{"id":56074,"date":"2018-03-31T02:17:06","date_gmt":"2018-03-31T02:17:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=56074"},"modified":"2018-03-31T22:22:35","modified_gmt":"2018-03-31T22:22:35","slug":"how-to-talk-about-race-and-genetics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=56074","title":{"rendered":"How to Talk About \u2018Race\u2019 and Genetics"},"content":{"rendered":"

How to Talk About \u2018Race\u2019 and Genetics<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The New York Times<\/a>
\n2018-03-30<\/p>\n

David Reich<\/strong><\/a>, Professor of Genetics
\nHarvard Medical School<\/em>
\nalso, Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/a>
\nAngie Wong<\/small><\/p>\n

In a Sunday Review essay last weekend<\/a>, David Reich, a geneticist at Harvard, argued that science is changing how we think about \u201crace\u201d and urged a candid discussion of the findings, whatever they may be. Hundreds of readers left comments, many expressing worry about the possibility that the results could be misinterpreted or nefariously applied. Here are Dr. Reich\u2019s responses to some of the comments. \u2014 The Editors…<\/p>\n

…From my point of view, it should be possible for everyone to hold in their heads the following six truths:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. \u201cRace\u201d is fundamentally a social category \u2014 not a biological one \u2014 as anthropologists have shown.<\/li>\n
  2. There are clear genetic contributors to many traits, including behavior.<\/li>\n
  3. Present-day human populations, which often but not always are correlated to today\u2019s \u201crace\u201d categories, have in a number of instances been largely isolated from one another for tens of thousands of years. These long separations have provided adequate opportunity for the frequencies of genetic variations to change.<\/li>\n
  4. Genetic variations are likely to affect behavior and cognition just as they affect other traits, even though we know that the average genetic influences on behavior and cognition are strongly affected by upbringing and are likely to be more modest than genetic influences on bodily traits or disease.<\/li>\n
  5. The genetic variations that influence behavior in one population will almost certainly have an effect on behavior in others populations, even if the ways those genetic variations manifest in each population may be very different. Given that all genetically determined traits differ somewhat among populations, we should expect that there will be differences in the average effects, including in traits like behavior.<\/li>\n
  6. To insist that no meaningful average differences among human populations are possible is harmful. It is perceived as misleading, even patronizing, by the general public. And it encourages people not to trust the honesty of scholars and instead to embrace theories that are not scientifically grounded and often racist…<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Hundreds of readers left comments, many expressing worry about the possibility that the results could be misinterpreted or nefariously applied. Here are Dr. Reich\u2019s responses to some of the comments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,2039,8],"tags":[18810,2640,2327],"class_list":["post-56074","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-health-medicine","category-media-archive","tag-david-reich","tag-new-york-times","tag-the-new-york-times"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56074","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=56074"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56074\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56080,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56074\/revisions\/56080"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=56074"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=56074"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=56074"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}