ABSTRACT
In Chapter 3, we aim to address the question of where and how racialization occurs in genomic science. Among our interviewees, those who support the usage of race/ethnicity often do so because they want to find out if there are genetic differences between racial/ethnic groups, and when they conduct such research, it leads them to believe that race and ethnicity are genetically determined. Those who oppose the call for increasing racial/ethnic diversity in human subjects often point out that there are greater genetic similarities between ethnoracial population groups and greater genetic heterogeneity within each ethnoracial population group. We further develop the concept of differential racialization by illuminating the different ways in which racialization happens. Our findings suggest that when race/ethnicity is mentioned in the context of genomic science, we should immediately raise some questions: are we talking about self-reported race? Name/surname race? Appearance race? National Registration Identity Card (NRIC) race? Multigenerational race? Country of family origin/nativity race? Geographical race? Ancestry informative markers (AIMs) race? While we believe that including greater human genetic diversity may be good for medical genetics, we argue against the usage of race/ethnicity to measure human genetic diversity, or to use race/ethnicity as a proxy for it.
