ABSTRACT
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158 The Social and Scientific Meaning(s) of Race . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158 Racial Classification as a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159 The Consequences of Racial Ideology in Science and Society. . . . 160 Why Do Geneticists Use Race and Ethnicity? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162
Methods. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164 Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
Do Geneticists Recognize that Racial and Ethnic Categories Are Unreliable, Invalid and (In)Sensitive? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
How Do Geneticists Justify the Use of Racial and Ethnic Categories in Genetic Research? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168
How Do Geneticists Accommodate the Argument that Race and Ethnicity are Socially Constructed? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
Potential Limitations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172 Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173 Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
This chapter sets out to understand why racial (and quasi-racial ethnic) categories continue to be used in contemporary genetic research despite sustained criticism from natural and social scientists. It draws on interviews with geneticists working on the editorial boards of 19 high impact genetics journals which routinely publish research using racial or ethnic categories. These interviews suggest that geneticists are generally aware of the questionable reliability, validity, and sensitivity of these categories as markers of genetic variation. However, most geneticists seem to assume that the (modest) genetic differences observed among different populations make racial and ethnic categories useful (if not important) in their research. They also assume that the legitimate use of such categories in genetic research can (and should) be separated from their use as popular components of social identity or as determinants of discriminatory practice within society at large. This chapter argues that this is an essentially untenable position, because geneticists rely on the social salience of race and ethnicity to operationalize these categories as useful markers of geocultural ancestry, while their sociocultural correlates help geneticists understand the differential distribution and penetrance of genetic traits. Indeed, geneticists have effectively subsumed the ‘social constructionist’ critique of race and ethnicity by using the social nature of these concepts to improve their utility as tools for genetic research. This might explain why geneticists, and others, continue to use racial and ethnic categories
as if
these were reliable, valid and sensitive markers of substantial genetic variation despite evidence to the contrary.
