Human Diversity, Genes, and Medicine - Brutes or Angels: Human Possibility in the Age of Biotechnology - page 134

next we turn to a highly regarded group of scientists whose profession
is to study all aspects of humanity, the American Anthropological Associa-
tion (AAA), for a scientific opinion on race. in 1998, the executive board
of the AAA adopted a statement on race, drafted by a committee repre-
senting American anthropologists. The statement is less than three pages
long and worth reading in its entirety. here i quote sections of the state-
ment that describe what race is not and what it is:
human populations are not unambiguous, clearly demarcated, bio-
logically distinct groups. evidence from the analysis of genetics (e.g.,
DnA) indicates that most physical variation, about 94%, lies within
so-called racial groups. Conventional geographic “racial” groupings
differ from one another only in about 6% of their genes. This means
that there is greater variation within “racial” groups than between
them.
from its inception, this modern concept of “race” was modeled
after an ancient theorem of the Great Chain of Being, 1 which posited
natural categories on a hierarchy established by God or nature. Thus
“race” was a mode of classification linked specifically to peoples in
the colonial situation. it subsumed a growing ideology of inequality
devised to rationalize european attitudes and treatment of the con-
quered and enslaved peoples. Proponents of slavery in particular dur-
ing the 19th century used “race” to justify the retention of slavery.
The ideology magnified the differences among europeans, Africans,
and indians, established a rigid hierarchy of socially exclusive cate-
gories, underscored and bolstered unequal rank and status differ-
ences, and provided the rationalization that the inequality was natural
or God-given. The different physical traits of African-Americans and
indians became markers or symbols of their status differences.
racial beliefs constitute myths about the diversity in the human spe-
cies and about the abilities and behavior of people homogenized into
“racial” categories. . . . scientists today find that reliance on such folk
beliefs about human differences in research has led to countless errors.