Table Of ContentWHAT ’S
T HE USE
?
O F RACE
MODERN GOVERNANCE
AND THE BIOLOGY OF DIFFERENCE
EDITED BY IAN WHITMARSH AND DAVID S. JONES
What ’ s the Use of Race?
What ’ s the Use of Race?
Modern Governance and the Biology of Difference
edited by Ian Whitmarsh and David S. Jones
The MIT Press
Cambridge, Massachusetts
London, England
© 2010 M assachusetts Institute of Technology
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or
mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval)
without permission in writing from the publisher.
For information about special quantity discounts, please email [email protected]
This book was set in Stone Sans and Stone Serif by Toppan Best-set Premedia Limited. Printed
and bound in the United States of America.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
What’s the use of race? : modern governance and the biology of difference / edited by Ian
Whitmarsh and David S. Jones.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-262-51424-8 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Genetics— Social aspects. 2. Racism. I. Whitmarsh, Ian, 1975– II. Jones, David S. (David
Shumway), 1970–
QH438.7.W53 2010
323.11 — dc22
2009037118
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
1 Governance and the Uses of Race 1
Ian Whitmarsh and David S. Jones
Ruling
2 What ’ s the Use of Race in Presenting Forensic DNA Evidence in Court? 27
Jonathan Kahn
3 Forensic DNA Phenotyping: R einforcing Race in Law Enforcement 49
Pamela Sankar
4 Beyond Inclusion, Beyond Difference: T he Biopolitics of Health 63
Steven Epstein
Knowing
5 Arguments against the Use of Racialized Categories as Genetic Variables in
Biomedical Research: W hat Are They, and Why Are They Being Ignored? 91
Simon M. Outram and George T. H. Ellison
6 From Self-Identity to Genotype: T he Past, Present, and Future of Ethnic
Categories in Postgenomic Science 125
Richard Tutton, Andrew Smart, Richard Ashcroft, Paul Martin, and George T. H. Ellison
7 The Genomics of Difference and the Politics of Race in Canada 147
Amy Hinterberger
8 Race and Ancestry: O perationalizing Populations in Human Genetic Variation
Studies 169
Joan H. Fujimura, Ramya Rajagopalan, Pilar N. Ossorio, and Kjell A. Doksum
vi Contents
Caring
9 Use of Racial and Ethnic Identity in Medical Evaluations and Treatments 187
Jay S. Kaufman and Richard S. Cooper
10 What ’ s the Use of Culture?: Health Disparities and the Development of
Culturally Competent Health Care 207
Angela C. Jenks
11 The Science and Epidemiology of Racism and Health: R acial/Ethnic Categories,
Biological Expressions of Racism, and the Embodiment of Inequality— an Ecosocial
Perspective 225
Nancy Krieger
Looking Forward
12 Race and the New Biocitizen 259
Dorothy Roberts
About the Contributors 277
Index 281
Acknowledgments
This book is the fi nal product of a series of conversations begun at a conference hosted
by the Center for the Study of Diversity in Science, Technology, and Medicine (CSD)
in April 2008. The CSD was founded at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
(MIT) in June 2000 by a generous grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Professor Evelynn M. Hammonds envisioned a center that would pursue two primary
goals. Scholars would examine the impact of diversity on the theory and practice of
science, medicine, and technology, as well as the contributions of racial and ethnic
minorities to those fi elds.
Starting in 2006, the CSD organized a series of three conferences that explored
questions of race and technology. The fi rst, “ Race, Pharmaceuticals, and Medical
Technology, ” focused on BiDil, the fi rst (and still only) medication approved by the
Food and Drug Administration for use in a specifi c racial or ethnic group, people who
self-identify as black. Many of the papers from this conference were published as a
special symposium in the J ournal of Law, Medicine & Ethics in the fall of 2008. General-
izing beyond pharmaceuticals, the 2007 conference, “ The Business of Race and
Science, ” examined how the modern sciences of race have been used to justify a series
of race-specifi c products and policies, from cosmetics, vitamins, and jogging shoes to
tests of genetic ancestry. The fi nal conference, “ What ’ s the Use of Race,” broadened
the conversation still further, asking how race has been, and should be, used in gov-
ernance, with examples drawn from law, science and medicine. A subset of the papers
presented were expanded into full length essays and then revised substantially to
produce the essays found in this volume.
The conference and this resulting volume would not have been possible without
the assistance of many people. Rosalind Williams and David Mindell, the chairs of
the Program in Science, Technology, and Society (STS) at MIT, and Philip Khoury and
Deborah Fitzgerald, the deans of the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences,
provided an institutional home and much needed support for the CSD. Debbie Mein-
bres, who orchestrated public programs for STS, handled most of the planning and
logistical details that made each of the three conferences a seemingly effortless success.
viii Acknowledgments
The conferences themselves would not have been possible without the thoughtful
contributions of all of the speakers, as well as the active participation of a surprisingly
dynamic and challenging audience. Many of our colleagues at MIT, especially Stefan
Helmreich, Erica James, Heather Paxson, Susan Silbey, Mike Fischer, David Kaiser, Beth
Coleman, Melissa Nobles, and Abha Sur provided useful advice as well. Evelynn Ham-
monds, despite her new roles at Harvard University, always remained a valuable source
of wisdom.
At MIT Press, Marguerite Avery has been an exceedingly encouraging and produc-
tive editor. Erin Shoudy, Marcy Ross, and Deborah Cantor-Adams guided us through
the maze of details of the publishing process. Continued support from The Andrew
W. Mellon Foundation allowed us to see this project through to completion.
None of these essays are expected to provide the last word on these subjects. We
hope, however, that they will stimulate on-going dialog on these vital issues for
science and society.
1 Governance and the Uses of Race
Ian Whitmarsh and David S. Jones
Race in America at the start of the twenty-fi rst century remains in a turbulent ferment.
The erosion of segregation in schools, workplaces, marriages, and politics— an erosion
symbolized by the election of the fi rst black president— is accompanied by, and masks,
persistent racial inequalities and injustices. Although some crises, such as Hurricane
Katrina or the state of American prisons, have brought continuing racial injustice
into the public eye and led to calls for remediation, legislatures and courts in the
United States have retreated from affi rmative action and other traditional policies
that sought to compensate for the history of racial inequality. Yet even as the govern-
ment backs away from race-based social welfare policies, it has established the impor-
tance of race in medical research and practice: federally funded research must now
examine racial difference, and both the Patent and Trademark Offi ce (PTO) and the
Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have sanctioned the concept of race-specifi c
pharmaceuticals.
Such government action on race is in line with broad interest in addressing racial
disparities through technological means. The marketplace is now fl ush with products
advertised as solutions for racial injustice. Race-specifi c vitamins offer to rescue dark-
skinned peoples from the vitamin defi ciencies they suffer as a result of having moved—
or been moved by slavery— from the sunny tropics to temperate climates. Race-specifi c
genetic tests can recover the ancestral histories of African Americans whose heritage
had been erased by the slave trade. Nike has even marketed race-specifi c jogging shoes,
designed specifi cally for the supposedly thicker feet of American Indians, to combat
the epidemic of obesity and diabetes on impoverished reservations.
The current tumult in race commerce and governance can be traced, in part, to
recent and surprising developments in the science of genetics and race (K oenig, Lee,
and Richardson 2008) . Coming out of the civil rights era, many scientists and scholars
joined a consensus that found race to be nothing more than an arbitrary social con-
struction. They hoped that policies would be enacted to address the existing social
injustices that had been created by past false beliefs about race and racial hierarchies.
Once this remediation work was done, race would be able to disappear, taking its place
