Race: The Reality of Human Differences--Chapter 1: Race and the Law

In Chapter 1 of Race: The Reality Of Human Differences, Sarich and Miele begin their treatment of race in earnest. Entitled "Race and the Law," this chapter seeks to justify the biological reality of race by showing that it is a commonsense concept that everyone intuitively understands. Although this chapter provides useful illustrations of the concept of race, as I said in my discussion of the book's opening statement, it is one I think will not be convincing to race-deniers.

The authors note that there is no legal definition of "race," yet the legal system accepts it and relies on average people's ability to identify race. Their point seems to be that if our legal system, the most contentious system within our society, has no problem accepting the reality of race, then it must be real. But of course, this will not sway the race deniers, whose belief that race has no biological basis in reality but is merely a "social construct" does not imply, in their minds, that race does not exist. They think it exists as a concept, but that that concept can be quite powerful and have a great deal of meaning and determinative effect on a person's life. They would say "yes, we can usually recognize when a person would be considered white, black, or Asian, but these are not clear-cut categories for which we can test for membership and make any predictions about the individuals based on them."

The authors describe two court cases in which race came into play and was accepted by all parties involved. The first, Rice v. Office of Hawaiian Affairs, involved Hawaiian laws defining "Native Hawaiian" as a person descended from the indigenous people of Hawaii. These laws originally used the word "races" repeatedly, but were later amended to substitute the word "peoples." An Office of Hawaiian Affairs was created, designated for the benefit of "Hawaiians," and one H.F. Rice brought suit against it for not allowing him to vote in an election for its trustees since he was not a "Native Hawaiian."

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals (often called the "9th Circus" for its liberal rulings) found in favor of the OHA, since Rice, while a resident of Hawaii, did not meet the legal definition of a "Native Hawaiian." The US Supreme Court reversed the decision, citing the 15th amendment to the US Constitution; in other words, finding that Rice was being denied a vote on account of his race. Now, anyone could have told you that this was inevitable, as soon as the OHA attempted to decide voter eligibility based on race. But the word "race" in the original statues was changed to "people" in order to get around a possible 15th amendment objection. In the end, however, this was unsuccessful, because the Supreme Court recognized the common sense definition of race.

In the second case, Haak v. Rochester School District, the parents of a white fourth-grade student named Jessica Haak had attempted to transfer their daughter from their home district to a mostly white district, through a transfer program that existed for the purpose of lessening racial separation among the districts involved. Their case was based on the notion that forbidding her to transfer because of her race violated the much-abused "equal protection" clause of the 14th amendment. The district court ruled for the plaintiff, but the 2nd Circuit overturned their decision.

The purpose for which the authors mention this case is to show how the Haaks, the school district, and the courts all took the existence of race, and the possibility of racial classification, for granted. The program involved a definition of a "minority pupil" as "a pupil who is of Black or Hispanic origin or is a member of another minority group that historically has been the subject of discrimination." It also specified that a program administrator could question the student's race on the basis of "name, manner of speaking and phrasing, and personal appearance during an interview or orientation." The point is that no one disputed that the school or anyone else was able to correctly identify Haak's race.

Again, as consistent as these two examples may be with the reality of race, they do not satisfy the race-denier. Race-deniers do not deny that there are some phenotypic features that correlate with self-identified race; they just claim that because there is no definitive genetic test to determine which race a person belongs to, and there is more genetic variation within races than between races, race is not biologically valid and racial differences are only skin deep.

The authors seem to recognize this when they proceed to question whether the courts "recognize the existence of race as a mere social construct or as an underlying biological reality." We can allow that the courts might recognize that race is real, but only because the social construct is so powerful, not because it has a biological basis. To bolster their case for the biological reality of race, they give an example in which genetic testing was used to determine the race of a killer on the loose, the case of Derrick Todd Lee.

You can read about the case from any number of online sources, so I won't bother rehashing the details. I recommend, though, that if you search for "Derrick Todd Lee" you include the name "Frudakis" in your search, because most online sources don't even mention the most salient aspect of this case, which is to be expected, because it proves the genetic reality of race. In a nutshell, police were looking for a white suspect until Tony Frudakis of DNAPrint Genomics told them he could determine the race of the killer via genetic testing. I recommend Wired Magazine's story, which has this to say:

In early March, 2003, investigators turned to Tony Frudakis, a molecular biologist who said he could determine the killer's race by analyzing his DNA. They were unsure about the science, so, before giving him the go-ahead, the task force sent Frudakis DNA swabs taken from 20 people whose race they knew and asked him to determine their races through blind testing. He nailed every single one.

Still, when they gathered in the Baton Rouge police department for a conference call with Frudakis in mid-March, they were not prepared to hear or accept his conclusions about the killer.

"Your guy has substantial African ancestry," said Frudakis. "He could be Afro-Caribbean or African American but there is no chance that this is a Caucasian. No chance at all."

There was a prolonged, stunned silence, followed by a flurry of questions looking for doubt but Frudakis had none. Would he bet his life on this, they wanted to know? Absolutely. In fact, he was certain that the Baton Rouge serial killer was 85 percent Sub-Saharan African and 15 percent native American.

"This means we're going to turn our investigation in an entirely different direction," Frudakis recalls someone saying. "Are you comfortable with that?"

"Yes. I recommend you do that," he said. And now, rather than later since, in the time it took Frudakis to analyze the sample, the killer had claimed his fifth victim. The task force followed Frudakis' advice and, two months later, the killer was in custody.

Think about that: there was a "they were not prepared to hear or accept his conclusions" and "there was a prolonged, stunned silence" in response to them. All because he told them the killer was black. That is the degree to which the important institutions in our society--law enforcement among them--deny the reality of race.

Sarich and Miele mention the type of DNA profiling commonly used in forensics examines short tandem repeats (STRs), which are sequences of DNA where a short pattern is repeated several times. Using thirteen of these markers is considered valid for identifying an individual, because with thirteen the odds of misidentification are about one in a billion. Thirteen STR markers are not sufficient to identify race, however. The DNAPrint methodology used by Frudakis uses a different kind of marker, a single nucleotide polymorphism or SNP, in which there is a difference of exactly 1 nucleotide between individuals. They point out that academic research has confirmed that using 100 of these markers, a person's ancestry (Africa, Europe, Asia, or the Americas) can be determined with almost 100 percent accuracy, and that DNAPrint Genomics has reduced the number required to 73. They also point out that this methodology is correct at a rate equal to that of the DNA profiling that is considered legally valid for identifying individuals.

The authors conclude their discussion of the case thus:

Unless race is a biological reality that gives important information about an individual's degree of genetic resemblance to the various human populations and the sequence in which those populations evolved by separating from other populations, it would be inconceivable to achieve the level of accuracy obtainable through the DNAPrint methodology. Indeed, given a sufficient number of markers, such analysis is capable of not only identifying race but predicting skin tone as well.

The success of the DNAPrint methodology contrasts sharply with a faulty genetic testing experiment used in the PBS documentary "Race: The Power of an Illusion" to prove that race has no genetic basis. In that program, six students of different racial backgrounds made predictions about which of the other students would have DNA most similar to their own, based upon typical racial criteria. They then examined six markers of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) to see if the reuslts would match up with their predictions, and lo and behold, they did not. The program concluded that people in one race were not more genetically similar to each other than to those in another race. Sarich and Miele explain why this experiment was flawed: first, only six markers were used, less than one-half of the thirteen required for individual identification by DNA fingerprinting. Second, mtDNA is inherited only along the maternal line and thus is not fully indicative of a person's ancestry. Therefore, the PBS program dishonestly stacked the deck to make it appear that genetic testing could not be used to determine race, when it easily can.

The chapter concludes with a brief discussion of an experiment showing that children as young as three can classify people into races without having been taught to do so. In the experiments, anthropologist Lawrence Hirschfeld found that when presented with a series of drawings of people who differ by race, body type, and occupational uniform, young children identify race as being inherited over the other two categories. After many years of research along these lines, Hirschfeld has concluded that children believe that "race is an intrinsic, immutable, and essential aspect of a person's identity," and "they come to this conclusion on their own." According to the authors, this must be because the common ancestor we share with chimpanzees must have been able to tell those who belonged to his own group from those who did not. Whatever the explanation behind it, the phenomenon is apparently observable and should give the lie to the liberal idea that race is something children need to be taught.

As I've said, unfortunately, I don't believe that is true for most of the examples given earlier in the chapter. The fact that the legal system doesn't question race, and that most ordinary people can correctly identify race, will not sway race deniers--in fact, since leftists typically don't trust common sense and believe that truth can be elucidated only by highly trained "experts," they may be all the more likely on this basis to believe that race must be illusory. Nevertheless, in closing the chapter, Sarich and Miele mention the moralistic fallacy, which says that what ought to be is what is, or that if something is morally wrong, it cannot be a part of our nature. This fallacy is sometimes used to argue that since racism is wrong, and belief in biological race leads to racism, there must not be any such thing as biological race. This echoes the belief of Alan Goodman, which the authors mentioned in the opening statement and say they will rebut later in the book, that even if race does not exist, it should not be studied; essentially, we should pull the wool over our eyes, because if we don't, we might become racists.

In the next chapter, Race and History, we will learn of how ancient cultures, including non-Western ones, believed in race, a specific rebuttal to the PBS documentary's assertion that race is a recent European idea invented to justify colonialism and slavery.

Race: The Reality of Human Differences--Opening Statement: The Case for Race

In Race: The Reality of Human Differences, before beginning their chapter-by-chapter treatment of the subject of race, Sarich and Miele present an opening statement briefly explaining the purpose of the book and laying out the general path it will follow.

They begin by calling race "America's most taboo four-letter word." Obviously "race" is not comparable to other four-letter words in terms of the reaction to speaking it, but it is true that the subject it denotes is one on which our society's opinion-makers will brook no dissent from the accepted view. Obviously, it was not always this way. The authors marshal an array of quotations from four American presidents--Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, and Richard Nixon--that would be unspeakable in polite society today. For example, Abraham Lincoln said, "There is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race." The authors intend for these quotations to demonstrate that belief in universal equality is a relatively recent phenomenon, and that for most of human history, the accepted view was what we might call race realism. Of course, we are used to hearing from the left that all of human history was a nightmare of ignorance, oppression, and injustice until the 1960's, so race deniers will likely be unpersuaded by this argument, dismissing it as argumentum ad populum.

As many of us know from real-life or online interactions with liberals, race deniers generally really believe that scientifically established facts are on their side; they tend to claim to be impartial, willing to evaluate any empirical evidence, and project an image of themselves as believing that race is a mere social construction only because that is what the best information we have tells us. While not mentioning this view directly, the authors provide a rebuttal to it:

Denying the biological reality of race and recognizing it as a pseudoscientific myth created to justify white supremacy, they admonish, will produce what biological anthropologist Alan Goodman in the PBS documentary Race: The Power of an Illusion terms "an absolute paradigm shift." The resulting realization that "race is not based on biology but race is rather an idea that we ascribe to biology" will cause any thought of genetically based group differences to disappear as well, or at least it will set society on the road to their long-overdue remediation through social and economic policy.

In other words, race-deniers don't say race is a social construction because they think that true, but rather because they think having people believe it will eliminate racism. The authors seem to be implying that race-deniers are less concerned with the truth or falsehood of their views than they are with how those views can be used as a means to their desired end.

Sarich and Miele intend to present "the case for race" in three parts: first, race being understood in the context of the history of the concept itself, second, what we know about race from evolution, and third, the political problems associated with race in our present society. In Chapter 1, "Race and the Law," they tell us, we will see that the commonsense idea of race is accepted without question in the legal system. Again, this will be useful in understanding the reality of race, but given what we know of the cultural left's view of the world, where common sense is always wrong, where what seems obvious is never really true, where we need experts to enlighten us, race-deniers will probably dismiss this argument as an appeal to the majority or to authority.

Chapter 2, "Race and History," sounds as though it will stand on more solid ground, in that it will present evidence from a variety of cultures throughout human history that the concept of race has always been with us, that even ancient civilizations believed that different racial groups had different physical and mental characteristics. In the authors' view, this chapter will refute the contention that race is a recent concept invented to justify European colonialism.

Chapter 3 is entitled "Anthropology as the Science of Race." This chapter will address, among other things, "the Darwinian revolution, when anthropology emerged as the science of race, and how and why that viewpoint was increasingly marginalized after World War II." That little tidbit was surprising to me, since the great majority of anthropologists today accept the "race is merely a social construction" view! What a drastic change for a field that, as the authors say, was created as the science of race. I'll be interested to learn how exactly that view of the field was marginalized after World War II.

Chapters 4, 5, and 6, "Resolving the Primate Tree," "Homo Sapiens and its Races," and "The Two 'Miracles' That Made Humankind" respectively, will address race in the context of evolution. It's interesting to use evolution to prove the reality of race, since the left wholeheartedly accepts evolution. I believe this is why, as I alluded to earlier, the race-deniers that make up the left claim to have the best scientific evidence on their side. They cannot dismiss the consensus view arrived at by a materialist scientific approach to human history, since that view hinges on Darwinian evolution, which provides them with their arguments against God, against transcendence, and for the religious right being a bunch of fascist rednecks trying to establish a theocracy in America. So instead they must claim to hew to modern science, distorting or misinterpreting scientific evidence to show that race is not real. The authors repeat the statement that Homo sapiens originated "only 50,000" years ago at least thrice in this opening statement; clearly they believe this is an unusually short time and that this shortness is significant in understanding race. Exactly why and how remain to be seen.

Sarich and Miele describe the views of three eminent scientists: Stephen Jay Gould (race cannot exist), Richard Lewontin (race does not exist), and Alan Goodman (even if race can and does exist, it should not be studied), and say that they reject all three of these views. Of particular interest will be their refutation of Lewontin: he was one of the star witnesses against race in the PBS documentary, and I know from online debates into which I have attempted to inject race realism that his name is often used by race-deniers as someone who's created an airtight argument against race being a valid biological concept. That is, when you get into an argument with a race-denier, their response is often to the effect of, "go read Richard Lewontin. Case dismissed."

Chapters 7, 8, and 9 sound to me like they will prove the most interesting; they are the ones which most directly address the common contention that the phenotypic differences between the races, which we see all around us every day, are illusory. Chapter 7 is entitled "Race and Physical Differences" and in it the authors intend to introduce the topic of racial differences in the least controversial, most accepted arena in which they are manifest: athletic performance. They mention the Kalenjin, the Kenyan tribe which utterly dominates world long-distance running. Of course, race-deniers do not deny the reality of such examples; they just say that that is one single trait that cannot be used to classify individuals into races in a valid way, and add that there is more genetic variation within races than between races (an argument the authors intend to address.) It will be interesting to see if the authors flesh this argument out in such a way as to answer the race-deniers' objections.

Chapter 8, "Race and Behavior," will address, inter alia, what is probably the most controversial topic of all related to race: intelligence differences. Entire books have been written on this subject, none of which, I'm ashamed to admit, I have read, so I'm looking forward to what will hopefully be a good overview of the topic from Sarich and Miele. They will use a classic study in dog breeds to elucidate this topic. Unsurprisingly, they say, Sarich had difficulties publishing a similar study done to examine race differences in humans.

In Chapter 9, "Learning to Live with Race," the authors will present three approaches to dealing with race: Meritocracy in the Emerging Global Economy, Affirmative Action and Race Norming, and Rising Resegretation and the Emergence of Ethno-States, and describe the pros and cons to each. While Rising Resegregation sounds best to me, and most realistic in dealing with the conflict created by racial diversity, the authors state their preference for the global meritocracy.

And this ties in with my one criticism of this opening statement. Several times the authors refer to the concept of evolution, by which I assume they mean Darwinian evolution, as though it were an end in itself. For example, they say that they believe "it is not only appropriate but important to study race, because it helps us to apply the evolutionary perspective to the analysis of human variation generally." In other words, it's not important to apply the evolutionary perspective because doing so helps us understand race; rather, it's the other way around. It's almost as though studying race were merely a means to an end, that end being applying the evolutionary perspective. When writing about the subject of race, we race realists often place scare quotes around the word "mere," because race-deniers say that race is "merely a social construct," implying that it is somehow less significant or important than commonly believed. But those to whom Darwinian evolution explains everything about mankind also inspire scare quotes, believing as they do that man, not merely his physical body but his highest, noblest, most transcendent thoughts, his dreams, aspirations, and hopes, is "merely" the product of random mutation and natural selection.

Whether this view informs the authors' preference for the meritocracy I cannot say for sure, but their stated goal is to enhance "the potential for achievement by individuals." This is a fine goal within a particular nation that can handle it, such as America, but to make this a worldwide goal is not something one would expect of those who understand the reality of race, unless their worldview was one in which there was nothing higher than man, and the autonomy and happiness of each individual was considered the greatest good.

That said, by the looks of the opening statement, the book will be a tour de force through race realism, and I'm looking forward to reading the rest of it.

Next up: Chapter 1, "Race and the Law."

Race: The Reality of Human Differences (Introduction)

A few months ago, I bought a copy of Race: The Reality of Human Differences by Vincent Sarich and Frank Miele, but hadn't gotten around to reading it. I thought that before medical school gets too busy again, I could try something new for this blog: an in-depth book review. So, over the course of the next few weeks, I am going to read the book, and post a review of each chapter.

I'll set the stage by summarizing the preface. Vincent Sarich is a professor emeritus of anthropology at the University of California at Berkeley, and Frank Miele is a senior editor of Skeptic magazine. Before I bought the book, I thought it was conceived as a response to PBS's much-vaunted documentary called Race: The Power of an Illusion, which unsurprisingly supported the view that race is a mere "social construct." This turned out to be wrong: the authors say that the PBS documentary aired while they were preparing the final draft of the book. Nevertheless, they had sufficient time to note in the Preface that the book provides a neat rebuttal to the documentary.

The authors list the 10 points available on the PBS website which summarize the documentary. They are as follows:

1. Race is a modern idea.
2. Race has no genetic basis.
3. Human subspecies don't exist.
4. Skin color really is only skin deep.
5. Most variation is within, not between, "races."
6. Slavery predates race.
7. Race and freedom evolved together.
8. Race justified social inequalities as natural.
9. Race isn't biological, but racism is still real.
10. Colorblindness will not end racism.

To a race-realist, those ten points--and even more so, that they were presented to the American public as fact, with all the authority of the Public Broadcasting System behind them--are quite infuriating.

The authors then state that they:

disagree with each of these ten points--and that is a remarkable degree of disagreement, given that the first eight points are matters of fact. In Race: The Reality of Human Differences, we present the evidence we believe refutes the first eight points and explain why we reject points nine and ten, not only for economic but ethical reasons as well.

Along with these ten points, the authors include a reference to the chapters which refute each point.

Sarich and Miele have set before them a daunting task: to establish that, against the received wisdom of all the leaders and elites of our society, nearly all those who consider themselves educated people, including the scientific establishment itself, race is a valid biological concept. I would tend to assume that such a valid biological concept, by dint of its momentous import, must necessarily influence social policy. Sarich and Miele don't seem to think so. They say that they are "individualists" on matters of social policy, seemingly setting themselves up as proponents of a strict meritocracy. It remains to be seen how they will derive this principle from, or reconcile it with, their view of race.

Stay tuned for part 2, "Opening Statement: The Case for Race."