Timothy
McGhee
Revision: Race as a Social Construct with Biological and Non-Biological Determinants
In the film “Race: The Power of Illusion ep. 1”, Pilar Ossorio reasserts
the popular rhetoric that race is a social construct and that, “There’s as much or more diversity and
genetic difference within any racial group as there is between people of
different racial groups.” Part of this rhetoric is an attempt by
contemporary scholars to redress the racial ideologies that support white
supremacy. By espousing the socio-cultural reforms of the Civil Rights
era, and directly countering biological racism, Ossorio joins the aggregation
of scholars and researchers who expound the ideas of racial equality.
These types of scholars are addressing the issue of race with new language that
denotes the intricate workings of racism and seeks to erase the notions of racial
differences being biological. This process at once relieves the
descendants of racists of responsibility for the views of their ancestors by
expounding a colorblind mantra, and seeks to quell the fervor behind minority
population’s adamant conviction that racist processes are generationally
inherited and ongoing. I submit that by reducing the concept of race to a
sociological construct, we are oversimplifying racial formation and the
processes of human evolution.
In
Alondra Nelson’s article “Genetic Genealogy Testing and the Pursuit of African
Ancestry”, we learn that there are two pronounced schools of thought on racial
formation; pragmatists and naturalists. Pragmatists believe race is totally a
social construct revolving around indexes of power. Naturalists believe
that race is a consequence of influences by Nature and that there is a
biological reality of race (note: Nelson avoids the debate of whether
Naturalists apply value to the differences). Nelson poignantly details
how both of these arguments have setbacks and are underdeveloped
theories. Of this she says,
“Invoking scientific objectivity, naturalists
may abjure responsibility for participation in research programs that presume
inherent human difference and for how subsequent findings are socially
reified. On the other side, while pragmatists attend to past injuries and
the potential risks of scientific racism when they consider recent developments
in genetics research, some do not fully appreciate how ‘race’ can be a
non-deterministic biological ‘discourse about the body’.
I think Nelson uses some very
‘safe’ language to describe the positions, yet was very accurate in
communicating the ideals of both groups. When she says racial formation
may include non-deterministic biological factors, she subversively steers the
conversation to the arena of biology by pigeonholing the idea to ‘discourse
about the body’. What of biological determinants that affect behavior
such as empathy, sensitivity, and collective consciousness? How does
racial formation play into our culturally inherited and innate behavior
patterns?
In an
Anthropology of Human Origins class I took last semester the argument was
bought up about new research finding that indigenous Africans have no
calculable Neanderthal DNA, while Europeans, Asians, Native Americans, and
mixed persons have anywhere between 1-7% of this genetic inheritance.
(Larson, p.256)
Understanding
race as a sociological construct and a scientific concept will entail
deconstructing the evidence that racial formation is both a sociological
concept and has no proven biological determinants on social behavior,
but perhaps there are other dimensions of humanity and human experience besides
the social and the biological that need to be explored in mapping out racial
formation. I contend that just as research is being conducted to
determine the advantages of having Neanderthal DNA such as immunity to certain
pathogens, research investigations must be made into the sociocultural
pathology of whiteness as it pertains to a propensity for violence and a lack
of empathetic sensitivity. James Baldwin said that, "I imagine one
of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense,
once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.” (Baldwin)
I
consider myself a mixed person. I have had my ancestry DNA done and I am
83% African from all parts of the continent and 17% European from the Northern
Isles and Scandinavia. My family has been in the United States since at
least the early 1800’s. I am quite sure
that since my family has spent hundreds of years in the Diaspora that I too
have some Neanderthal DNA. This makes my questions that much more
poignant and timely, because whether the answers are enriching or negating to
the ideals of whiteness or blackness, I am affected just like countless
others. In the end, we are a human family and we must learn our origins
while we accept that we are tied to a common destiny. This planet belongs
to all of us and we to it. We must harmonize ourselves with ourselves if
we are to all survive, thrive and continue to evolve.
Bibliography:
Larsen,
C. S. (2008). Our origins: Discovering physical anthropology. New York:
W.W. Norton & Company, 2014.
Baldwin,
J. (1963). The fire next time. New York: The Dial Press.
Nelson,
A. (n.d.). The social life of DNA: Race, reparations, and reconciliation
after the genome.
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