Ralina Joseph: “Well, if you were to ask him. President Obama is black. He is African-American.”
Steve Scher: “Yeah. When President Obama came out after the Trayvon Martin killing and he said, ‘My kids would have looked like Trayvon Martin if they had been boys.’… Let’s unpack all of the things that were being said there. What was he saying about his identity?”
Ralina Joseph: “So, this is a really interesting question. I think that he is identifying as black and in the way which we have seen President Obama identify publically it has been as black. He has also talked about his white family. He’s also famously referenced his mother from Kansas and his father from Kenya. But that has not precluded his identifying as African-American. I think that in real life that these identities are always together. They’re very much a part of each other. They’re fluidly understood. They’re simultaneous. And yet, when we understand race, we think about them in these really separate binaristic manners. So it makes sense to me that he identifies very much with Trayvon Martin’s family and also can talk about his white and Asian-American family, for example.”
Henry Louis Gates Jr., Host and Alfonse Fletcher Jr. University Professor; Director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts
Genetic studies have found a striking amount of diversity among people in Mexico. Credit: Stephania Corpi Arnaud for Nature
Researchers are trying to dismantle the flawed concept of homogeneous racial mixing that has fostered discrimination in Mexico, Brazil and other countries.
Nicéa Quintino Amauro always knew who she was.
She was born in Campinas, the last city in Brazil to prohibit slavery in 1888. She grew up in a Black neighbourhood, with a Black family. And a lot of her childhood was spent in endless meetings organized by the Unified Black Movement, the most notable Black civil-rights organization in Brazil, which her parents helped to found to fight against centuries-old racism in the country. She knew she was Black.
But in the late 1980s, when Amauro was around 13 years old, she was told at school that Brazilians were not Black. They were not white, either. Nor any other race. They were considered to be mestiços, or pardos, terms rooted in colonial caste distinctions that signify a tapestry of European, African and Indigenous backgrounds. And as one single mixed people, they were all equal to each other.
The idea felt odd. Wrong, even. “To me, it seemed quite strange,” says Amauro, now a chemist at the Federal University of Ubêrlandia in Minas Gerais and a member of the Brazilian Association of Black Researchers. “How can everyone be equal if racism exists? It doesn’t make sense.”
Amauro’s concerns echo across Latin America, where generations of people have been taught that they are the result of a long history of mixture between different ancestors who all came, or were forced, to live in the region…
Geneticists are working to remove harmful racial categories from their descriptions of human populations. DAVIDE BONAZZI/@SALZMANART
Field still struggles with how to accurately describe populations, study finds
Human geneticists have mostly abandoned the word “race” when describing populations in their papers, according to a new study of research published in a leading genetics journal. That’s in line with the current scientific understanding that race is a social construct, and a welcome departure from research that in the past has often conflated genetic variation and racial categories, says Vence Bonham, a social scientist at the National Human Genome Research Institute who led the study.
But alternative terms that have gained popularity, such as “ancestry” and “ethnicity,” can have ambiguous meanings or aren’t defined by genetics, suggesting researchers are still struggling to find the words to accurately describe groups delineated by their DNA, according to the study.
In the 19th and 20th centuries, many geneticists embraced the idea that there were races, such as “Negroid” or “Caucasian,” that were distinct biological groups; such “race science” helped perpetuate discrimination and inequality. (Scientists have now thoroughly demonstrated the lack of a biological basis to racial categories.)…
Ovetta Wiggins, Local reporter covering Maryland state politics
Uchenna Ndubisi, who is undergoing dialysis treatment, was pleased to learn that her hospital is getting rid of a race-based algorithm for a kidney diagnostic test. (Astrid Riecken for The Washington Post)
Uchenna Ndubisi was blown away when she first noticed the “African American” notation on a diagnostic test designed to show doctors how well her kidneys are working.
What did her race have to do with the toll lupus was taking on her body? The answer left her more resigned than surprised: an equation used to estimate how well a person’s organs filter waste included a decades-old racist assumption about Black bodies.
In this case, clinicians assumed Ndubisi had more muscle mass than a White patient would. For many Black kidney patients, like Ndubisi, the equation overestimates how well their kidneys are functioning, leading to the loss of critical time for necessary treatment.
“It’s being Black in America,” said Ndubisi, 35, who lives in Prince George’s County. “Another reminder . . . that there’s hurdles into health care for African Americans in this country.”…
Elizabeth A. DiGangi, Associate Professor of Anthropology Binghamton University, State University of New York, Binghamton, New York
Jonathan D. Bethard, Associate Professor of Anthropology University of South Florida, Tampa, Florida
Since the professionalization of US-based forensic anthropology in the 1970s, ancestry estimation has been included as a standard part of the biological profile, because practitioners have assumed it necessary to achieve identifications in medicolegal contexts. Simultaneously, forensic anthropologists have not fully considered the racist context of the criminal justice system in the United States related to the treatment of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color; nor have we considered that ancestry estimation might actually hinder identification efforts because of entrenched racial biases. Despite ongoing criticisms from mainstream biological anthropology that ancestry estimation perpetuates race science, forensic anthropologists have continued the practice. Recent years have seen the prolific development of retooled typological approaches with 21st century statistical prowess to include methods for estimating ancestry from cranial morphoscopic traits, despite no evidence that these traits reflect microevolutionary processes or are suitable genetic proxies for population structure; and such approaches have failed to critically evaluate the societal consequences for perpetuating the biological race concept. Around the country, these methods are enculturated in every aspect of the discipline ranging from university classrooms, to the board-certification examination marking the culmination of training, to standard operating procedures adopted by forensic anthropology laboratories. Here, we use critical race theory to interrogate the approaches utilized to estimate ancestry to include a critique of the continued use of morphoscopic traits, and we assert that the practice of ancestry estimation contributes to white supremacy. Based on the lack of scientific support that these traits reflect evolutionary history, and the inability to disentangle skeletal-based ancestry estimates from supporting the biological validity of race, we urge all forensic anthropologists to abolish the practice of ancestry estimation.
Alan Goodman, Professor of Biological Anthropology Hampshire College, Amherst, Massachusetts
For over 300 years, socially defined notions of “race” have shaped human lives around the globe—but the category has no biological foundation.
A friend of mine with Central American, Southern European, and West African ancestry is lactose intolerant. Drinking milk products upsets her stomach, and so she avoids them. About a decade ago, because of her low dairy intake, she feared that she might not be getting enough calcium, so she asked her doctor for a bone density test. He responded that she didn’t need one because “blacks do not get osteoporosis.”
My friend is not alone. The view that black people don’t need a bone density test is a longstanding and common myth. A 2006 study in North Carolina found that out of 531 African American and Euro-American women screened for bone mineral density, only 15 percent were African American women—despite the fact that African American women made up almost half of that clinical population. A health fair in Albany, New York, in 2000, turned into a ruckus when black women were refused free osteoporosis screening. The situation hasn’t changed much in more recent years.
Meanwhile, FRAX, a widely used calculator that estimates one’s risk of osteoporotic fractures, is based on bone density combined with age, sex, and, yes, “race.” Race, even though it is never defined or demarcated, is baked into the fracture risk algorithms.
Trina Jones, Jerome M. Culp Professor of Law Duke University School of Law
Jessica L. Roberts, Leonard H. Childs Professor of Law and Director of the Health Law & Policy Institute, University of Houston Law Center; Professor of Medicine, University of Houston College of Medicine
Can genetic tests determine race? Americans are fascinated with DNA ancestry testing services like 23andMe and AncestryDNA. Indeed, in recent years, some people have changed their racial identity based upon DNA ancestry tests and have sought to use test results in lawsuits and for other strategic purposes. Courts may be similarly tempted to use genetic ancestry in determining race. In this Essay, we examine the ways in which DNA ancestry tests may affect contemporary understandings of racial identity. We argue that these tests are poor proxies for race because they fail to reflect the social, cultural, relational, and experiential norms that shape identity. We consider three separate legal contexts in which these issues arise: (1) employment discrimination, (2) race-conscious initiatives, and (3) immigration. Based on this analysis, we strongly caution against defining race in predominantly genetic terms.
Dig into the science of how ancestry DNA tests work, their accuracy, and why tracing ancestry is so complicated.
Two sisters take the same DNA test. The results show that one sister is 10% French, the other 0%. Both sisters share the same two parents, and therefore the same set of ancestors. So how can one be 10% more French than the other? Tests like these rely on our DNA to answer questions about our ancestry, but DNA actually can’t tell us everything. Prosanta Chakrabarty explores the accuracy of DNA tests.
23andMe wants to sell you vacations based on your DNA. But what are they really basing that on?
Identical twins have virtually identical DNA. So you’d think if a set of twins both sent in a DNA sample for genetic ancestry testing, they’d get the exact same results, right?
Not necessarily, according to a recent investigation by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. In fact, the journalists demonstrated that twins don’t often get the same results from a single company. And across the industry, estimates of where an individual’s ancestors lived can differ significantly from company to company.
In one instance, the consumer genetics company 23andMe told one twin she was 13 percent “Broadly European.” The other twin’s test, meanwhile, showed she had just 3 percent “Broadly European” ancestry, and had more DNA matched to other, more specific regions in Europe. What’s more, when the twins had their DNA tested by five companies, each one gave them different results.
One computational biologist told the CBC that the differences in the results were “mystifying.”
So what accounts for these differences? Overall, discrepancies in ancestry testing don’t mean that genetic science is a fraud, and that the companies are just making up these numbers. They have more to do with the limitations of the science and some key assumptions companies make when analyzing DNA for ancestry…
Wendy D. Roth, Associate Professor of Sociology University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia
Şule Yaylacı, Banting Postdoctoral Fellow
Identity and Conflict Lab University of Pennsylvania
Kaitlyn Jaffe, Ph.D. Candidate
Department of Sociology University of British Columbia, Vancouver
Lindsey Richardson, Associate Professor of Sociology University of British Columbia, Vancouver
Genetic ancestry testing is a billion-dollar industry, with more than 26 million tests sold by 2018, which raises concerns over how it might influence test-takers’ understandings of race. While social scientists argue that genetic ancestry tests may promote an essentialist view of race as fixed and determining innate abilities, others suggest it could reduce essentialist views by reinforcing a view of race as socially constructed. Essentialist views are a concern because of their association with racism, particularly in its most extreme forms. Here we report the first randomized controlled trial of genetic ancestry testing conducted to examine potential causal relationships between taking the tests and essentialist views of race. Native-born White Americans were randomly assigned to receive Admixture and mtDNA tests or no tests. While we find no significant average effect of genetic ancestry testing on essentialism, secondary analyses reveal that the impact of these tests on racial essentialism varies by type of genetic knowledge. Within the treatment arm, essentialist beliefs significantly declined after testing among individuals with high genetic knowledge, but increased among those with the least genetic knowledge. Additional secondary analysis show that essentialist beliefs do not change based on the specific ancestries reported in test-takers’ results. These results indicate that individuals’ interpretations of genetic ancestry testing results, and the links between genes and race, may depend on their understanding of genetics.
