Race Is Not Validated By Science And A Social Construction

Scientists have argued that race is a social construct that has no biological backing; this is because race has been defined by phenotypic characteristics which are characteristics that can be seen on an individual which are not genetic data. Similar to sex and gender whereas sex is a biological factor compared to gender which is a social construct. Melanin in your skin is a biological concept, whereas your appearance of your skin is social. Only recently was the human genome put together, nineteen years ago, and in this assembly scientists specifically chose many people from different ‘races’. With this you can not identify someone's race by simply looking at their genotype or their genetic code. We as a society have held this belief of race for thousands of years. However, hypothesize that with genetics coding geneticist can predict people’s of different races individual intelligence.

The history of genetics has a very long and windy history; it wasn’t until 1944 that scientists had proof that is was deoxyribose nucleic acid (DNA) is what makes up the genetic material in all organisms. Ten years later Watson and Crick discovered the actual shape of the DNA molecule. Then in 2001 is when the human genome was published. As of right now we still do not fully understand what genes code for what, to be exact scientist can only identify 1.2% of the genes in a human genome which in total has 20,000 genes.

In March of 2018 genestits David Reich published an article called, “How Genetics is Changing our Understanding of Race.” Contrary to popular belief, does not base his work on a scientific basis despite Dr. Riech is a world renowned geneticist who specifically studies DNA and human populations structures. His lab’s main focus was on collecting large scale amounts of ancient DNA to gain insights on human biology to help combat disease. Dr. Reich has had many publications in books such as, Nature and his very own book, Who We Are and How We Got Here. He is also a senior associate member of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard.

In Dr. Riech’s article he argues that technology is advancing which is a good thing when it comes to scientific discoveries. He believes we should use this to our advantage to understand the differences between human beings. However, the author is arguing that there is going to be a breakthrough in genetics, that will help us understand the differences between the ‘races’. Since race is a touchy subject we as a society need to understand that there are going to be differences in our genetics and we need to be okay with that. For example different bases code for different amounts of melanin in skin cells. However, he goes in all the wrong ways in arguing his point of view, such as misconstruing that DNA differences impact human intelligence.

Dr. Reich does a few things well throughout his article. One of those things being he acknowledges the fact that this topic in itself is very problematic. As much as we like to believe that science is strictly facts sometimes peoples opinions can get in the way of discovering the truth. He specifically acknowledges that there have been racist ideologies that have clouded geneticists in the past; specifically James Watson for most famously saying, '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.'' (James Watson quoted in ScienceAlert).Or the fact that Nicholas Wade sourced anthropologist Henry Harpending who believes “people of sub-Saharan African ancestry have no propensity to work when they don’t have to because, he claims, they did not go through the type of natural selection for hard work in the last thousands of years that some Eurasians did.” ( David Riech NYT, Henry Harpending quoted in“A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race and Human History,”)

Most of the article really couldn’t be taken seriously for a handful of reasons. One of them being the use of ‘I’. Usually in scientific papers there are no use of pronouns. Even though this was an opinion piece, I still believe when talking about things that should be scientifically proven it would come across some much better if he took himself out of the picture. Secondly, Dr. Riech in a way tries to allude to the fact that racial stereotypes will be proven and we as a society should be okay with that. But, it is pretty common knowledge that intelligence has a lot more to do with the resources you’re given not your genetics. The way that the article was articulated he almost made it seem like there is such a genetic difference between two different people when in fact they are only about .5% different. Dr. Riech uses poor examples when arguing genetic based intelligence the one that stood out the most was his use of sex. This is like comparing apples to oranges because when talking about sex is there is a different chromosome for each gender. XX for females and XY for males which in genetics is a huge genetic difference because the chromosomes are different. When comparing a black male and a white male their chromosomes are going to be the same since they are humans and males. Lastly, genetics has nothing to do with intelligence. Intelligence has to do with environmental factors and cultures. This has nothing to do with science but more to do with the history of different races in certain societies. For example, in the United States of America there was a long time in history where African Americans were slaves and then viewed as second class citizens. The reason as to why White populations in America are more wealthy than say black individuals is because of the economic advantage of new money and old money. Many African Americans ancestors can be traced back into the slave trade where as Caucasian’s ancestors can be traced back to many to different types of families with either higher or low economic status. Historically, white people have had more opportunities to quality education in the United States while people of color were segregated and viewed as second class citizens.

Genetics is a relatively new area in biology even though humans have been aware of genetics for centuries. Dr. Reich did have the right intentions however, he didn’t go the right way of expressing his ideas. As of now science can not have a significant amount of evidence to support the ideology of race. The likelihood of there being a significant amount of evidence to support the idea of race is highly unlikely. However, there have been certain diseases that are more prevalent in certain communities than others, but doesn’t have a good enough point to argue that different races are drastically different from others.