Disclaimer: I think racial DNA tests are absurd, and are based primarily on social notions of race, not actual distinct genetic and biological human categories. Personally, I think the idea of African, Asian, or European DNA borders on absurd, and I do not endorse the use of “racial DNA tests.” However, I couldn’t resist posting this because I got a really big chuckle out of it.
Remember a few months ago when renown Nobel Prize winner James Watson claimed blacks were naturally less intelligent than whites–well I wonder if he now thinks he is less intelligent other “whites.” Check this out:
JAMES WATSON, the DNA pioneer who claimed Africans are less intelligent than whites, has been found to have 16 times more genes of black origin than the average white European.
An analysis of his genome shows that 16% of his genes are likely to have come from a black ancestor of African descent. By contrast, most people of European descent would have no more than 1%.
The study was made possible when he allowed his genome – the map of all his genes – to be published on the internet in the interests of science.
“This level is what you would expect in someone who had a great-grandparent who was African,” said Kari Stefansson of deCODE Genetics, whose company carried out the analysis. “It was very surprising to get this result for Jim.”
Watson won the Nobel prize, with Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins, after working out the structure of DNA in 1953. However, he provoked an outcry earlier this year when he suggested black people were genetically less intelligent than whites.
This weekend his critics savoured the wry twist of fate. Sir John Sulston, the Nobel laureate who helped lead the consortium that decoded the human genome, said the discovery was ironic in view of Watson’s opinions on race. “I never did agree with Watson’s remarks,” he said. “We do not understand enough about intelligence to generalise about race.”
The backlash against Watson forced him to step down as chancellor of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, New York state, after 39 years at the helm. He had said he was “inherently gloomy about the prospects for Africa” because “all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours – whereas all the testing says not really”.
The analysis by deCODE Genetics, an Icelandic company, also shows a further 9% of Watson’s genes are likely to have come from an ancestor of Asian descent. Watson was not available for comment.
And if you want to read a bunch of racist rubbish you can go read the comments to the article, too.
@ “I think the idea of African, Asian, or European DNA borders on absurd.”
Then how come geneticists can use your DNA to determine your ethnic ancestry?
How come people with ancestry from different latitudes have different colour skin and hair? You don’t think that’s genetic?
We know that different groups have some different genes. Eg. some groups are lactose tolerant, some not; some groups have sickle-cell genes, some not; some groups, like Ashkenazi Jews, have their own specific inherited diseases (eg. Tay-Sachs). If you’ve got a Tay-Sachs gene, you’d better believe you’ve got Jewish ancestors! Nothing “absurd” about that!
It’s totally true that we are all mixed-race — there is no racial purity in the real world. It’s true that Africa has more genetic variation than all the rest of us put together — partly cos homo sapiens only left Africa pretty recently. We’re all of African descent, ultimately. It’s true that between-group variation only accounts for a small fraction of human genetic variation. It’s true that humans have much less genetic variation overall than do chimpanzees. It’s true that categories like ‘black’ and ‘white’ have no wider genetic or biological reference.
But it’s just not true to say that there are not different genetic inheritances. No geneticist believes that. Being anti-racist doesn’t require you to believe that all human groups have had an identical gene pool!
I assume what you mean (since it’s been called into question already) is that, given the similarity between racial groups and the diversity within them, the accuracy of tests like these is highly questionable.
I’d still like to take one, though, just for shits and giggles. And because there’s value in shaking up one’s assumptions and remembering that people have never stayed put in neat little categories. (but I hate needles, so it won’t ever happen)
I’ve seen studies which use software to show the existence of clustering along broad racial lines, without any predefined races being defined from the start. The clustering is most robust at four clusters, corresponding roughly to sub-Saharan Africa, NorthAfro-EurAsia, and East Asia, plus a fourth more heterogeneous grouping which includes the Amerindians, Pacific Islanders and Oceanians.
The division of the Afro-Eurasian landmass into three distinct groups is explained by the historic land barriers of the Sahara Desert, and the Himalayas.
Presumably he thinks he’s as intelligent as he is.
Men are, on average, taller than women. I’m a man, But I don’t conclude from this that I’m taller on average than women. If I want to find out how tall I am, I use a ruler. I don’t consult average height tables.
A Tay-Sachs carrier does not necessarily have a Jewish ancestor. There are over 100 mutations identified in the Tay-Sachs gene and only 4 are common to people of Jewish descent. French Canadians, Louisiana Cajuns, Pennsylvania Dutch are all considered high risk with a carrier rate of 1/27. Preliminary data suggests persons of British Isle and Irish descent have an increased risk between 1/50 and 1/150. Tay-Sachs occurs in the general population with a carrier rate of 1/250.
For more information please visit National Tay-Sachs & Allied Diseases Association, Inc. website http://www.ntsad.org.
actual distinct genetic and biological human categories
I think the term you’re looking for is phylogenetically distinct or some such. Of course, you could talk about populations of people, as opposed to races.
Also, I think the article got at least one thing wrong: I’m pretty sure that Watson’s (or the other people referred to in the last graf) genome was never sequenced and published. Instead, they probably looked at very small sections of DNA scattered throughout the genome (markers). This is a very different and far more modest task.
(Science reporting is notoriously error-prone.)
This makes me grit my teeth, mostly because of the idiotic way that it mixes generalizations and specifics.
It’s like that person–you know who they are–who responds to “men are generally paid more than women” with the comment “my sister makes more than I do!” To which I respond: yeah, so what?
I don’t think Watson is correct. But nonetheless he was talking about general traits; nothing in his claims would support the nonexistence of specific individuals who violated the general rule.
Turnaround is fair play, but you have to do it right. The people who are viewing this as “turnaround” are missing the point.
@ Kim Crawford
Thank you – didn’t know that. Will check out link.
I don’t think Watson is correct. But nonetheless he was talking about general traits; nothing in his claims would support the nonexistence of specific individuals who violated the general rule.
Of course not. Plenty of racists hasten to say that they don’t mean Joe who works down at the station, of course; he’s a good fella and a credit to his race, but the rest of them….
jd, I don’t believe the test uses any needles. You just swab the inside of your cheek with a Q-tip and send that in. At least, that’s how my mom did it when she sent her DNA to National Geographic to be analyzed.
And Rachel, you say you think that “racial DNA tests” are asburd, but these tests reveal ethnicity, not race. The results of the test would never be that someone is “black” or “white,” but rather that they are “European” or “African.” There’s a big difference.
Madeline said, “And Rachel, you say you think that “racial DNA tests” are asburd, but these tests reveal ethnicity, not race. The results of the test would never be that someone is “black” or “white,” but rather that they are “European” or “African.” There’s a big difference.”
I’m going to have to disagree with you here. Ethnicity is not by any means predicated on the idea of biology. Ethnicity is culture. Furthermore, “European,” “African,” and “Asian” are not ethnicities. There is tremendous cultural and ethnic variation within all three of those categories, and there is no way that one’s culture can be determined by a DNA test.
Rachel –
Ethnicity is a very specific type of culture that is closely linked to heirity. You can not tell if someone is “Southern” or “Budhist” or “Goth” with a DNA test, but you have an extremely good chance of determining if they are “Irish” or “Jewish” or “Han” with a DNA test.
You know what? I can almost understand claiming that blacks are less “intelligent” than whites. It’s offensive and almost certainly untrue, but I could understand it if you believe you have evidence. There are some objective standards of problem-solving, memory, etc., and these abilities are a skill and muscle that is built up by a lifetime of mental problem-solving. In America, blacks and whites have very different lifestyle, so it _is_ possible that the black lifestyle fosters less problem-solving than the white one (or vice versa). Mind you, I personally wouldn’t believe any study stating this fact, since, as has been mentioned before, the tests they use are chock-full of unconscious cultural bias.
But claiming it’s a genetic difference is the height of Mengele-esque eugenic bigotry, and makes me throw up in my mouth a little.
Decnavda said, “Ethnicity is a very specific type of culture that is closely linked to heirity.”
That’s not the definition used in sociology. Honestly, I teach this every single semester. While ethnicity is often connected to ancestry, ancestry is not the only element used to determine ethnicity and there are ethnicities that one would have a much more difficult time connecting to heritability.
Think of Latin American countries as an example. For example, Panamanian is an nationality and would be considered to be an ethnicity by most. There’s no way we are going to be able to develop any type of Panamanian DNA test.
And I’d be hesitant to trust anyone claiming to give me an Irish DNA test.
Hmmmm, I would not have considered nationalities to be the same as ethnicities. I was actually thinking of “Irish” as an ethnicity, not actually just anyone from Ireland, but maybe that is not really correct. My wife is from Mexico, and I would call her “Mexican” – mainly because she calls herself that – but I would not think of “Mexican” as an ethnic group – the main population is too mixed with too much genetic variety from three or four different continents, and there are specific indigenous groups within Mexico I would think of as ethnicities.
Would you concede that at least some ethnicities are strongly connected to ancestry enough to allow for DNA testing? Was the geneticist who told Stephen Colbert that there is a 3 in 4 chance he is Jewish full of crap?
Is it possible the professional sociological definition of ethnicity differs from what most people think of? After all, if you are studying societies, drawing circles of definitions around present cultures makes more sense than tracking their genetic history. That is, maybe sociologists define ethnicity in cultural terms rather than ancestoral terms because sociaologists study cultures, not ancestory.
Ethnicity is a cultural concept, not a biological one. What the DNA tests can distinguish is populations whose members in the past interbred more frequently with each other than with outsiders; i.e., clusters of people who have a probability of breeding with somebody else in the cluster that’s higher than the chance probability that we expect from the whole population of the species. There is no a priori reason this will coincide with “ethnicity.”
@Silenced is Foo: we’ve been over racist theories of intelligence over and over in this thread.