July 11, 2003
Is Race Real?
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
OXFORD, England
I had my DNA examined by a prominent genetic specialist
here, and what do you know! It turns out I'm
African-American.
The mitochondria in my cells show that I'm descended from a
matriarch who lived in Africa, possibly in present-day
Ethiopia or Kenya.
O.K., this was 70,000 years ago, and she seems to be a
common ancestor of all Asians as well as all Caucasians.
Still, these kinds of DNA analyses illuminate the raging
scientific debate about whether there is anything real to
the notion of race.
"There's no genetic basis for any kind of rigid ethnic or
racial classification at all," said Bryan Sykes, the Oxford
geneticist and author of "The Seven Daughters of Eve." "I'm
always asked is there Greek DNA or an Italian gene, but, of
course, there isn't. . . . We're very closely related."
Likewise, The New England Journal of Medicine once
editorialized bluntly that "race is biologically
meaningless."
Take me. Dr. Sykes looked at a sequence of my mitochondrial
DNA to place me on a kind of global family tree. It would
have been nice to learn that my ancestors hailed from a
village on Loch Ness, but ancestry can almost never be
pegged that precisely, and I appear to be a mongrel. One of
my variants, for example, is scattered among people in
Finland, Poland, Armenia, the Netherlands, Scotland,
Israel, Germany and Norway.
On the other hand, is race really "biologically
meaningless"? Bigotry has been so destructive that it's
tempting to dismiss race and ethnicity as artificial, but
there are genuine differences among population groups.
Jews are more likely to carry mutations for Tay-Sachs,
Africans for sickle cell anemia. It's hard to argue that
ethnicity is an empty concept when one gene mutation for an
iron storage disease, hemochromatosis, affects fewer than 1
percent of Armenians but 8 percent of Norwegians.
"There is great value in racial/ ethnic
self-categorizations" for medicine, protested an article
last year by a Stanford geneticist, Neil Risch, in Genome
Biology. It warned against "ignoring our differences, even
if with the best of intentions."
DNA does tend to differ, very slightly, with race.
Profilers thought a recent serial killer in Louisiana was
white until a DNA sample indicated he was probably black.
(A black man has been arrested in the case.) As genetic
science advances, the police may eventually be able to
recover semen and put out an A.P.B. for a tall white rapist
with red curly hair, blue eyes and perhaps a Scottish
surname.
On the other hand, genetic markers associated with Africans
can turn up in people who look entirely white. Indians and
Pakistanis may have dark skin, but genetic markers show
that they are Caucasians.
Another complication is that African-Americans are, on
average, about 17 percent white: they have mitochondria
(maternally inherited) that are African, but they often
have European Y chromosomes. In other words, white men
raped or seduced their maternal ancestors.
Among Jews, there are common genetic markers, including
some found in about half the Jewish men named Cohen. But
this isn't exactly a Jewish gene: the same marker is also
found in Arabs.
"Genetics research is now about to end our long
misadventure with the idea of race," Steve Olson writes in
his new book, "Mapping Human History."
When I lived in Japan in the 1990's, my son Gregory had a
play date with a classmate I hadn't met. I asked Gregory,
then 5, whether the boy's mother was Japanese.
"I don't know," Gregory replied.
"Well," I asked sharply, "did she look Japanese or
American?" Although he'd lived in Tokyo for years, Gregory
replied blankly, "What does a Japanese person look like?"
He was ahead of his time. Genetics increasingly shows that
racial and ethnic distinctions are real ? but often fuzzy
and greatly exaggerated. Genetics will increasingly show
that most humans are mongrels, and it will make a mockery
of racism.
"There are meaningful distinctions among groups that may
have implications for disease susceptibility," said Harry
Ostrer, a genetics expert at the New York University School
of Medicine. "The right-wing version of this is `The Bell
Curve,' and that's pseudoscience ? that's not real. But
there can be a middle ground between left-wing political
correctness and right-wing meanness."
I'll be searching for that middle ground this year as I'm
celebrating Kwanzaa.
* * *
Genetic Bazaar
Anyone can get a DNA analysis to try to shed light on
genetic origins, but for now don't expect to be pegged too
precisely. Bryan Sykes of Oxford University founded a
company that offers analyses based on the rubric in his
book "The Seven Daughters of Eve," and more information is
available at www.Oxfordancestors.com. That's the company I
used. An alternative is an American company offering DNA
analyses with a genealogy focus, www.familytreedna.com. |
