Ne pas confondre « races » et populations : une réponse simple et puissante aux habits neufs du racisme scientiste
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Jon Marks
20 h · Charlotte, États-Unis
This is a response to the David Reich essay by sociologist Ann Morning.
Several friends have asked my opinion about this recent New York Times op-ed by geneticist David Reich claiming that “differences in genetic ancestry that happen to correlate to many of today’s racial constructs are real.”
Basically he does something I feel like I’ve seen 20 times before. He uses a rhetorical device that Ohio State demographer Reanne Frank called “the forbidden knowledge thesis,” where academics who identify themselves with “science” (and are usually, though not always biological scientists) claim that anyone who questions the biological foundations of racial groupings is denying reality, or “sticking their heads in the sand” as Reich put it. Another recent version of this was NY Times former science reporter Nicholas Wade’s 2014 book “A Troublesome Inheritance.” The NYT also published an op-ed by geneticist Armand LeRoi in 2005 making pretty much the same case, so I’m not sure why they felt it was new in 2018. But the conceit is that there has been a social scientific cover-up (or “orthodoxy” in Reich’s words) denying the biological truth about race, so we need brave souls like Reich and Wade and LeRoi to reveal the truth (again!) to the public: race is a biological characteristic of the human species.
The problem in the geneticists’ arguments (science journalist Wade’s are of a whole other magnitude of weakness) is that basically they confuse “population” with “race.” They are absolutely correct when they talk about average differences between populations in terms of the frequency of particular genetic traits. They illustrate this with examples like the Andaman Islanders (in LeRoi 2005) or Northern Europeans or West Africans (in Reich 2018). The trouble is, none of these groups are considered “races” (or have been at least since the 1920’s). “Races” are huge groups spanning entire continents and thus remarkably varied ecological environments. “Races,” as described by Linnaeus in the 1700’s or on the U.S. census of 2010, group Koreans, Mongolians, Sri Lankans and Pakistanis together (as the “Asian” race); they group Moroccans, Norwegians, and Greeks together as another (the “white” race). Groupings like these, billions of people strong and traditionally inhabiting highly variable geographic terrains, just don’t demonstrate homogenous genetic characteristics that distinguish them, even if average differences can be calculated between them. That is why the statistics that Reich or others present are actually not about races; they are about much smaller-scale, local populations. Indeed, Reich himself claims that the people we call “white” today descend from four genetically-distinct populations, thus shooting himself in the foot because it suggests that “races” are in fact not actually the same thing as genetically-identified “populations.”
I think his piece is right to make a plea for better understanding of the biological variation that characterizes our species. But “race” is a really lame, blunt, and—it has to be said—historically racist tool for such scientific inquiry. As far as I can tell, the only advantage to dredging up the “race” notion is to be provocative and garner attention (especially if, like Reich, you have a new book to flog). What amazes me is that media outlets like the NYT seem to have so little institutional memory that the same argument can be presented again and again as if it were a fearlessly iconoclastic novelty. Go figure! Honestly, this op-ed should’ve been titled, “How Race Is Warping Our Understanding of Genetics.”