The issue of how race and genetics should interrelate goes to the heart of an unfinished discussion about race and racism in both the United States and around the world. The category of race is still powerful and dangerous, especially in scientific work. Addressing this issue is all the more important given the fact that race is still frequently essentialized and treated as biologically real. This tendency continues even as social and natural scientists such as Troy Duster and Charles Mills (...) largely agree that race is a social construction. Mills sees this racial construction as deeply rooted in the legal and constitutional orders of American society. Race is a modern category invented by white male scientists in the “era of modernity” and instantiated globally in the consciousness, social practices, and institutional interstices of Western European cultures, among countless others worldwide. Indeed, the pseudoscience of the period was highly informed by tales of difference brought back by explorers. (shrink)

We must critically rethink race and genetics in the context of the new genetic breakthroughs and haplotype mapping. We must avoid the slippery slope of turning socially constructed racial categories into genetic realities. It is a potentially dangerous arena given the history of racialized science in the United States and globally. Indeed, the new advances must be viewed in the context of a long history of racial inequality, continuing into the current period. This is more than a question of how (...) carefully we use categories of analysis such as race. Justice and equity must be core to our considerations. There is a community stake in this work that must be seriously considered and included in decision making. A progressive and critical analysis is in order. (shrink)