Part I
“The billion or so of the world’s people of largely European descent have a set of genetic variants in common that are collectively rare in everyone else; they are a race. At a smaller scale, three million Basques do as well; so they are a race as well. Race is merely a shorthand that enables us to speak sensibly, though with no great precision, about genetic rather than cultural or political differences.”
—Armand Leroi, The New York Times 3/14/05
I disagree with Armand Leroi’s above comment. It is scientifically inconclusive to say that race is biologically based. However, I do recognize that race can serve as an important indicator that allows us to gain a better understanding of differences that exist among the different groups of people, such as the prevalence of certain diseases in some races but not in others. Yet, I find Leroi’s statement to be problematic for two reasons: First, the premise of his study is inflated and not holistic, in that the range of genetic differential that he attempts to categorize as different racial types of humans cannot exceed .01%, since according to human genome film, Homo sapiens are 99.9% genetically identical. Second, his theory of genetic racialization is based on an inconstant and fluctuating sample of human genes. That is, his sample base of human genes are not stable enough to make a scientific claim, in that Homo sapiens always have been, is in the process of, and will continue to be subject to evolution which involve the following unpredictable and incalculable forces: (1) external/natural environment, like climate, gene flow, and genetic drift; (2) internal/biological environment, like mutations, endemics, and blood types; (3) cultural behavior, such as various breeding patterns, migrations, diet, and beliefs.
Bluntly put, Leroi’s scientific claim about human variation at genetic level is not based on precision over the whole population. For instance, though the discovery of DNA has revealed human diversity with greater precision, virtually no one genotype is exclusive to one race. For example, according to Molnar, though African-Americans show a higher frequency of sickle-cell genes, other ethnic groups also display sickle-cell genes, and they are categorized into different geographical types as they are found in locations such as Senegal, Benin, Bantu, and Asia (Molnar 162). Also, in England, within one race of blood type-A patients who are afflicted with stomach cancer, a study of the frequency of this disease “revealed a difference between regions: The mortality rate was higher in the North than in the South,” depending on other elements of people’s blood type (Molnar 99). In other words, in this case of stomach cancer in England, racial type was not an indicator of why some have cancer and why some don’t. Race is but one element of infinite number of other factors that determine the susceptibility of certain biological difference at a genetic level. In other words, to borrow Alan Goodman’s term in his essay “Two Questions About Race” (2005), Leroi, as a scientist, is making a grave error because his concept of “genes as an indicator of different race” is based on a “shifting concept” (Goodman 3). Goodman further critiques that Leroi “tends to forget about the 94% of variation that race fails to statistically explain (Goodman 3). Rather, Goodman says that “race is an inherently unstable and unreliable concept, [which may be] . . . fine for local realities but not so for a scientific concept” (Goodman 3). If, within this .01% of biological variability, certain traits are more common in one group of people than others, Leroi exaggerates this variability and postulates this tendency out of context as being a significant indicator of race disparity.
Unlike Leroi, Molnar, on the other hand, believes that “study of biology forces us to reject perceptions of superficial differences, many of which are due to factors of nutrition, child growth, and climate” (Molnar 2). In terms of nutrition and child growth as factors, I have personally noticed a change in appearance of Koreans brought up in US versus my other relatives who have never left Korea. Korean immigrants in US more or less adopt American diet. Consequently, unlike their relatives in Korea, Korean immigrants of US drink more milk and eat more pizza like the mainstream Americans. This change in environmental and behavioral factors, in turn, affect genetic expression of the growth hormones in Korean immigrants’ children: Higher intake of dairy products causes their children to grow taller and stronger than their relatives in Korea. As I am not a scientist, though I cannot validate my aforementioned hypothesis—that higher intake of dairy products produce taller people—Molnar cites cases in which diet seems to be a significant element in genetic makeup: First, according to Molnar, Cross-culturally, and particularly in Asia, Africa, and in many European countries, more adults, opposed to infants, are classified as mal-absorbers of milk, because adults drink less or no milk compared to infants (Molnar 129). However, a large percentage of adults in North America and pastoral tribes in East Africa are classified as absorbers due to their more exposure to dairy products (Molnar 129). Thus, Molnar says that “milk-using experience . . .contribute[s] to high frequency of the gene for adult lactase persistence in some peoples of the world” (Molnar 129).
Not only culturally specific “diet” affects human genome, but culturally particular “belief/behavior” also plays a role in genetic frequency. For instance, albinism type II, tyrosinase positive, is most frequently seen in Africans and Native Americans (Molnar 126). One explanation for this phenomenon in one group—at least in the Native Americans—can be traced back to their cultural proclivity to the spread of Albinism: In their culture, Albino males are treated well, doing lighter domestic jobs with women at home, which increase their prospect of mating and thus the chance of procreating more albinos (Miller, lecture). In terms of both lactose tolerance and albinism, then, culturally particular human behavior—such as diet and sexuality—affect human diversity at a biological level.
According to Molnar, climate is another indicator of human diversity. For example, one type of protein called Haptoglobins (Hp1) which “have the capacity to combine with the oxygen-carrying pigment, hemoglobin” has the highest frequency in tropical locations (Molnar 120). Molnar says that this is probably due to the fact that “this Haptoglobin (Hp1) type would be an advantage in populations where hemolytic anemia is very high”: the tropical areas (Molnar 121). Another example of climate as an indicator of human diversity is that, though there are numerous exceptions, in general, “taller people [are] farther from the equator (as in northwestern European) and shorter people nearer [to] the equator” (Molnar 181). Likewise, people are fatter and lighter in the northern cold regions versus their thinner darker counterparts in the warm humid areas (Molnar 186). Even the various head sizes of human show correlation with the climate: In colder climates, the people on the average have “rounder heads than peoples in the tropics,” as “surface area and volume is a critical factor in heat radiation to regulate body temperature” (Molnar 188, 9). Also, in terms of heat radiation/heat conservation, Homo sapiens’ other body parts like arms, legs, facial features, teeth, and hair are affected by climate, ultimately increasing the multiplicity and individuality of Homo sapiens, though within the .01% of human variation. Most crucially, however, these milliard differences in human are merely correlations between climate and human variation; they are tendencies, not facts. Thus, any observation and assumptions about the phenotypical variation in humans—however genetically detailed the data may be—still do not stand as facts. Ultimately, then, the very idea, such as that of Leroi’s—that humans are divisible into few racial types by observing their genes—is problematic, as many precursors to genetic difference, like climate cannot be measured by scientific methods.
Molnar explains that in any given population, studying its gene pool and frequencies are affected and shaped by other immeasurable factors such as “mutation,” “natural selection,” “genetic drift,” and “gene flow” (Molnar 56). Mutation not only causes change in genetic codes but introduces a new variety of allele, increasing the number of different genotypes/phenotypes within a population (Molnar 59). It is often driven by humans’ natural biological tendency to adapt, known as “natural selection” (Molnar 60). For instance, polymorphism shown in human blood types is often a result of natural selection. An allele such as Hbs, which is advantageous under harsh slavery conditions, for example, “appears more in several populations in Africa,” theoretically due to natural selection (Molnar 146). Although its high frequency in several parts of India is hard to explain, at least in eastern Nigeria, it seems that this Hbs gene frequency was “spread by population migration and interpopulation contact, . . . because of its selective advantage” (Molnar 148). The effect of natural selection is also seen in malarial cases—a widespread disease in mostly tropical areas. For example, abnormal hemoglobin SCT are less able to support malarial parasite growth, and thus natural selection favors individuals with SCT, in that they are less likely to die from falciparum malaria than persons with all normal hemoglobin (Molnar 150). The point is, how in the world Leroi can scientifically factor these natural phenomena into his truth claim—the genetic human variation? Human variation, though parts of its aspects may be recognizable at genetic level, its holistic picture is impossible to neatly grasp, because human genes will be different tomorrow than what they are today; they are inconstant; they mutate.
Gene flow and genetic drift are other random human social phenomena which forestall any human attempts to categorize genes into few racial types. According to Molnar, “gene flow refers to exchanges between different population gene pools so that the next generation is a result of admixture” (Molnar 63). Over the human history, Molnar says that invaders, colonists, travelers, and traders have all collectively contributed to this gene flow phenomenon (Molnar 63). Thus, throughout the human history, this high rate of admixture, the phenomenon that is accelerating in our contemporary world, has been an important factor which prevents the development of unique gene combinations. Evidence of diversification of genes due to gene flow can be seen in the case of sickle-cell traits in black populations. According to Molnar, African-Americans in the US have, on average, less than one-fourth to one-half of the Hbs found among West African populations today (5-10 percent versus 20 percent)” (Molnar 160). He says that “this reduction, occurring over the three-and-a-half centuries of their occupation in the New World. . . may be accounted for either by admixture with Euro-Americans or by an elimination of the selective advantage of the carrier of the sickle-cell trait.” (161). On the other hand, Molnar states that Genetic Drift indirectly influences the course and intensity of natural selection, in that when a breeding population is too small, there is a possibility that not all gene combinations will be represented in the next generation—so called a “sampling error” (Molnar 64). In short, smaller the population sample, higher the rate of gene frequency change between the generations (Molnar 65). Thus, population size is another unmanageable, irregular factor which scientists like Leroi cannot accurately assess in analyzing human variation.
In conclusion, according to Molnar, “the record of DNA markers tell us little about how we gained certain of these complex traits—how we acquire a certain size and appearance, a skin color, or rates of growth” (Molnar 179). Molnar has also warned against scientists like Leroi, in that he says that “no matter how we may define or classify clusters of populations today, their composition will undoubtedly change over future generations, as a result of major alterations in evolutionary forces through human adaptation and because of continuing migrations and interbreeding,” which, I might add, has increased rapidly in our contemporary world (Molnar 2). Likewise, Alan Goodman in his essay “Two Questions About Race” (2005) says that “we just don’t know” enough about human genes to make such a conclusive scientific claim. Rather, human diversity is better explained in terms of “evolution and history” (Goodman 3). Because Homo sapiens consist of enormous range of physical variability, any scheme to divide humanity into a few racial types is bound to be fallacious and misleading (Miller, lectures). Thus, when Armand Leroi claims that race is genotypically distinguishable, he is—according to the human genome film—arguing and exaggerating the difference he sees within the narrow zone of .01% variability among different peoples, since cross-racially, humans are 99.9% genetically identical.
Part II
“Instead of obsessing about race, we could try to build a race-blind society. Instead of feeding the fires of neuroticism, we could start teaching people to forget about race, to move on. But to do that, first we must sideline the entire race relations industry—whose only function, it seems, is to make us all deeply anxious about ‘race’—a concept they simultaneously believe has no objective reality. “
—Sean Thomas, Sunday Telegraph (London) 3/13/05
I also disagree with Sean Thomas’s above comment. I find the idea behind it to be, well, wishful thinking at best. To be “race-blind” means what?: that we forget the history of racial oppression which is so embedded in the collective unconscious?; that we do not recognize the multicultural reality of the United States?; that we adhere to one set of ideas about American culture?; if so, whose? The phrase, “move on” is a phrase that Ralph Ellison has mocked in his Invisible Man. There are people who actually fear remembrance of history and a culturally pluralistic society. I suspect that this is what is behind Thomas’s message.
For one, the effects of imperialist colonialism of the past still linger among us. Take India, for example, Eurocentric colonial nation building left ethnic strife among the colonized. According to Kottak, “over a million Hindus and Muslims were killed in the violence that accompanied the division of the Indian subcontinent into India and Pakistan” (Kottak 82). Similarly, “problems between Arabs and Jews in Palestine began during the British mandate period” (Kottak 82). Moreover, during WW II, both Canada and US ordered expulsion of Japanese from their mainstream centers (Japanese internment). In the history of a young nation of merely 200 some years, US has enforced numerous discriminatory immigration and property laws against those other than “white”—e.g., Chinese exclusionary Act, to name just one. Thus, contrary to what Thomas suggests, race is not something that can be “[taught to] to forget. . . [and] move on,” because it has, it does, and it continues to affect the people of color in enormous and powerful ways.
The effect of racism is inscripted in both collective consciousness and in real life of colored people. For instance, not only in US, but world-wide, people with darker pigmentation are the poorest (Miller, professor). In US alone, more people of color, particularly, blacks and Latinos, are disproportionately incarcerated. They are paid the least. They live in and their children go to worst schools. They are thus the least likely to succeed physically, intellectually, economically, and politically. Their sociopolitical odds, then, are enormous. In short, it affects every aspect of a colored person’s life: wealth, education, career, health, and the list can go on.
Now, I would like to discuss about my personal observation/experience with racism in higher education. Because the nature of my discussion is somewhat theoretical and subtle, before I immerse into my argument against intellectual racism within the canonical circle of Western countries, US in particular, I would like to first reiterate Kottak’s definition of racism: According to Kottak, “when an ethnic group is assumed to have a biological basis, it is called a race. Discrimination against such a group is called racism” (Kottak 67, emphasis added). Well, what I have observed is that this racism against ethnic group exists even in the intellectual community, namely, among the canonizers—those who compile textbooks of higher educations. For the purpose of this essay, I call this a “canonical racism”—the racism of anthologizers against works of ethnic writers.
Until recently, the inclusion into or the exclusion from the Western canon was dependent upon the work’s “familiarity” and/or “durability” within the dominant culture. Although canon debates by their very exclusionary nature can never please all sides, traditionally, they have systematically marginalized literary works of ethnic writers. Perhaps, Samuel Johnson’s observation still holds true today: that “the reverence due to writings that have long subsisted arise…not from any credulous confidence in the superior wisdom of past ages,…but is the consequence of acknowledged and indubitable positions, that what has been longest known has been most considered, and what is most considered is best understood” (230, emphasis added). What Johnson’s theory is implying is that what survives as “revered” (the canonized) literature owes to its “indubitable positions” (the positions of white males) within the literary circles.
For example, a decade ago, in 1995, an Asian Diaspora who was raised in America since the age of three wrote a novel claiming numerous awards, to name just one from the long list is the Hemingway Foundation/Pen Award. Most memorably, for his novel Native Speaker, he was selected by the New Yorker as one of the twenty best “American writers” under forty. This “American,” or should I say “Korean-American,” is Chang Rae Lee. However, his book, Native Speaker, though he won “the twenty best American writers under forty” award, was automatically labeled under the “minor literature” in a separate American canon, because according to Deleuze and Guattari, Lee’s Native Speaker fits the definition of “minor literature”: work of a minority writer in a major language (English). The value of this incidence for my argument is that it illustrates what I mean by canonical racism in intellectual community in US. Frankly, I believe that none of this labeling business should be espoused in the process of anthology. If a writer is an American, then, s/he is singularly American, and his/her work is singularly an American literature. No prefixes such as “Afro,” “Asian,” “Latino,” nor qualifiers such as “minor” or “ethnic” is needed, unless the canon is willing to equally dissect the entire culturally hybrid, transnational writers of America.
Pertinent to canonical racism is an essay called “The More Things Change: Paradigm Shifts in Asian American Studies” written by Sumida Stephen. Stephen, in his essay, informs that “for about a decade the critique of Asian American ‘dual identity’ empowered Asian American studies with the contravening idea that it is the concept of ‘America’ that needs to be changed so that it is understood that Asian Americans are singularly American” (Sumida 1). In the past, if silent submissive Asian Americans can be effortlessly alienated (e.g., Japanese internment and Chinese exclusionary Act) on the basis of “phenotypically/culturally being more foreign than others”—thus requiring qualifiers and prefixes describing what type of American they are—now, such systemized alienation are no longer feasible. With the coming-of-age of children of the Asian Diasporas, who may be the future writers/scholars, who have grown up in America, and who are mentally, culturally, and legally “Americans,” need to be dealt with. Surely, it is inevitable that the canon debates in the U.S., in the very near future, will have to re-examine the concept of “American” in categorizing the works written by Asian Americans, and by extension, other prefixed half-Americans.
John Guillory in “The Canon as Cultural capital,” says that much of the canonical debates stem from racist nationalism. In his essay, Guillory states that “the ‘West’ was always the creation of nationalism,” and critiques that Western universities are involved in the discriminatory “project of constituting a national culture” largely through the process of canonization (222). According to Guillory, the method of sustaining what he calls the West’s “imaginary cultural continuities” begins with the assumed Eurocentric superiority, weighing what is culturally “Western” more principally into the canon, while subordinating or excluding literature that represents the “other.” Thus, in this nationalistic milieu of the Western canon, ethnographic works are often pushed out as “not [representing] our culture” (222). However, Guillory warns that “the very distinctness of cultures, Western or non-Western, canonical or noncanonical, points to a certain insistent error…in the supposed transmission of culture” through literature (223), because the very idea of “cultural homogeneity” is an illusion—a “fiction” (221).
Similarly, the chief spokesperson of subaltern studies, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, in her essay, “Imperialism and Sexual Difference,” requests accurate, not distorted, representation of women of color in Eurocentric literature. For example, in many literatures written by Western writers, women of color are portrayed as physically, intellectually, and culturally inferior—e.g., they are usually a slave, maid, prostitute, or mentally insane (like Rochester’s wife from Jamaica in Jane Eyre). She challenges Western academia to stop misrepresenting the women of the third world by first deconstructing the tropological truth-claim made by the imperial masculists, meaning that this cultural violation stems from the fact that Western academia insists “the white race as a norm for universal humanity” (340). Particularly, what troubles Spivak the most is that this cultural violation—committed by the Western male and female elitists—perpetuates through cultural ignorance of the teachers to their students, which she describes it as the “sanctioned ignorance” (345). In order to avoid sanctioned ignorance, then, their misrepresented history written by the Eurocentric writers must be re-represented/revised; however this cannot happen without the “equal access” in the canon (347).
Like Spivak, critics like Bhabha also demands equal representation of the postcolonial cultural hybridity written by diasporas and other ethnic minorities. He says, “The Western metropole must confront its postcolonial history, told by its influx of postwar migrants and refugees, as an indigenous or native narrative internal to its national identity” (1335, emphasis added). He proposes that “the centre of …[our] study would [no longer] be the “sovereignty” of national cultures, nor the universalism of human cultures, but a focus on those ‘freaks’ of social and cultural displacements,”’ meaning minorities (1340). He asks the Western canon to endow equal access into their literary circles those who in the past have been perceived as “freaks” by the dominant culture.
In conclusion, just as my personal observation of canonical racism illustrates, even though race makes little sense on the genetic level, this does not mean that it is not real in a social sense. Thus, Tomas’s notion of a “race-blind” society is naive. Other than teaching people to treat others as individuals and not collectively as a race or group, how do you create a “race-blind” society? It is just not possible. Perhaps I’m pessimistic, but it’s a utopian ideal that is not realistic. Moreover, what does he mean by the “race relations” industry? It seems to me that the only people who obsess about race as an issue and are anxious about it are those who feel the need to overlook race. As I have mentioned in my introduction of my first essay, race can be an important indicator and an important measurement to gain a greater understanding of other groups of individuals, not only biologically to cure diseases, but to improve our social conditions. However, to create this race-blind society is to argue that there are no differences among us. It is only through open dialogue (e.g., in intellectual community) not by pretending that all of us could be “race-blind,” that we can “move on” towards racial equality (Thomas 2005).
Works Cited
Bhabba, Homi. “Locations of Culture.” The Critical Tradition. Richter, David H. Boston:
Bedford Books, 1989.
Gilles, Deleuze, and Guattari, Felix. “What Is a Minor Literature?” Falling into Theory. Richter,
David H. Boston:
Goodman, Alan. “Two Questions About Race” 20 April 2005
<http://raceandgenomics.ssrc.org/Goodman>
Guillory, John. “The Canon as Cultural Capital.” Falling into Theory. Richter, David H. Boston:
Bedford Books, 2000
Johnson, Samuel. “Preface to Shakespeare.” The Critical Tradition. Richter, David H.
Boston: Bedford Books, 1989.
Kottak, Conrad Phillip. On Being Different. 2 Boston: McGraw Hill, 2003.
Lee, Chang Rae. Native Speaker. New York: Riverhead Books, 1995.
Molnar, Stephen. Human Variation: Races, Types, and Ethnic Groups. 5 New Jersey: Prentice Hall,
2002.
Spivak, Gayatri. “Imperialism and Sexual Difference.” Falling into Theory. Richter, David H.
Boston: Bedford Books, 2000.
Sumida, Stephen H. “The More Things Change: Paradigm Shifts in Asian American Studies.”
American Studies International 38 (2000): 97-114.
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