geographically congruently varying characters (taxonomic features that are locally invariant) within a core geographical area.  They are NOT species because they are still genetically ‘permeable’ metapopulations and not evolutionary lineages, and are circumscribed geographically by character ‘suture zones’ within which character congruence breaks down because of unimpaired interbreeding.   These taxa should be detected objectively through the study of representative, uniformly distributed samples from throughout a species’ range and delineated by characters.  Samples MUST NOT be predefined geographically, with sampled areas only retrospectively discriminated statistically using correlations between traits (measures that can vary within a particular locality). 
For an example of how subspecific taxonomy ‘works’, in a ‘racial’ practical at University of Cape Town, several groups of undergrad students are each presented with a pile of 450 cards of unknown provenance illustrating, actual, continent-wide, local and geographical external anatomical and DNA variation in specimens of Helmeted Guineafowl Numida meleagris, Africa’s most widespread and geographically variable bird.  The students invariably sort them into nine major piles that confirm the existence of the geographically definable, widespread subspecies recognized in a 1978 monograph and illustrated in the attached figure.  This because these well-marked ‘races’ are delineated by a range of independent anatomical and molecular genetic features that are highly uniform within populations and vary geographically congruently between them.
But, regardless of these differences, where these ‘self-defining’ guineafowl taxa come into contact, because members of their populations have an identical avian ‘language’ and courtship behaviour and are genetically compatible post-mating, they interbreed freely without hybrid disadvantage. 
This results in another 20, much smaller ‘practical piles’ comprising ‘different’ individuals that are morpho-genetic ‘hybrids’ from 100-300 km-wide ‘suture’ zones where races come into contact and within which local within-population variation is high.  Many of these intergrades were, at one time or the other, erroneously ‘recognized’ as ‘waste-basket’ subspecies.

If one were to use the same, uniform sampling strategy for African humans (anatomically corrected for height), one would get two geographically delineated piles; golden-skinned individuals with women exhibiting steatopygia (KhoiSan from southwestern Africa), and a highly variable, widespread one comprising the rest. A microcosm of latter would include South Africa’s ‘Coloured People’, arguably the most morphologically and genetically complex and diverse ethnic group on Earth, with genetic ties to Khoisan (32–43%), Bantu African (20–36%), Northern European (21–28%), East Asian (9–11%), Indian and even Yemeni peoples.

Indeed, if one sorted the same specimens (indeed human specimens from throughout the world) by skeletal anatomy and/or DNA, there would be only one mega-pile, with all individuals outside of Africa being subsets of those found there.  Everything is just ‘mixed up’.  This is because our species is evolutionarily young and highly mobile and genetically admixed, especially during the last 3000 years.
Then ‘why races’?
So why do genetic racialists (like Edwards, Rosenberg and Dawkins), Ancestry.Com/DNA, ‘scientific’ racists and decolonists, in the face of this evidence, persist in supporting racially partitioning modern humans?  From a genomic perspective, this is because, multivariate statistical analyses of multilocus genetic information and anatomical measurements employing specific methods (e.g. cluster analysis) and selected algorithms (there are more than 100) can discover ‘overall’ differences between populations, and, in some instances, ‘correctly’ assign individuals to continental areas or putative human races. 
They’re wrong for two reasons.

First, their samples are often ‘cherry-picked’ to reflect core geographic areas of putative races or by continental limits.   Populations considered to be “admixed,” as well as individuals of “mixed ancestry,” are often excluded from sampling (e.g. as in Dawkins’ ‘photos’).  In their 2004 paper Evidence for Gradients of Human Genetic Diversity Within and Among Continents, David Serre and Svante Pääbo showed, contrary to Rosenberg et al., that when humans are sampled homogeneously and uniformly across the globe, the pattern seen is one of clinal (geographically gradual without sharp breaks) gradients of allele frequencies that extend over the entire world, rather than discrete clusters that reflect putative races or continental areas. In fact, the distance between two populations is by far the best predictor, explaining more than 80% of the variation of human genetic differentiation.

Rosenberg et al. 2005 conceded (at last in part) on this point: “In several populations [identified as meaningful “clusters” by their approach], individuals had partial membership in multiple clusters, with similar membership coefficients for most individuals. These populations might reflect continuous gradations across regions or admixture of neighboring groups.” “For population pairs from the same cluster, as geographic distance increases, genetic distance increases in a linear manner, consistent with a clinal population structure.” This means that there is clinal variation WITHI their ‘clusters’.  “Our evidence for clustering should not be taken as evidence of our support of any particular concept of ‘biological race’.”

However: “At the same time, we find that human genetic diversity consists not only of clines, but also of clusters that STRUCTURE (their cluster analysis program) observes (give certain assumptions) to be repeatable and robust.” since “for pairs from different clusters, genetic distance is generally larger than that between intracluster pairs that have the same geographic distance.”

So: “Loosely speaking, it is these small discontinuous jumps in genetic distance—across oceans, the Himalayas, and the Sahara—that provide the basis for the ability of STRUCTURE to identify clusters that correspond to geographic regions.” that may be able “to facilitate further research into such topics as human evolutionary history and the identification of medically important genotypes that vary in frequency across populations.”

In short, Edwards/Rosenberg ‘clusters’ are statistically significantly different (not evolutionarily cohesively similar) entities within which, for gene-genealogical purposes,  at least some of your ancestors existed at one time or other. They may also, in some instances, be useful proxy study groups in tackling problems related to improving medical health care. 

But, they have no utility in investigations relating to the evolutionary structuring of human genetic diversity, and NO ontological status that racially motivated people can employ in support of their ‘causes’ or ‘being’.

Second, the genetic differentiation, F_st, between putative human races (0.04-0.08) falls well below that found between the generally recognized non-human subspecies (0.15-0.20) and species (0.35).

What pro-race geneticists and biometricians don’t admit is that, pushed to the limit, their Procrustean approaches could also statistically ‘discriminate’ between many of the putative 20000 ethnic groups in the world, the hundreds said to occur in Africa and at least 14 in South Africa.  Their demographic ‘tools’ would have been ‘manna from heaven’ for Hendrik Verwoerd and his separate-development, social anthropologist mentor Werner Eiselen.  Of course, the ‘downside’ for these Broederbonders is that such ‘tests’ could place many of their cultural ‘kindred’ on the ‘wrong side’ of the “one-drop” black spectrum.  Inversely, not long after Afro-American Harvard Prof. Henry Louis Gates Jr. was arrested for ‘breaking into’ his own home by Irish-American police officer James Crowley, he announced on The Oprah Winfrey Show that one of these tests indicated that they shared a common Irish ancestor!

Where do pro-racialists draw the line?  What is the role of these genomic “Dasein” [a “primal nature of being”, a self-identity based on a “shared history and destiny”], especially when the isolation of such entities is ‘reinforced’ by linguistic, religious, other ethnic and political/ideological ‘differences’? What if these Dasein also correspond to hyper-taxonomized, polytypic entities within humanity recognized when employing a Phylogenetic Species Concept?

Rather than enriching our understanding of human evolution and human relations, these ‘races’, ‘clusters’ and ‘phylogenetic’ subspecies only encourage racists to ignore, misunderstand, hate and make war/genocide the ‘others’, and ‘cleanse’ themselves of the ‘odd-ones’ within?”

This sounds like racism and eugenics to me.


Robert Sobukwe got it right.  There is only one, crazy mixed up human race.

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”.