magazine issue 9 2008 / Issue 8

Reconsidering Race in the Genetic Era

• written by Chris Buchholz
• edited by Abdolhossein Abdollahi

Condit and colleagues conducted a study that may shed some light on this issue. They found evidence that the media coverage of developments in genetic research may reinforce the public’s folk views of race (Condit, Parrott, Bates, Bevan, & Achter, 2004). In one study, they presented individuals with a mock public service announcement that described the potential links between race, genes, and heart disease. A group of predominately white college students from a large university in the southeastern United States were randomly assigned to one of four audio messages: 1) linked heart disease and genes (no race specified), 2) linked heart disease and genes (specifying "Blacks" as participants), 3) linked heart disease and genes (specifying "Whites" as participants), and 4) was a control condition where the participants received no message. After hearing the message (or not in the case of the control group), participants’ levels of racism and their belief in a genetic basis for that racism were measured using a variety of scales. These scales included the Modern Racism Scale (McConahay, Hardee, & Batts, 1981), the Racial Denial Scale (Entman & Rojecki, 2000), and the Genetically-Based Racism Scale (Condit, Parrott, Harris, Lynch, & Dubriwny, 2004, all scales cited in Condit et al, 2004). The participants who listened to the message linking heart disease to genes for "Black" participants were found to exhibit significantly higher levels of racism, as well as, an increased belief in a genetic basis for that racism, when their results were compared to those of participants in the other conditions. In other words, just hearing that some genetic markers for heart disease are more likely to be found "among black men and women" appears to increase racism, and more disturbingly, seems to provide a quasi-scientific basis for that racism (p. 404).

This is not the first time that scientific discoveries have been used to support racist ideology. In the early twentieth century, for example, Darwin’s theory of evolution was appropriated by those who believed that distinct races existed and that some races were inferior to others. For instance, the Eugenics movement, also known as Social Darwinism, suggested that we should selectively breed humans to enhance desirable traits and reduce undesirable traits (Hawkins, 1997). Based on this quasi-scientific rhetoric, there were efforts in the United States and other countries to forcibly sterilize those with physical and mental impairments (Larsen, 2004). In the most extreme example, Eugenics was the backbone for the Nazi’s notions of racial purity and part of their justification for genocide (Proctor, 1988).

In light of the increasing prominence of genetics research in the media, it is important that the public understand the true complexity of human genetics and its relationship to race. Empirical studies in psychology have consistently demonstrated that most basic psychological processes do not differ significantly across cultural, ethnic, or racial groups. In other words, the basic physiology of our nervous system is essentially the same for all humans. When we do find minor differences in basic psychological processes such as visual perception or memory, instead of suggesting racial groups are fundamentally different, cross-cultural research has found evidence that these differences are due to a complex interaction between development and the socio-cultural environment (Ross & Milson, 1970; Segal, Campbell, & Hersokovits, 1963, 1966). In other words, psychological differences found between races are a result of the human mind’s ability to adapt to different environments. So, it is not race that determines differences in mental abilities across cultures, but the influence of culture and the environment. Nonetheless, there are, of course, some physical differences between members of different racial groups.

The most obvious difference, variation in skin color, appears to have evolved to help early humans adapt to a range of climatic conditions (Bamshad & Olson, 2003; Ossorio, 2006). Darker skin, for example, is associated with our ancestors that lived near the equator, where more radiation from the sun reaches the Earth. Melanin, the hormone that produces skin pigmentation, works as a natural sunscreen protecting our body from harmful radiation. Even short-term exposure to ultraviolet (UV) radiation will result in an increase in melanin, temporarily darkening the skin (i.e., a suntan). Over thousands of generations, individuals that were better able to produce melanin were more likely to survive the harmful effects of UV exposure and thus more likely to live long enough to pass on their genes to their offspring.