phillip kitcher article
Does ‘Race’ Have a Future?
December 20, 2007
By Kitcher, Philip
I There are simple and powerful arguments against the biological reality of
race.1 Although the phenotypic characteristics, the manifest features that have
traditionally been used to divide our species into races, are salient for us,
they are superficial, indicating nothing about important differences in
psychological traits or genetic conditions that constitute some racial essence.
Throughout history, allegations of deep differences in temperament and
capacity, claims grounded in no evidence, have done incalculable harm.
Contemporary genetic studies of human populations have revealed that there are
no alleles distinctive of this race or of that, and, although a few researchers
like J. Philippe Rushton- "ogre naturalists," as Ian Hacking aptly
dubs them-continue to seek such simple genetic differences, there is a
widespread consensus among anthropologists that races are not "biologically
real."2
If you have a particular view of natural kinds, the line of reasoning I
have just sketched will appear overwhelming. Suppose you believe that natural
kinds are distinguished by some special underlying feature that explains the
behavior of members of the kind- like atomic number, for example, in the case
of the elements-then you will infer directly from the absence of special
genetic or chromosomal markers of race to the biological insignificance of
racial divisions. But there is a serious mistake here. The
essentialist/explanationist approaches to natural kinds that have dominated
much philosophical discussion in past decades have always been woefully
inadequate as accounts of biological kinds.3 Indeed, anyone familiar with the
writings of two of the greatest evolutionary biologists of the last century,
Theodosius Dobzhansky and Ernst Mayr, can only wonder at philosophical
insistence on the idea that natural kinds have essences.4 As Dobzhansky and
Mayr tirelessly pointed out, biological taxa are not demarcated by essential
differences; in general, there is no analogue of atomic number, no genetic
feature, say, that separates one species of mosquito or mushroom from another;
there are occasional exceptions, cases in which species of lizards are formed
by hybridization or species of grasses result from doubling, or tripling, of
chromosomes, but these are relatively rare.
Many of the premises from which eliminativists about race begin are
correct, and important enough to repeat, again and again: there are no genes
distinctive of the groups we call races, no biological markers of psychological
or behavioral differences. In their studies of nonhuman organisms, however,
biologists typically do not appeal to distinctive genes in their demarcation of
taxa. Once this fact is appreciated, the question of race as a biological
category should be recast. Is there a biological basis for dividing species
into smaller units, and does appeal to this basis generate a division of our
own species into races?
II
The obvious way to approach this question is to begin from the ways in
which species are differentiated. Here, as I have argued elsewhere, we discover
a number of species concepts, and the significance of this point will occupy us
later. For the moment, however, I want to consider the approach to species most
popular among naturalists (especially naturalists who study animals that
reproduce sexually). Dobzhansky introduced, and Mayr articulated in great
detail, the biological species concept, according to which species are clusters
of populations that would freely interbreed in the wild, separated from other
such clusters by reproductive isolation.5 The notion of reproductive isolation
is more delicate than philosophers typically appreciate. It does not entail that
interbreeding is impossible: the fact that tigers and lions can produce hybrid
progeny under conditions of captivity does not undermine their status as
distinct species. Nor does it mean that interbreeding never occurs in the wild:
there are well-studied cases of "hybrid zones" at the boundaries of
species ranges. The important point about these hybrid zones is that they
remain stable and relatively narrow; outside the special conditions, usually
marked by a low density of the pertinent organisms, breeding is within the
species.6
What causes reproductive isolation? Sometimes rather striking features of
the organisms like incompatibility of the genitalia or a barrier to proper
incorporation of genes into the zygote. Most often, however, the mechanisms are
subtle. The courtship behavior of the male fly is rejected by the female of a
different species, or the species are simply active at different times or in
different places. In the Caribbean , lizard
species of the genus Anolis sometimes differ in the fact that one species lives
in the crowns of trees, another on the trunks, and yet another on the ground
around the bases.
Much more could be said about this approach to species, but our interest
lies with infraspecific units. As Dobzhansky and Mayr both saw, there are
occasions on which we might want to divide a species into varieties or
"local races," species in statu nascendi.7 Consistent with the
general approach to species, the obvious criterion to employ is one of reduced
interbreeding. If we discover a population within a species that is mostly
inbred, that is, it is considerably more probable that members of the
population will mate with one another than with outsiders, then we have an
embryonic version of the condition, reproductive isolation, that distinguishes
species. Naturalists identify such populations as subspecies, or races.
I want to refine this conception a bit by recognizing explicitly something
implicit in the biological practice: the populations are identified, of course,
by phenotypic traits, differences that are sometimes slight, and it is assumed
that these differences have arisen over generations of inbreeding. The notion
of race is thus that of an inbred lineage, where the inbreeding may initially
have resulted from geographical isolation that eventually gives rise to
differences in phenotype and to some interference in free interbreeding, even
when the geographical isolation is overcome. That notion is available for
generating infraspecific units within any species, including Homo sapiens.
About a decade ago, I proposed that this was the way to make sense of race
as a biological category. Quite independently, Robin Andreasen has deployed a
different approach to species (the "cladistic species concept") to
argue for a similar thesis.8 Andreasen and I are united in accepting the
biological facts to which eliminativists point; we insist on the absence of
deep essential differences among biological races. More recently, Michael
Hardimon has refined my conception of race in connection with our own species,
suggesting that our ordinary concept of race is that of a relatively inbred
lineage that emerges from a particular geographical region and manifests
distinctive superficial traits that people find salient.9 Two points are worth
making about Hardimon’s careful analysis. First, a similar refinement would be
available along the lines marked out by Andreasen. Second, there are obvious
prospects for a historical explanation of the emergence of racial concepts. The
sorts of phenotypic features often used to demarcate races-skin color, hair
texture, and so forth-have always been salient for humans (witness literary
descriptions from ancient times); racial concepts were forged in the age of
discovery, when clusters of these traits came to be associated with groups of
people who had descended from ancestors in a particular region.
Suppose, then, that careful study of patterns of human mating discloses
that there are inbred lineages, coming from particular regions and having
acquired, over generations, slight differences in phenotypic features that
people find salient. Suppose, further, that when the lineages come into
contact, rates of inter-lineage mating remain significantly lower than those of
intra-lineage mating. There are genuinely biological phenomena here, and a
division of our species can be grounded in those phenomena.
But to leave matters at that is unsatisfactory. For the causes of the
incipient reproductive isolation may be social. Recall the subtleties of
isolating mechanisms, and the species of lizards differentiated by their
positions on the trees. Perhaps people in one line of descent do not mate as
frequently with those in another line of descent because their paths rarely
cross, or rarely cross in contexts conducive to courtship, and perhaps the
separation of places of activity comes about because those in one group have
once made judgments about those in the other, judgments based on no evidence
but profoundly consequential in fixing the socioeconomic status of the
descendants of the judged. The biological phenomenon, the incipient isolating
mechanism, is an effect of social attitudes, the result of marginalization and
prejudice. These people belong to a different race because they were once
labeled-mistakenly, ignorantly, unreasonably-as intrinsically different, for
that initial labeling has given rise to the separation of their way of life
from that of the labelers.
If that is so, races are both biologically real and socially constructed.10
III
I have outlined a view of human races that views them as biological kinds,
not in the traditional, thoroughly misguided and harmful, way, but in line with
the practice of naturalists who try to bring order to the organisms they
observe and study. I could now go on to elaborate the view, and to support it
with what evidence there is about human practices of mating. Instead, I want to
argue that matters are far more complicated than I have portrayed them. The
simple eliminativist argument with which I began goes astray because of a
mistaken premise about natural kinds: natural kinds have essences, and, in
particular, biological kinds have genetic essences. The mistake is corrected by
turning from a bad philosophical account of kinds to taxonomic practice in
biology. But the account I developed also made philosophical presuppositions
about natural kinds, presuppositions I now find dubious.
Those presuppositions stem from a realist view of natural kinds. Realists
believe that nature is divided, independently of us, of our cognitive
capacities and our interests. One of the important tasks of the natural
sciences is to trace the divisions-in Plato’s famous metaphor, to carve nature
at its joints-and, in a discussion of progress, I once proposed that conceptual
progress consists in adjusting language to those objective fault-lines.11 If
you accept a view like this, then you will be interested in the general types
of divisions that various sciences draw, in the ways the fault-lines run. Once
you see a particular type of division, division by microstructure, say, or
division by interruption of free reproduction, then you will trace that sort of
division wherever you can, and take the resultant boundaries to demarcate
natural kinds. Interruption of free reproduction is important to biologists,
and we should thus look for it within any group of organisms. A refusal to
apply that principle of division to Homo sapiens would have to rest on an
illicit separation of our species from the rest of the living world.
This picture no longer seems to be persuasive. I find it hard to envisage
nature as prescribing the forms our language should take, as coming nicely
organized with fence-posts that our concepts must respect. There is, as I see
it, no feasible project of inquiry (singular) that aims at a complete account of
our world, but rather many inquiries driven by specific questions we find it
important to answer. We make conceptual progress by devising concepts that
prove useful for us, with our particular capacities and limitations, to deploy
in answering the questions that matter to us, and we should recognize that
those questions are historically contingent and culturally variable. To use an
analogy I find useful, there is a nondenumerable infinity of possible accurate
maps we could draw for our planet; the ones we draw, and the boundaries they
introduce, depend on our evolving purposes.12
Abandoning a strong realism about kinds does not mean giving up completely
on realism. There is a world, one world, containing what is completely
independent of us, and that world resists some of our efforts to draw
boundaries within it; indeed, it resists the overwhelming majority of divisions
we might try to find. There are nondenumerably many choices for demarcating
objects within it, however, choices that the world would not resist. Other
sentient and sapient beings with different capacities might be led to different
choices; similarly for human beings with different interests. Even given a
choice of boundaries for objects, a decision about where Manhattan stops or
just how much space is included within a star, there are nondenumerably many
ways to sort objects into kinds, and these, too, depend on our capacities and
our purposes. In the sense that the world contains the so-far undifferentiated
totality of what is independent of us, there is just one world. In the sense
that the world is a collection of objects, assorted into types, there are many
worlds, and we choose the one, or ones, in which we live.
The position I am sketching, probably too indistinctly, plainly recapitulates
the views of Nelson Goodman.13 Yet there are affinities with earlier authors,
especially with James and Dewey, both of whom want to combine a version of
realism with an insistence on the indefinitely multiple possibilities of
classification.14 That insistence, rather than the famous, and famously
problematic, slogan about truth, seems to me to be the core insight of
pragmatism with respect to issues about truth and realism. So, for brevity, I
shall call the position I have sketched a pragmatist account of natural kinds
(I use an indefinite article because it may not be the only one deserving the
label).
This version of pragmatism about kinds can be defended by focusing on the
pluralistic character of taxonomic practices in the sciences, especially within
biology. A couple of decades ago, John Dupre and I argued, independently, that
there were lots of different ways in which the world of living things can be
divided up, according to the things human beings find salient and according to
the purposes they have.15 Dupre called his view "promiscuous realism"
and I referred to mine as "pluralistic realism"; in essence, we
continued to take the Platonic metaphor of a beast with joints seriously, and
campaigned for multiple-jointedness. So, for example, I proposed that there
were many different species concepts, appropriate for different purposes of
inquiry. Both Dupre and I, however, tended to think in terms of manageable
pluralism, or limited promiscuity; for my part, I took the Biological Species
Concept to be one among a number of contenders. The real trouble, however, is
that the Biological Species Concept itself allows for indefinitely many ways of
development, depending on how one approaches the notions of population and of
reproductive isolation. Even worse, it is quite evident that the multiplicity
of species concepts I considered, and the folk divisions that Dupre rightly
emphasized, pick out only a tiny subset of the possible ways in which people
might shape their divisions of the natural world to different purposes.
Promiscuity becomes rampant, and, as you appreciate that, the thesis that there
is a vast number of ways to carve the beast at its joints, a vast number of
privileged fault- lines in nature, topples over into the position that there
are no privileged fault-lines at all, that the divisions are drawn to suit our
purposes. Really promiscuous realism drops the realism and becomes
pragmatism.16
I shall say no more by way of motivation and defense. My aim is to explore
the consequences of this pragmatic approach to kinds for the naturalistic
proposal about races outlined above. The first thing to note is that pragmatism
renders suspect a crucial part of the argument for grounding races in biology.
Once you move to pragmatism, you lose the general license to introduce a
subdivision of Homo sapiens on the grounds that the principle of division
accords with the infraspecific distinctions biologists make in other cases. The
fact that it is useful for certain purposes to use reduced gene flow in a
widespread species of oaks to talk about local varieties, or local races, does
not mean that it will be useful to mark out similar divisions in the case of
our own species. Pragmatism insists that the usefulness be demonstrated in the
particular case at hand.
Here I find common ground with some criticisms that people have offered
against the biologically grounded proposals made by Andreasen and me,
criticisms that are especially cogent against my version. A common objection
runs something like this: "You point to reduced interbreeding between
human lineages that have been geographically separated and inbred during long
periods. But this is likely to be a temporary phenomenon. Sooner or later, and
hopefully sooner, the social barriers will be broken down; people will respond
to the beauties of others without regard to the trivial differences of the
phenotypic markers used in racial discriminations. Nobody seriously thinks
that, in the human case, we can talk of ‘species in statu nascendi’-indeed, it
would be a horrific thought."171 agree that the phenomenon of reduced
interbreeding is likely to be temporary, and, indeed, I think the significance
of elaborating the biological approach to race is to raise consciousness about
the phenomenon so as to hasten the day when the social barriers disappear. I
have been inclined to respond to the criticism by leaning heavily on a realist
conception of kinds. Biologists pursuing evolutionary studies have shaped their
concepts of species and subspecies to conform to the genuine fault-lines in
nature; even in cases where there is no intention of pursuing an evolutionary
project, of picking out incipient speciation within Homo sapiens, there are
similar fault-lines; hence, without supposing that the notion of biological
race in human beings is valuable to the same ends, it is still a legitimate
biological category.
This response will not do. Given pragmatism about kinds, it is necessary to
point to particular purposes that drawing racial divisions in this way would
serve, purposes that can themselves be defended. If no such defensible purposes
can be identified, then we should simply acquiesce in eliminativism. Indeed,
the criticism can surely be strengthened. Given the immense harm that use of
racial concepts has generated in the past, insisting on race as a legitimate
biological category, even though that concept is linked to no valuable
biological project, can seem irresponsible and even perverse. Moreover, even if
the concept of race plays a role in some lines of biological inquiry, the
values of those lines of inquiry, and of pursuing them through retention of the
concept of human race, would have to be sufficiently great to outweigh the
potential damage caused by deploying this concept in the other contexts in
which it plays so prominent a role, namely in our social discussions. In
assessing this criticism, I think it helps to start with some clear instances
of related biological categories that can be defended on pragmatic grounds.
With respect to sexually reproducing organisms, a division according to
reproductive isolation is valuable in pursuing certain kinds of evolutionary
questions, precisely because, when two populations become reproductively
isolated, changes in gene frequencies within the one are no longer reflected
within the other. The ways in which descendant populations respond to selective
pressures may thus be quite different. When the focus shifts to asexual
organisms, it is not possible to make the division in exactly the same way, nor
is it always appropriate to suggest that the distinctions be made according to
the features that accompany division by reproductive isolation in the closest
sexually reproducing relatives of the asexual organisms under study (a
suggestion that Mayr has repeatedly offered in his attempts to claim a
universal priority for the Biological Species Concept).18 Consider, for
example, asexual microbes, including some viruses, bacteria, and parasites.19
Here taxonomic divisions are reasonably based on the molecules that give these
organisms their distinctive ways of attacking the bodies of their hosts, or on
the genotypes that underlie the production of those molecules. In effect, you
look at what the microorganism does to the plant or animal it infects and then
group together those microbes with the same crucial structures. It would be mad
dogmatism to worry, in this context, about protecting some principle that
genuine taxa can only evolve once: if a virus is completely wiped out, but
researchers at a bioterrorism agency subsequendy use the recorded sequence of
its genome to synthesize an exactly similar organism, we would quite properly
see them as having subverted the original program of eradication and as having
reintroduced the very same virus. For the purposes that drive taxonomy here are
medical; we need ways of classifying the microorganisms in terms of the
structures that underlie the tricks they use to do harm to their hosts.
The challenge for someone who intends to defend a biological approach to
human races is to develop a similar account for the utility of picking out
those inbred lineages that descend from populations once geographically
separated, in which, as a result of the separation, there are differences in
superficial phenotypic traits, characteristics which, despite their superficiality,
are salient for human beings.
IV
Contemporary research on genetic variation within human populations offers
what initially appears to be a way of meeting that challenge.20 Our recently
acquired capacities for genomic analysis, coupled with a commitment to
understanding human diversity, have enabled biologists to identify subspecific
units within the human species-"clusters" as the researchers call
them- based on measures of overall genetic similarity. In effect, studies of
this kind are using techniques of statistical analysis that critics of the
biological species have previously deployed at the phenotypic level, to discern
groups that have probably been separated from other such groups for a large
part of their ancestry. It is crucial to emphasize that the recognition of
different clusters in no way contradicts the received wisdom that there are no
racial essences: as the researchers point out, 93 to 95 percent of human
genetic variation is found within the clusters (rather than between clusters);
each cluster, then, is itself genetically quite heterogeneous.
Faced with the statistical analysis, and especially with the illuminating
figures that present the data, it is tempting to say that here we have a
completely objective division of the human species into infraspecific groups.
We have put the question, and nature has spoken: there are races, or something
akin to them. That conclusion, however, has to be hedged with qualifications.
First, it is important to understand the question that has actually been put.
Given rich data about individuals and bits of their DNA sequences, computer
programs have sought divisions, being told in advance how many clusters they
are to find. So, for example, we might ask, "If our species were to be
divided into just two groups on the basis of genetic similarity, how would
geographical populations be assigned to those groups?" and we would
discover that the two clusters are "anchored by Africa and America"
(Eurasian populations would be lumped with the African ones). Ask for three
groups, and Eurasia is split off; ask for four, and East Asian populations form
a distinct fourth group; ask for five, and Oceania is separated from the other
East Asian populations.21 So there is a genuine issue about level or fineness
of grain, one that can only be settled on pragmatic grounds: the clusters, or
races, will be picked out by fixing the number so that the resulting division
best accords with the inquiries we find valuable.
Picking out new clusters preserves, in an important sense, the boundaries
that have already been drawn. You may find new subdivisions within a previously
identified unit, but you do not generate new clusters that straddle earlier
ones. If two populations are assigned to different clusters at one value of the
parameter, they remain separated at all higher values. On this basis, one might
conclude that the pragmatic component in dividing the species is relatively
insignificant, just a matter of finding the appropriate level in an objective
tree-structure. There is, however, a second way in which the goals of inquiry
affect the whole enterprise, one that elaborates the general points of the
previous section. Why, we might ask, does clustering according to genetic
similarity identify the significant units within the human population? The
obvious answer is that hypotheses about genes, about genetic differences and
genetic similarities, play important explanatory roles in addressing questions
that matter to us, so that division on a genetic basis yields categories that
are more valuable than, say, dividing people up according to the curvature of
their eyebrows or the length of time for which they can stand on one leg. Yet
here we should tread carefully, for the emphatic disavowal of racial essences
already signals the fact that the clusters demarcated on the basis of genetic
similarity are not going to play a significant role in the explanation of
shared phenotypic features or susceptibilities to various types of disease.
Indeed, the authors of the study do tread very carefully, linking the
categories they introduce, not to some ("ogre naturalist") project of
understanding differences in phenotypes, but to understanding the history of
human migrations.22 The fact that contemporary science takes the question "How
did our species reach its current distribution?" as a significant one does
not entail that there is a list, Nature’s Agenda, on which it figures. It is
posed because we find it significant: because of a fact about us. In principle,
we might discover, on reflection, that it is not something we need to know,
and, if that were to occur, then the enterprise of tracing genetically similar
"clusters" would lose its principal rationale.
The pragmatic dimensions of our concepts are frequently invisible to us
because we are so used to certain kinds of inquiries that they come to feel
natural, externally given. Only when science changes dramatically, or when we
realize that some lines of research have damaging social effects, do we pause
to wonder if those inquiries are genuinely justified. On the face of it, the
genetically similar clusters discerned in the brilliant work of Rosenberg
V
The difficulty with biological projects of subdividing our species is that
they appear to introduce a conceptual framework that can easily revive unjust
and damaging social practices. Although contemporary research may speak of
"clusters" rather than "races," it is relatively easy to
foresee that the old, loaded word will often substitute for the aseptic
scientific terminology.23 As the researchers themselves note, self-reported
ancestry (itself entangled with folk racial categories) can sometimes serve as
a good proxy for an identification grounded in genetics.24 The places where
divergence is most likely to occur are in practices of classification that
appeal to extraneous and superficial markers, where tangled prejudices easily
come into play. Yet, of course, where prejudice still exists, overtly or
disguised, there is ample motivation for assimilating the scientific
classification as a cover for continued assertions about the reality of race.
This means that the notion of race is likely to continue to straddle the
divide between well-motivated science (for example, the quest to trace patterns
of human migration) and social applications. Any pragmatic assessment of its
value will have to deal in a synthetic and balanced way with both types of
context. We shall need an overall evaluation, one that takes into account all
its potential uses and abuses. Recent debates about the continued deployment of
‘race’ and cognate terms are full of contending voices that emphasize selected
aspects of the picture.
One might maintain, at this point, that these contending voices can be
ignored, at least insofar as we are concerned with the legitimacy of a notion
that has shown itself valuable in connection with a serious scientific project:
once we know that talk of "clusters" is valuable in the study of
human migrations, debate ends and the concept stands vindicated.25 That version
of pragmatism strikes me as too anemic. As I insisted above, the significance
of scientific questions is conferred by us, and, in recognition of the problems
associated with continued usage of a concept, it might be reasonable to suggest
that, when all the consequences of using that notion are taken into account, we
would be better off to give up on particular lines of research. I anticipate
obvious questions and worries. Does this strong pragmatic test set standards
for justified scientific research that are impossibly demanding? I believe not.
We would rightly worry about the continued deployment of a concept in
fundamental physics, if thinking about nature in terms of that concept could
lead, relatively directly, to the discovery of principles about the release of
energy that would make massively destructive bombs available to anyone.26
Similarly, if a concept, valuable to some investigators pursuing a particular
research question, might cause, in the social world into which that concept is
likely to make its way, considerable burdens for many people, then one ought at
least to raise the question of whether such research is warranted. I emphasize
that this is not a matter of censorship-the idea of a "thought
police" that supervises research and issues interdictions against some programs
is obviously counterproductive (as well as being distasteful); the ethical
question "Should this research be done?" needs to be differentiated
from the sociopolitical question "Should there be a public ban on
exploring some types of investigations?"27 We might answer both questions
in the negative.
Many areas of scientific research would survive this stronger pragmatic
test, for, although there are often uncertainties about the intellectual and
practical consequences, the occasions on which one can confidently predict that
damage is likely to be done are quite rare.28 When such occasions arise, the
obvious tactic is to try to find ways of insulating the research so that
potentially damaging consequences do not occur. Precisely this sensible tactic
is prefigured in the use of the term ‘clusters’ by the researchers on human
migrations. Unfortunately, the pressure on science journalism, even in the most
apparently respectable media, to sensationalize recent findings, led quickly to
the demolition of the barrier that the investigators had hoped to erect.29 So,
to recapitulate my earlier conclusion, we need a thorough survey that considers
all the potential uses and abuses.
VI
There is at least one type of social issue for which we might seem to
require a notion of race based on separation of inbred lineages. People belong
to two kinds of lineages, one biological and one cultural. The former relates
us to our biological ancestors and descendants, the latter to those who pass on
to us parts of our distinctive mix of ideas and ideals, lore and law, as well
as to those to whom we pass on our traditions. When the biological line in
which we stand belongs to a population whose lineages are inbred, and when the
principal cultural ancestors and descendants of people in these lineages tend
to be people who belong to the biological lineages, then we have a use for the
notions of race and ethnicity, the one pointing to the line of biological
descent and the other to the line of cultural descent. This provides a basis
for exploring mismatches between race and ethnicity, to pose questions about
the desirability of viewing members of a particular race as bearers of its
culture. At the heart of claims about cosmopolitanism lies the thought that
cultural descent should be liberated from the patterns associated with
biological descent, that individuals should not be confined to the ethnicity
associated with their race.30
There are genuine questions in this area, ranging from large issues about
the survival of cultural traditions and the responsibility of biological
descendants to preserve the lore of their ancestors to debates about the
desirability of transracial adoption. ‘Race’ and ‘ethnicity’ provide convenient
shorthand terms for exploring them, and for marking out the places in which
concerns about the coincidence of biological inheritance and cultural
inheritance coincide. All this, however, may seem far too slight to serve as a
counter to the damage that is likely to be done by retaining a notion of race.
For, after all, there are obvious and familiar costs to the continued use of
racial distinctions.
The most obvious of these is the practice of stereotyping, whether it is
manifest in the police practice of rounding up the usual suspects or in a
teacher’s forming a premature judgment about a young schoolchild. Sometimes the
stereotype is imposed on the basis of a folk generalization, a claim that
people of a certain race are more likely to have some undesirable trait, where
not only do the appliers of the stereotype have no evidence for that claim but
there is also in fact, absolutely no evidence for it to be found. On other
occasions, however, there may indeed be a correlation that would stand up to
serious investigation: evidence would disclose that people with a particular
cluster of superficial phenotypic traits, who belong to a relatively inbred
lineage that was once separated from other such lineages for many generations,
are more likely to have the trait in question. Even here the practice is
pernicious, for the correlation is readily mistaken for a causal diagnosis.
Despite all our knowledge of the triviality of the genotypic differences
between racial groups, the singling out of some racial groups as more likely to
engage in criminal behavior (say) encourages the myth that there are deep
features of membership in such groups that explain the increased probability.
So the practice of stereotyping fosters backsliding into the ugly racial theses
that have disfigured past centuries, and they recur in modern dress as searches
for behavioral genes associated with criminality, genes alleged to be
differentially distributed among the races.
In fact, the practice is even more hideous than I have represented it as
being, for a better explanation of the correlations involves the past
application of racial concepts. Where the correlations are sustained, where,
for example, young men with particular phenotypes are more likely to engage in
criminal behavior than young men with other phenotypes, nothing hangs on the
phenotypes themselves, the textures and colors of skin and hair, nor on the
distribution of alleles responsible for such traits. The accidental association
occurs because of a past history of poverty and deprivation, one that continues
into the present: young men with dark skin are not more likely to commit crime
because of the darkness of the skin or because the alleles that code for
proteins that increase melanin concentrations in the skin have some
psychological side effect, but because they are poor, undereducated, given
fewer opportunities, and so on. Behind these conditions, of course, we can
trace a past history of discrimination. So, at the root of the causal story are
past practices of identifying some people by the superficial characteristics,
viewing them as belonging to a special race, and, in consequence, cramping and
confining their aspirations and their lives. Crude essentialist notions of
race, often committed to prejudiced speculations about the "biological
bases" of various cognitive and behavioral traits, have played crucial
roles in these practices. Application of the notion of race is thus ultimately
responsible for the correlations adduced to "defend" the current
practices of stereotyping; the old errors have unjustly generated conditions that
now differentially affect people with different phenotypes, and racial
stereotyping is likely to maintain the difference, enabling future generations
of stereotypers to mount the same defense.
To abandon the recording of data in terms of racial categories would undermine
an ability to support stereotyping by appeal to evidence of correlations, but
it would probably not terminate the beliefs that prompt the application of
stereotypes. Folk generalizations are likely to live on, and even to be
reinforced by resentment of the decision not to collect data couched in racial
categories. The eliminativist thought that the damage done by current
employment of the concept of race can be undone by jettisoning the concept is
surely too simple. Conceptual reform is no substitute for the serious work of
ameliorating social conditions, and it is an empirical issue how much good
conceptual reform alone can do.
Moreover, we may look at the harms and injustices caused by past use of
racial concepts somewhat differently, inquiring whether retention of some,
appropriately sanitized, notion of race is needed to correct them. Might
sociological research not require a concept of race to identify the damage that
has been done by various forms of racial discrimination? Perhaps repairing that
damage may require policies of compensation, explicitly crafted in racial
categories: think of programs of affirmative action. Even more importantly, the
political struggle for remedying the injustices of the past may turn on
developing racial concepts that foster forms of solidarity among those who now
suffer from the effects of those injustices, as well as from the racism that is
still perpetrated. Tommie Shelby has argued eloquently for redeploying a notion
of race in these ways.31
Although the harm that accrues from the use of racial stereotypes surely
outweighs the usefulness of deploying the notion of race to explore issues
about race and ethnicity, not to mention the value of the concept of human race
in biological inquiries, the pragmatic evaluation of the concept turns on a
host of intricate questions for which it is hard to assemble empirical
evidence.
In any event, however, scientific work in the past few years has added
further complications.
VII
Although there are no distinctive alleles found in the relatively inbred
lineages we might mark out as races, there is significant variation in the
frequencies with which alleles occur in different human groups.32 It is well
known, for example, that the allele for Tay-Sachs occurs with greatest frequency
among Ashkenazi Jews (as well as in some French Canadian populations), and that
the mutations associated with cystic fibrosis are most common among people
whose ancestors hail from northwestern Europe. Recently, however, it has become
evident that the alleles that affect receptivity to bone marrow transplants are
distributed in ways that reflect some traditional racial divisions; in
particular, because of the variance in African American populations, it is
important not only to use a racial category in classifying potential donors but
also to appeal to people, identified by race, to donate. For those involved in
trying to help people who urgently need a bone marrow transplant, the
eliminativist proposal appears dangerously misguided. As Hacking rightly notes,
they view the continued employment of racial categories as a matter of life and
death.33 This is a striking instance of what we can expect to be a general
phenomenon, one likely to become ever more evident. Because of the geographical
isolation of some populations for long stretches of our human past, there are
differences in the frequencies with which different alleles occur within those
populations. As genomic studies reveal the variations in DNA sequences, and in
the frequencies with which particular sequences occur in different relatively
isolated populations, and as the medical significance of certain variants
becomes known, it is to be expected that differential diagnosis can be
facilitated by data on the rates at which particular sequences are found in
different races. In many instances, the statistical information might be
superseded by identifying the patient’s sequences at the pertinent loci, but
when treatment is needed immediately, or when the recommended approach depends
on information about others (as in the example of transplants), the
partitioning of the statistics according to race may be crucial.
In fact, there is an important difference between the issues that arise in
tailoring prescriptions to patients who have different genotypes and recruiting
donors for transplant programs. Suppose a doctor must prescribe for a patient.
Assume it is already known that the disease for which relief is sought is
associated with two different genotypes, one that is very common in one racial
group (a lineage that has been relatively isolated for a significant chunk of
human history) and another that is very common in a different racial group.
There are two treatments, one good for cases that are associated with the first
genotype and the other good for cases associated with the second genotype.
Initially, knowing the person’s race would seem valuable in deciding which
treatment to prescribe. Yet a moment’s reflection reveals a better approach:
for the patient is at hand and (insurers permitting) can be tested to determine
which genotype is present. Prescription can go better by moving beyond the
racial classification to finer-grained sorting by genotypes.
In recruiting transplant donors, however, the people an agency wishes to
attract are not at hand. Instead, one must appeal to markers that raise the
probability of finding matches for members of particular groups, markers that
are available to the intended audience. So, registry websites contain phrases
like the following:
Because tissue type is inherited, patients are most likely to match someone
of their same race and ethnicity. There is a special need to recruit more
donors who identify themselves as: Black or African American, American Indian
or Alaskan Native, Asian, Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander, Hispanic or
Latino.34
We are currently trying to recruit more African, African Caribbean and
Mixed Race potential donors in our efforts to offer patients the CHANCE OF
LIFE.35
Because African, African American, and African Caribbean populations are
genetically diverse for the pertinent loci, the chances of finding a match are
smaller than those for many other groups. This intensifies the need to recruit
a large number of potential donors. If everyone had been tested, and knew and
remembered his or her genotype at those loci, then the appeal could be couched
in terms of requests for those with particular allelic combinations to
volunteer. But it is utterly unrealistic to hope that we can replace
self-identification by race with anything like that. From a practical point of
view, the use of the racial category is necessary.
Moreover, recruitment by race may have a special force. When the racial
groups involved have a history of marginalization (or worse), members of those
groups may see themselves as joining together to tackle a problem that arises
from their genealogical relationship. Here, in a medical context, racial
solidarity may play a valuable role.36
I have starkly distinguished recruitment of donors from prescription of
medicines by taking advantage of convenient idealization: I assumed that the
causes of differential effectiveness were genetic, and that these were already
known. In many instances, however, doctors are aware of an effect that
correlates with racial classifications, but are ignorant of the causes. They
see the decision to prescribe differently for members of different races, where
races here are demarcated in everyday ways and are available to patients in
their own self-identification, as an interim measure, valuable in a condition
of imperfect information. Perhaps at some future time the causal factors
responsible for differential reactions to alternative drugs will be understood,
perhaps they will be genetic, and the physician’s decision can be taken in the
more fine-grained way I imagined. In arriving at that knowledge, however,
epidemiological data will be required, and the crude correlation may prove
helpful in arriving at the causal explanation. So the use of racial categories
here is not just a stopgap measure to treat patients, but part of an
investigative strategy for doing better.
Recent debates about "race-based medicine" (see, for example, the
BiDil(R) controversy) bring out two further complications. First, skeptics
about the role of race in medicine argue that the racial classifications that
appear in the alleged correlations are unlikely to be good indicators of
genetic differences. Their caution is justifiable, given that the racial groups
across which differential responses are supposed to occur"African Americans"
and "Whites"-are unlikely to accord very closely with clusters
demarcated by genetic analysis; these are just the sorts of cases in which
social criteria are likely to distort class membership and prevent
self-identified ancestry from serving as a good proxy for genetically
distinctive populations. So, although critics may concede the point that
relying on a crude correlation is the best available strategy for treating
patients in the here and now, they are skeptical of the value of racial
categories as vehicles for refining our ignorance about the causal factors
responsible.
The second complication arises as a response to this line of criticism. It
is quite possible that environmental differences may affect aspects of the
human phenotype that determine the efficacy of a drug, and that those
environmental differences may themselves be caused by the social practice of
assigning people to different races. It is very clear that African Americans
(the people inclined to designate themselves in this way) are markedly less
well served by U.S.
"Race-based medicine," conceived as the reiteration of the
familiar theme that different races have different alleles and thus different
propensities for disease, is rightly criticized. Understood differently, it may
involve an appreciation of the ways in which social discrimination acts through
the physical environment to diminish health. More than a temporary measure, a
way of coping with sick people in a situation of relative ignorance, it can be
viewed as a commitment to understanding the causes of differential morbidity
and mortality, and even as a method of creating trust among people who have
been neglected by and who have become alienated from the institutions of U.S.
medicine, a tacit promise that, at last, their plight is being taken
seriously.37
VIII
Let us take stock. In rejecting a realist approach to natural kinds, I have
suggested that the legitimacy of notions of race has to depend upon the
suitability of those notions to our purposes. At first sight, the damage that
racial concepts have caused, and continue to cause, makes it look as though we
come to eliminativism by a nonstandard route. I have been trying to suggest,
however, that matters are far more complicated than they initially appear. Not
only are there uses that pull in different directions, but there are also
serious, unresolved empirical issues, I believe, about what conceptual reform
might accomplish.
How, then, to go on from here? My answer is in the spirit of the pragmatism
I have been espousing, and also of the plea for a more democratic science that
I have tried to defend in recent years.38 The phrase "the suitability of
the notion of race to our purposes" is radically incomplete as a
characterization of any test to which racial concepts might be subjected. For,
although one can pick particular contexts and uses as they seem salient-as I
have done by pointing to questions about human migrations, about race and
ethnicity, about racial stereotypes, and about medical uses of racial
categories-these are a poor substitute for a systematic survey of the variety
of uses to which racial concepts might be put, an investigation of their
effects, and an exploration of what might be achieved by eliminating the
concepts. There is much here that is unknown, unknown not simply to academic
philosophers but to anyone. A responsible verdict on the notion of race must
await the elaboration of information about all the uses, their consequences,
and the prospects of doing better without racial categories. Although that is
necessary, it is hardly sufficient. For the fact that notions of race have
surfaced both in scientific inquiry and in socially consequential debates means
that the continued viability of these notions should not be decided by any
group of academic researchers. As so often, the glib first-person plural,
"our purposes," disguises the heterogeneity of perspectives that different
groups of people might bring, even when presented with the ideal elaboration of
information. If there are any groups whose voices should be heard in rendering
the verdict the pragmatic test demands, then they should surely be those who
have suffered most from the past employment of the categories. This strikes me
as a clear case in which the declaration of independence of scientific inquiry
rings hollow, an exemplar of the need for that involvement of the judgments of
informed outsiders for which I have argued elsewhere. ‘Race’ is a viable
concept just in case it would be hailed as such by a set of ideal deliberators,
inclusive with respect to variant human perspectives, fully informed by the
systematic elaboration I have seen as a necessary part of the pragmatic test,
and mutually engaged. At present, we can only speculate about how that
discussion would come out.
Are races natural kinds? I believe not, because I am dubious of the notion
of natural kind. There are biological phenomena that can be connected with
infraspecific distinctions biologists find it useful to make in nonhuman cases,
and, more to the point, that are valuable for research on human historical
geography. That does not clinch the case for making infraspecific divisions
within our own species. There is a genuine issue about whether the category of
race is worth retaining. I hope to have said enough to show that settling that
issue is harder than it might appear, that there are considerations pulling in
different directions. Beyond that, I have tried to argue that the pragmatic
test of racial concepts will depend upon systematic explorations, and the
amassing of information nobody yet has, and, most importantly, that it should
involve people who have usually been left out of the discussion.
An earlier version of this
article was prepared for a symposium at the Eastern Division of the American
Philosophical Association in December 2005. I am grateful to my co-symposiasts,
Anthony Appiah and Tommie Shelby, for their exceptionally thoughtful
presentations, to Macalester Bell for some insightful advance suggestions, and
to members of the audience for their questions and comments. A later version
was presented at a conference on "Race in the Age of Genomic
Medicine," brilliantly conceived and organized by Koffi Maglo, at the
University of Cincinnati, where I had the opportunity to learn from scholars in
a variety of fields. Although all the speakers at that conference have
influenced the final version, the greatest impact on my thinking came from
presentations by Marcus Feldman, Keith Ferdinand, and Charles Rotimi. I also
owe a large debt to Ian Hacking, both for his incisive writings about issues of
classification over many years, and for sharing with me some important
forthcoming work. Finally, I would like to thank the Editors of Philosophy
& Public Affairs, for suggestions that have helped me to improve this
article.
1. These have been well
presented by many anthropologists in recent decades; see, for example, F. B.
Livingstone, "On the Nonexistence of Human Races," in The Concept of
Race, ed. Ashley Montagu (New York: Free Press, 1962). Useful recent summaries
are provided by Stephen Molnar, Human Variation (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.:
Prentice-Hall, 1992); and by Jared Diamond, "Race without Color,"
Discover 15 (1994): 82-89. Appiah offers lucid philosophical presentation in
his contribution to Anthony Appiah and Amy Gutmann, Color Conscious (Princeton,
N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1997).
2. Ian Hacking, "Why
Race Still Matters," Daedalus 134 (2005): 102-16; J. Philippe Rushton,
Race, Evolution, and Behavior (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Press, 1995).
3. Hacking has made it
extremely clear that what philosophers call the "Kripke-Putnam"
theory of kinds comprises two related, but distinct, approaches (and explicitly
not a fully developed theory). See his forthcoming essay, "Putnam’s Theory
of Natural Kinds and Their Names Is Not the Same as Kripke’s," where he
points out how Putnam looks to underlying structures as sources of explanation
rather than as essences.
4. Their articulation of a
nonessentialist approach to species begins in two classic works of the
neo-Darwinian synthesis. See Theodosius Dobzhansky, Genetics and the Origin of
Species (New York: Columbia University Press, 1937; reprint 1982), especially
chap. X; and Ernst Mayr, Systematics and the Origin of Species (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1942; reprint Harvard University Press [Cambridge,
Mass.: 1999]), chap. II-V. Mayr reiterated his main arguments, and his defense
of the "biological Species concept," throughout his long career.
5. In Mayr’s classic
formulation, "Species are groups of actually or potentially interbreeding
natural populations, which are potentially isolated from other such
groups," Systematics and the Origin of Species, p. 120; it should be noted
that this is the abbreviated version of Mayr’s definition, even though it is
typically repeated as Mayr’s analysis.
6. See M. J. Littlejohn and
G. F. Watson, "Hybrid Zones and Homogamy in Australian Frogs," Annual
Review of Ecology and Systematics 16 (1985): 85-112; and N. H. Barton and G. H.
Hewitt, "Analysis of Hybrid Zones," Annual Review of Ecology and
Systematics 16 (1985): 113-48.
7. The term is introduced in
Theodosius Dobzhansky and Boris Spassky, "Drosophila paulistorum, a
cluster of species in statu nascendi," Proceedings of the National Academy
of Sciences 45 (1959): 419-28. It is taken up in Mayr, Animal Species and
Evolution (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1963), and in Theodosius
Dobzhansky, Genetics of the Evolutionary Process (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1970); but it is effectively present in the discussions of notions of
race from Genetics and the Origin of Species and Systematics and the Origin of
Species on.
8. Robin Andreasen, "A
New Perspective on the Race Debate," The British Journal for the
Philosophy of Science 49 (1998): 199-225.
9. Michael Hardimon,
"The Ordinary Concept of Race," Journal of Philosophy 100 (2003):
437-55.
10. It is worth emphasizing
that there is nothing paradoxical here. We can apply either label depending on
how deeply we intend to probe the causal history of our practices of racial
classification.
11. See Philip Kitcher, The
Advancement of Science (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), chap. 4. In a
forthcoming essay, "Plato’s loints," Laura Franklin-Hall subjects
Plato’s metaphor to devastating scrutiny.
12. See Philip Kitcher,
Science, Truth, and Democracy (New York : Oxford University
13. The obvious link is to
his Ways of Worldmaking (Indianapolis, Ind.: Hackett, 1978). But the same
general view is also present much earlier in the dependence of kinds on
practices of projection that appears in Nelson Goodman, Fact, Fiction, and
Forecast (Indianapolis, Ind.: Bobbs-Merrill, 1956).
14. See William James,
Pragmatism, Lecture VII; John Dewey, The Quest for Certainty, chap. 5,
Experience and Nature, chaps. 1-2.
15. John Dupre,
"Natural Kinds and Biological Taxa," Philosophical Review 90 (1981):
66-90, and The Disorder of Things (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,
1993); Philip Kitcher, "Species," Philosophy of Science 51 (1984):
308-33.
16. Some critics of my
proposals about species came close to seeing this point; see, for example, P.
Kyle Stanford, "For Pluralism and Against Realism about Species,"
Philosophy of Science 62 (1995): 70-91.
17. Concerns along these
lines were offered independently by Anthony Appiah, Amy Gutmann, and Michele
Moody-Adams.
18. See Systematics and the
Origin of Species, p. 122, for recognition of the problem with asexuality; for
a succinct statement of Mayr’s later attempts to deal with it, see The Growth
of Biological Thought (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1982), pp.
283-84.
19. For penetrating
discussion of the taxonomic issues that arise with respect to bacteria, see
Laura Franklin-Hall, "Bacteria, Sex, and Systematics," forthcoming in
Philosophy of Science.
20. The landmark article is
Noah Rosenberg et al., "Genetic Structure of Human Populations,"
Science 298 (2002): 2381-85. Effectively, this article is the culmination of
the "respectable" biological theorizing about infraspecific-"racial"-divisions
that proceeds from the work of Dobzhansky and Mayr to the contemporary
achievements of L. L. Cavalli-Sforza and Marcus Feldman. Feldman is in fact the
last-named author of the Rosenberg et al. study.
21. Interestingly, as the
authors point out, the sixth population is a relatively isolated group from Pakistan
23. As it did, almost
instantly. The New York Times rightly saw this as extremely important
scientific work, and, ignoring the cautious language of the article, reported
it as a regrounding of the concept of race.
24. Rosenberg et al.,
"Genetic Structure of Human Populations."
25 I am indebted to an
Editor of Philosophy & Public Affairs, who suggested that I should confront
directly the issues raised in the next few paragraphs.
26 This possibility is
explored in Diirrenmatt’s play Die Physiker. I have elaborated on the moral in
chapter 8 of Science, Truth, and Democracy.
27 See Science, Truth, and
Democracy, chap. 8, and also "An Argument about Free Inquiry," Nous
31 (1997): 279-306.
28 This also means that we
only rarely have to confront the obviously difficult issues about how to weigh
intellectual values (greater understanding of some aspect of nature) against
practical concerns.
29 In the New York Times
article that rightly celebrated the beautiful research, the term ‘cluster’
immediately gave way to ‘race.’ (It is unclear whether the substitution
resulted from a connection that might appear natural to well-meaning people, or
whether it should be charged to culpable carelessness.) I heartily sympathize
with the tactic pursued by Rosenberg, Feldman, and their colleagues, but any
effective use of this tactic will have to come to terms with the ways in which
social interests and prejudices distort the transmission of knowledge. I
discuss related issues in "Knowledge and Democracy," Social Research
(2006). It is also worth noting that Mobius, the central figure of Durrenmatt’s
Die Physiker, also tries an insulating strategy-and that he fails.
30. I discuss issues of this
sort at greater length in sections VI and VII of my essay "Race,
Ethnicity, Biology, Culture," in Racism, ed. Leonard Harris (Amherst,
N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1999), pp. 87-117; reprinted as chap. 11 of Philip
Kitcher, In Mendel’s Mirror (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003).
31. Tommie Shelby, We Who
Are Dark (Cambridge , Mass. :
Harvard University Shelby
32. To acknowledge this is
not to embrace essentialism. I note this because discussions with philosophers
who have made outstanding contributions to our understanding of racial concepts
have convinced me that there are serious misunderstandings of any proposals
that recognize this kind of genetic variation-in some instances, I have even
found an inability to hear the words that present recent genomic findings. For those
who have difficulty, Hacking’s lucid explanation in "Why Race Still
Matters" ought to be required reading.
33. Ian Hacking, "Why
Race Still Matters," Daedalus (2005): 102- 16, at p. 108.
34.
http://www.katiasolomonfoundation.org/ CordandMarrowDonation.html. I conjecture
that the appeal statement uses both terms ‘race’ and ‘ethnicity’ not because of
any confusion about the relation of the cultural concept of ethnicity to
genotypes, but because the foundation simply wants to maximize the number of
responses.
35.
http://www.aclt.org/details/d.aspx/16. Capitals in original.
36. Here, evidently, I echo
the arguments that Shelby
37. This point parallels Shelby
38. Philip Kitcher, Science,
Truth, and Democracy, also "What Kinds of Science Should Be Done?" in
Living with the Genie, ed. Alan Lightman, Dan Sarewitz, and Christina Dresser
(Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 2003), pp. 201-24.
PHILIP KITCHER is John Dewey
Professor of Philosophy at Columbia
University Darwin
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