What the Science of Race Doesn't Show

As a part of my research on science and religion in America over the past two years, which resulted in my book coming out next month, I came to take in the recalcitrant history of the science of race.

And, of course, one all-too-common result has been--and still is--racism, which represents another indelible feature of our country and which some have called "America's original sin."

Maybe you know something about this topic already, but I was woefully underprepared. If you'd like a brief intro, here are three articles from the BioLogos website that offer a solid overview of the topic (and are brief enough that you don't have to do copious reading). 

Here are the links to the mini bibliography:

1. Dave Unander, "Race: A Brief History of its Origin, Failure and Alternative" 
2. Deborah Haarsma, "One Human Family" 
3. Brad Kramer, "Science, Race, and the Bible: Coming to Terms with a Messy History"
4. In addition to these thoughtful pieces that offer an overview, here's a scholarly article: Alan Templeton's “Biological Races in Humans” in the 2013 Studies in the History and Philosophy of Biology and Biomedical Sciences, 44 (2013): 262–71

The bottom line (or at least, one critical takeaway) from this research is summarized well by Deborah Haarsma:

No genetic basis for race” is referring to the way we define “race” in our culture. When the census asks you to identify as “white”, “black”, “asian”, etc., those are cultural categories, not scientific categories. While some aspects of these cultural categories (e.g. skin color) are genetic traits, those traits are a small part of all the genes that differ between any two individuals. Yes, there is a genetic basis for the many local ancestry groups. But as geneticist Alan Templeton points out, “If every genetically distinguishable population were elevated to the status of race, then most species would have hundreds to tens of thousands of races.” BioLogos President Deborah Haarsma

I'd be interested to hear your comments.

P.S. While I'm at it, I'll link one more article, this by Karen Norrgard, "Human Testing, the Eugenics Movement, and IRBs."