The science of racism

Did anyone happen to catch Henry Louis Gates Jr. interviewing James Watson on theroot.com the other day? I watched it yesterday from The Scientist editorial office, where I am an editor.

It was a very interesting situation because Watson, who was skewered last year for insinuating to Britain's Sunday Times Magazine that black people were intellectually inferior to whites, sat down to talk with Gates, a leading black intellectual.

The interview wandered in and out of some pretty strange territory. Gates and Watson discussed the possibility of a basketball gene, and at one point, Watson mentioned a product tester who self-administered a hormone derivative, giving himself a ten-hour erection. The back-and-forth was made all the more bizarre by the fact that through the entire interview, Watson had a band-aid dangling from his left nostril. I'm sure it was necessary, but it just lent the already-bizarre interview that extra touch of surreality.

The conversation got very interesting, though, when Gates pondered the possibility of an unequally shared genetic root of intelligence. He asked Watson how our civilization would respond to findings that suggested blacks were indeed genetically less intelligent than whites. Watson replied: "Black people and white people, we're going to both be better because of this knowledge. Everyone should be judged [as] individuals. No one should be judged by a term like 'black.' So I'm optimistic about where we're going. I don't think it's going to lead to people being just discriminated. I see them being helped by knowing what genes might affect your health, and also in understanding when you don't fit in."

Though Watson attempted to allay Gates' fears, their conversation raises a crucial question. If science does uncover key genetic differences between people of different ethnicities (by no means a foregone conclusion) how will society (and researchers) react? What do you think?

The entire concept of "race" is meaningless as far as human beings are concerned. Human experienced a population restriction some 100,000 years ago, or less, and the species lost most of its genetic diversity as a result. The concept that in the intervening time a set of traits as complex and multifactorial as "intelligence" would experience differential selection among what was essentially hunter-gatherer societies everywhere sufficient to be detectable over the noise of culture is virtually incomprehensible to me as a biologist.

What I find fascinating is the issue of "race" seems to revolve around peoples of African vs. Western European origin and the alleged superiority of the latter. However, on almost all tests, people of Asian origins outperform those of European origins. Perhaps we should ask what would be the effect if science uncovered "key genetic differences" proving the superior intelligence of people of Asian origins. Somehow, I suspect that while people of European origin seem to be less critical than they should be about evidence suggesting their superiority over people of African origin, my guess is they would be highly critical of evidence suggesting their inferiority to people of Asian origin.

Frankly, I am astounded that a biologist of Watson's stature would be so silly as to involve himself in this meaningless debate. Perhaps this simply shows how deeply ingrained racism is, even among biologists who should know better.

There is no scientific basis for "race" based on skin color. There is a certainty that there are genetic differences between members of different ethnicities, and even between groups within the same ethnicity. Consider ABO, for instance. There are many people on this planet who are of mixed ethnicity, because all humans are the same species and can interbreed. So is the question based on an assumption of some standard of "pure" ethnicity? And what do you mean by a "key" genetic difference, anyway?

This is a thought-provoking question, but I suspect that any key discovery in the human genetics area will be so complicated to explain in lay language that there won't be an identifiable long-term societal reaction. Examples abound; I recall the Ames carcinogen testing stories of the 1980's, which initially had people concerned about eating, breathing, or touching anything. When the stories begain to delve into test methodologies, statistics, and other opaque aspects, the public largely lost interest and went back to waiting for the next big story to break. For a more current example, try global warming.

In short, my money is on alarm followed by concern/puzzlement followed by indifference. I am, however looking forward to other responses to your question from the less jaded among your readers!

With all due respect to the previous responders, scientists should never let opinions and knowledge generally believed to be true or what we were taught way back when trump raw numbers. Science marches on. What do the data state according to Watson? Is he incorrect with his conclusions based on that evidence?

In the end, it is absolutely true that means and standard deviations do not say anything about the individual, but they can be used as guidance for future scientific investigation and knowledge.

Thank you both for responding. I agree that human "race" or "ethnicity" are often misconstrued concepts, sometimes used for nefarious purposes in social contexts. The terms have little grounding in biology, but still, the conversation between Gates and Watson did turn to the genetics behind the phenotypic differences we see in different groups of people.

I think the two were pointing out the fact that much remains to be discovered in the human genome, and that genetic differences between groups of different geographical origin MAY turn up. By "key genetic differences," I was again referring back to the conversation between Gates and Watson in that they were discussing the impact of discovering genetic distinctions in intelligence and not in less weighty characters like height or hair color.

Again, I reiterate, no such "key" distinctions have been uncovered, and it is a very real possibility that, as we understand more and more about our genome, none exist. I think it a fruitful exercise, however, to explore the hypothetical and to discuss the possible impacts on society and the scientific community. Thanks again for your input.

Not sure I understand this need to hold onto outdated concepts that have no biological or genetic validity? Most African-Americans individually represent heterogenous backgrounds owing to the introduction of forced migration out of several geographical locales in Africa, and the subsequent relationships between African slaves in America, Native Americans and European Americans in various permutations. I find it quite frankly absurd that anyone would think that we could identify a single or multiple genetic loci that would correlate with such a complex phenotype as intelligence.

Not to mention, what is intelligence? What are we exactly measuring here? clearly IQ is at best a surrogate marker for something that is ill-defined. That's a discussion in it of itself...

Racism is a logical consequence of the human desire to label things and then simplify decisions based on these broad labels. Skin color is a very simple, obvious label that is immediately vulnerable to these tendencies. For the same reason that political campaigns can successfully manipulate the opinions of large numbers of people with "sound bites" that appeal to pre-existing desires for simplistic assessments without any necessary basis in reality, but rather on easily exploited emotions such as fear and suspicion, the love of gossip, etc., many use physical characteristics such as skin color or Asian eyes to make simple, quick, and easy judgments of others.

Xenophobia, for example, is based on fear of the strange, different, or unknown. This emotion is amazingly easy for individuals to indulge or certain interests to exploit for a variety of nefarious purposes. If we were to mark a select population with an obvious colored symbol tattooed on the forehead, we could deliberately choose any negative quality such as low intelligence to make our selections. We could select a population that had statistical outliers in both the positive and negative directions, but that constituted overall a clean normal distribution that centered on a mean that was significantly negative. Within a short period of time, the most positive outliers, including absolute geniuses, would find themselves in trouble because of the reflexive labeling that people would begin applying to the general population of those so marked.

The bottom line on all this is this: when given a choice between making judgments based on careful individual evaluation of performance or whatever other chosen characteristic as opposed to using a convenient label that allows us to make a broad statistical judgment, whether even this collective judgment has any basis in fact, most people will choose the latter. This is unfortunate for the world, since it requires a general elevation in the collective awareness and information processing habits of the world in order to change.

The question of how to make sense of patterns of human genetic variability is fundamental and can and should be engaged by biological and social scientists as well as by the public at large. This said, I do not think that Jim Watson is well versed in the nuances of describing what is known of the state of the science in human genetic variation. He was unwise to stumble into this quagmire and seems to have rather simple notions of human variability rooted in genetic determinism. This said, it is notable that many believe that cognition, perception and behavior are not coded in our genetics. I think we are still in the infancy of science regarding human nature and genetics and speculations abound. There are some facts however that might help to quell these "debates" and encourage research as well as mature ethical opinions regarding the consequences of discovery.

Well siad MarkTS55841. I share your sentiments and hope for the same.

Regarding the nature of intelligence or its definition, in the last decades at least, there has been an increasing recognition in both academia and other relevant professional fields that traditional measures of intelligence are narrowly weighted toward detecting potential for academic success and severely lacking in terms of assessing more general cognitive function. Is it not chauvinistic to assume that individuals all possesses more or less the same level of cognitive capability beyond the narrow aspect we generally and rather crudely conceive in terms of academic intelligence?

That is probably an assumption very typical of humans, but also likely a very flawed one. We know there are statistical outliers on the mentally ill and criminal end of the spectrum whose cognitive maladies have little to zero correlation with what we narrowly conceptualize as intelligence. Why should we blithely assume, therefore, that there are no outliers on the other extreme that exhibit a cognitive clarity that also lacks much if any correlation with conventional measures of either level of education or intelligence? Eastern spiritual traditions, for example, have long preoccupied themselves with developing aspects of cognitive function that have little to do with what we have generally conceived intelligence to be.

Is it not then possible that the continuum from criminal minds and the mentally ill to those outliers on the other extreme who may have been traditionally considered prophets, sages, or saints is in fact a continuum that, although it correlates little if at all with traditional measures of intelligence, does correlate with a more general level of cognitive function that comprehends extremely low to extremely high levels of cognitive coherence and clarity? Could it be that, as referred to in my previous post, the general elevation in the collective awareness and information processing habits of the world needed for eliminating the sad consequences of racism might require just such an increase in cognitive coherence and clarity?

In that case, we would need to look well beyond mere means of informing the public through traditional educational means or the mere teaching of logic and critical thinking. Neither of these approaches affects cognitive clarity and coherence at any kind of remotely fundamental level. Rather, they simply address the same narrow aspect of cognitive functioning we have traditionally been labeling as intelligence. Lest we become discouraged, however, this needn't indicate that such a change is impossible, but we must indeed reach far outside our traditional boxes to find the means. What remains to be seen is whether the political will exists to find them. If we do find them, might we also find that they have been right under our noses all along?

What I find rather interesting - and digusting - about racism, is that racists tend to say that someone with, lets say, 1/8 african heritage is black. I think this is insulting, because they say that 7/8th of European blood is less important than the last 1/8th. And where do you think that that supposed "intelligence gene" ist going?
The whole idea is simply ridiculous.

SusanneTS782085 wrote:What I find rather interesting - and digusting - about racism, is that racists tend to say that someone with, lets say, 1/8 african heritage is black. I think this is insulting, because they say that 7/8th of European blood is less important than the last 1/8th. And where do you think that that supposed "intelligence gene" ist going?
The whole idea is simply ridiculous.

Why is it an insult to be referred to as a race that one actually is? Whether it be 1/8th or not, one still is part of the race. I'm not African American, but if I was 1/2 Irish, 1/4 Scottish, 1/8 French, 1/8 african - I would be perfectly fine with someone referring to me by any of my hertiages. I hate to say but your post sounded a slight bit racist. To me your post says, that you are ashamed of your own hertiage. Racism sadly is still alive and well. What I believe has happened is that nowadays there is more of an unspoken racism, as racists are acting more PC in public.

Racism as we know it here in the U.S. is derived from the purchase of slaves in the mid 1600s. Slavery had been a fact of human existence, of course, for millenia, but in Rome, Greece, pagan Europe, Asia and the Arabic world, the sole justification was the strong defeated the weaker, and the spoils of victory included enslaving the losers. As the Enlightenment spread through European civilization, slavery by conquest began to take on an unfavorable hue, and a more compelling reason for maintaining the economically valuable African slaves was needed. What better reason than their supposed inferiority? Prior to the sale of slaves to the colonies, European civilization had little concept of the superiority of whites over blacks. All that emerged later.

Also, it's interesting that none of the evidence alleged to support racial differences relating to intelligence is genetic. It's all phenotypic, and, as the other Robert commented, is related to the narrow topic of academic performance.

I suppose that if someone were truly interested in identifying a putative link, a genome-wide gene association study comparing people >1 sd above the mean intelligence (however defined) with >1 sd below the mean could uncover such differences, should they exist and should the sample size be large enough. Then, the task would be to attempt to determine whether any of such genes or SNPs show differential expression according to the recognized Y-chromosome haplotypes. But, I wonder why anyone would want to do this. The differences among individuals are larger than the differences between so-called "races." Any difference is bound to be small, should it even exist.

From title #109 at
http://blog.360.yahoo.com/blog-P81pQcU1dLBbHgtjQjxG_Q--?cq=1

Incompatible Cultural Phenotypeness Separate Human Groups, Not Intelligence

Oct 31 2007, in PhysOrg Forum

A. Watson Retires From Cold Spring Harbor Lab

Quote:

Watson was widely condemned after The Sunday Times quoted him on 14 October as saying that he was "inherently gloomy about the prospect of 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." Watson subsequently apologized, but the damage had been done..." end quote

B. Culture And Intelligence

http://blog.360.yahoo.com/blog-P81pQcU1dLBbHgtjQjxG_Q--?cq=1&p=247

The core (wordnet.princeton) definition of "intelligence" is "the ability to comprehend, to understand and profit from experience". These surviving abilities are different for the different phenotypes within a genotype, therefore each phenotype has its own meaning of "intelligence".

Intelligence is to culture approximately as essential amino acids are to proteins. Culture evolves in response to circumstances only by use of intelligence and to the extent and scope feasible by the extent and scope of intelligence.

C. It's Culture, Not Intelligence, Watson...

Watson's statement is not backed by data and is scientifically incorrect. It could have been made by a chemist but not by a biologist. Intelligence and Culture are Biology, not chemistry.

A modern updated biologist can state that the Curtain that seperates between USA, China, Russia, Muslim world etc., is the Phenotypic Cultural Curtain, the primary darwinian striving of each phenotype to survive at all costs...

But it shall come to pass one day that humans will understand their biological nature and biological environments and cooperate rather than fight for survival...

Dov Henis

To be sure genetic differences related to geography are present, but how these support a concept of race is not clear. The Y-chromosome and the prevalence of SNPs and other features have been used to track the ancient migrations of peoples. Interestingly, the farther from Addis Abbaba, the less diversity in the Y-chromosome is seen. The least genetically diverse people on the planet are probably the inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego because the are the descendents of people who came out of Africa, across Asia to North America and then to the tip of South America. The most genetically diverse are those who inhabit the Horn of Africa. Most of the differences in Y-chromosome diversity undoubtedly relate to genetic drift as small populations pushed on into new territory. Relatively little selection has occurred except in the area of adaptation to climate--skin color, for example, which balances protection from skin cancer with loss of folate. Some other areas of the genome continue to evolve, namely the immune system response, but other than those it is my understanding that the human genome is stable.

Scientists such as Watson seem to develop an interesting kind of amnesia. Within my lifetime, white people were behaving every bit as beastly toward each other as any repressive regime in Africa. Nazi Germany and the USSR provide little support for a theory of the superiority of intelligence of white skinned people.

IsItNovemberYetTS1038682 wrote:

SusanneTS782085 wrote:What I find rather interesting - and digusting - about racism, is that racists tend to say that someone with, lets say, 1/8 african heritage is black. I think this is insulting, because they say that 7/8th of European blood is less important than the last 1/8th. And where do you think that that supposed "intelligence gene" ist going?
The whole idea is simply ridiculous.

Why is it an insult to be referred to as a race that one actually is? Whether it be 1/8th or not, one still is part of the race. I'm not African American, but if I was 1/2 Irish, 1/4 Scottish, 1/8 French, 1/8 african - I would be perfectly fine with someone referring to me by any of my hertiages. I hate to say but your post sounded a slight bit racist. To me your post says, that you are ashamed of your own hertiage. Racism sadly is still alive and well. What I believe has happened is that nowadays there is more of an unspoken racism, as racists are acting more PC in public.

I agree with Susanne there. If people with (to keep her example) 1/8 African heritage were referred to as BOTH black and white, I wouldn't have any problems with it. But usually the person is considered just black, and NOT white.
Hope IsItNovember doesn't consider my use of the word white "racist", but their post lacks a term to group all the European groups mentioned, and at the same time African is not divided in subgroups - why the difference?
I'm also not sure why it was assumed that Susanne is 1/8 African, when that isn't anywhere in her post...
And before I'm accused of being ashamed of anything, let me disclose that I'm 1/4 Italian, 1/4 German, and the other half is probably mainly Portuguese with a bit of Native.

Why is there so much discussion of racism with no definition of what the word means? Why is the focus on discrimination between White Americans and African Americans of color? There are many forms that racial discrimination takes, e.g., Western Samoans and New Zealanders have some mutual animosity. Northern and Southern Italians dislike one another. Hutus and Tutsis. Sunni and Shiites (religion). Japanese and Koreans. German Jews and Sephardic Jews. So much energy was wasted by well-intentioned people without defining what they are talking about. It was reported that Chimpanzees have 97 percent of the identical makeup as humans. What does that say about all of the different humans?

I've commented on this here:

http://www.kurzweilai.net/mindx/show_thread.php?rootID=130347#id130347

William Saletan wrote a series of articles on Slate late last year indicating that the evidence actually supports what Watson said, and the challenge for society to come to terms with it (basically there are differences in average scores between groups, but there is overlap).
http://www.slate.com/id/2178122/entry/2178123/