On the other hand, Watson’s foolish statement tells us a lot about the danger of mixing racial notions with science. While he didn’t use the term “race,” it was implied nevertheless when he characterized all Africans as less intelligent than everyone else. He didn’t mean it that way, of course, but that’s the way it sounded and that’s how it’s been interpreted.

The underlying problem is the insistence on tying intelligence to notions of racial identity — and the problem underlying that is exactly what we’ve been debating: the status of race as a scientific principle.

A short editorial in this week’s Nature offers the perspective that while “…the damage has been done, lending succour and comfort to racists around the globe,” the cancellation of speaking engagements discourages scientific inquiry: “Scientists with controversial arguments need to be able to withstand the heat, defending or retracting statements as the evidence indicates is required.” Moreover, I would say, they need to take the opportunity to present their perspective in what may otherwise be distorted by the media. A prospectus on the discussion of race and human variation is offered: “There will be important debates in the future as we gain a fuller understanding of the influence of genetics on human attributes and behaviour.” Pointing to the power that Watson may have in society at large, it ends “Crass comments by Nobel laureates undermine our very ability to debate such issues, and thus damage science itself.”

You write: “it boils down to what the question is and its scope.”

Here I agree completely. And there are, indeed, many contexts in which the term “race” is appropriate.

You continue: “Furthermore, I don’t want to “let go” (as you say) of its discussion because avoiding it only encourages ignorance, promoting misunderstandings of what is otherwise conflated by ideology. Understanding its different definitions, its utility—or lack thereof, and its limitations translates into the social dimensions of its use.”

Here I agree as well, though with a word of caution. Too many people in the social sciences, cultural studies, etc. believe that because something has been deconstructed as a “social construct” it has thereby been debunked and dismissed and should be ignored. Deconstruction is NOT the same as demystification, though you’d get that impression from much that’s been written in cultural studies. Race is a social construct for sure, but it is a very powerful social construct and as such has taken its place as part of the reality in which we, as social beings, live. It can function as a destructive stereotype, but can also be meaningful when implementing positive programs such as affirmative action. The standard for determination of “race” in affirmative action can never be precise, because racial identity can never be precisely defined. But the PERCEPTION that one is African-American is — and should be — enough to get you into such a program. Because it is exactly those perceptions that have made programs such as affirmative action necessary.

So yes we can’t do without the notion of “race” and must certainly continue to use it in certain contexts. At the same time we have an obligation as “experts” to remind the public, whenever we can, that race IS indeed a social construct, NOT a scientific principle.

“To ask for a scientific definition is to ask for a tool (that has certain standards) by which to model the observed variation in any given species.” Not bad — as a definition of scientific definition. Is that also your definition of race? We already have tools of that sort, but none of them is being called “race” by any of the many scientists actually working on that problem (as opposed to some speculating about it). What does “race” add that isn’t already in the toolbox?

“But ideology is part of our extended phenotype and another level of variation we can consider. It really boils down to what our question is: what kind of variation we want to study.” See my previous post. I have no problem with “racial science” as long as it includes those ideological (psychological, ethnological, etc.) aspects that make ”race” meaninfgul — as a social construct.

“Race as a taxonomic tool models empirical observations.” Please give me an example of how “race” is being or can be used as a taxonomic tool. I’ve done a lot of reading in the literature of population and anthropological genetics and have never encountered that term as a serious part of anyone’s research. As I understand it the taxonomy of human variation is now being modeled by the use of phylogentic trees. In almost all cases, these trees map haplotype and haplogroup distributions, which are then interpreted to apply to more or less specifially defined populations. The populations are defined geographically or in terms of tribal or other local groupings, NOT in terms of race. So where is there room for race to come into this picture? Would it make you feel better if we eliminated the term haplogroup and called it “race”? Such a usage wouldn’t resemble any current usage of the term “race,” since only a very few haplogroups are population specific.

Or are you talking about morphological classifications? That too is being done and again I see the word “race” used only as a convenience, never as a scientific term.

If the notion of “race” is so important to you that you simply can’t do without it, I have to wonder why that is and maybe you need to ask yourself that question.

I know that I’ve been perceived in radically different ways by different people. The teenage son of friends of mine, who looked up to me a as a kind of mentor, saw me as resembling Sean Connery. When I told my girlfriend about that, she thought it was ridiculous. She sees me as Garfield. When I’ve let my beard grow and my pot belly develop, I’ve been mistaken for Santa Claus. Comparing photos of myself, there are some I really like (because, hey, I DO resemble Sean Connery in some of those) and some I hate because they make me look like a sad and decrepit old man.

Also it’s important to understand the high degree of genetic variation in some of our “oldest” populations, not just the more recent, “racially mixed” ones. That’s how we can tell which are oldest, by the way.

Victor, I used to have a friend (dead just now) who had a Hawaiian father and Jewish mother (from London). Spoke with a London accent but looked Polynesian. Not exactly practicing Jew but thought of himself as such. Interesting combination.

Here in New Zealand people of European ancestry are usually refered to by the Maori expression, “Pakeha”. Worked fine until we had a lot of people from East Asia come in. Can we refer to them as Pakeha? Generally agreed we can’t. As Hugo suggests most people have become so mixed classifying them into a race is irrelevant. However it’s still usually possible to guess the region where the majority of someone’s ancestors came from.

Race as an IDEA can mean a lot of things. Race as a TAXONOMIC UNIT is a descriptive model based on empirical observations. The former is constantly changing and the latter, as a scientific tool, has given parameters and is modified as per the scientific method.

To ask for a meaningful definition is asking for the IDEA of race. To ask for a scientific definition is to ask for a tool (that has certain standards) by which to model the observed variation in any given species. I don’t think we should avoid toolkits and models that can be useful, even in the case of describing human variation. However, we must be cautious in understanding the extent to which the model is useful. On the one hand, it can lead to bad policy (or medicine, or otherwise) if the information is poorly understood or distorted, but, on the other hand, it can be useful and have practical applications. Product design is an example of the latter, Nike’s recent “Air Native” shoe probably being the more recent, which was designed for Native Americans (http://www.nike.com/nikebiz/nikebiz.jhtml?page=2).

Your point, Victor, about the idea of race having a function is what I mean about ideology being part of the extended phenotype. Understanding the variation here is a tremendous challenge. If we use this to make racial categories, then we face an impasse because we don’t yet have a good toolkit for quantifying and understanding ideas, beliefs, and values or behaviors and traditions. Though no doubt gains are being made, I think this area is particularly important in the modern context because it can (and has) have real effects on our social lives (if at various points our scientific understanding of human morphological variation was used in distortion to carry a political agenda, so can our understanding of human ideological/behavioral variation be used to support discrimination and intolerance). Moreover, the extended phenotype can be far more varied within a population than morphogenetic variation.

Remembering this original post, Cavalli-Sforza has moved from understanding morphological variation to moreover understanding genetic and linguistic variation of indigenous populations. The relationships and correlations are due to natural history and not chance or ideology. But ideology is part of our extended phenotype and another level of variation we can consider. It really boils down to what our question is: what kind of variation we want to study.

To sum and reiterate: As TerryT has alluded, it is ill-intended ideology and the maintenance of power structures that is the problem with the idea of race. Race as a taxonomic tool models empirical observations.

To be direct Victor, and with all due respect, I wouldn’t have a problem attempting to designate you to a certain racial category (as a taxonomic unit), but with the understanding of the limitations of my method and the limitations of the information used. Just as I wouldn’t say my racial category is Mexican or Mexican-American, I would not say your racial category is Jewish or Jewish-American. These are nationalities and ethnicities. But our cases are particular, mine as a case of admixture and yours as a case of displacement. We can, in the older paradigm, still attempt to assign ourselves to a certain racial category and this, as I pointed above, can have practical applications. But our cases are increasingly not so particular, given the rapid movement of people and resources.

But isn’t that what race is all about, stereotypes? As you write, “The IDEA(s) of race has to be contextualized in a social, political, economic, and intellectual context across time and space;” But isn’t that the same as identifying it as a social construct? Don’t get me wrong, we have to take social constructs seriously because they FUNCTION in our society as realities, whether or not they are scientifically meaningful.

I have another question, by the way: can anyone actually provide us with a definition of the term “race” that is meaningful to THEM?

Victor: Let’s be clear about the empirical observations of human variation and the ideological associations we make. The IDEA(s) of race has to be contextualized in a social, political, economic, and intellectual context across time and space; no doubt these ideas can lead to hostility and bad policy. But observable variations are just that (and may change in scope because science is self-correcting as new methods and tools develop).

I’m glad you asked the direct question of what racial categories we would place ourselves in. It’s something that most of us have probably thought about when checking off the “race/ethnicity” box for paperwork. Once I had a job application that had “Race” and a fill-in-the-blank space. I was intrigued and overjoyed by the possibilities. I could write a whole essay, I thought, but I needed to be concise. “Should I put Homo sapiens [sapiens] mexicanus?,” I thought. Given that it was a retail position, I knew the employer probably wouldn’t appreciate it. But beyond that, I was also thinking in terms of nationality, and that’s not always informative for understanding human variation, especially in the western hemisphere. Not to mention I had recently been naturalized to also have citizenship in the United States. “Aha! Homo sapiens [sapiens] norteamericanus,” I thought, but “no, that’s more my ethnicity,” given my social, political, and economic experience in North America. During Linnaeus’ time, this probably would be considered to mean Native American anyway. So what’s it going to be?

For the job application, I put “Mexican-American” as per standard American census boxes (and I was aware that it represented nationality and ethnicity more than race). But really, I’d say my racial category is more like Euro – Amerindian/Native American. Homo sapiens [sapiens] euroamericanus, I suppose. But at a finer scale (and this is key: scale is important in how we “lump” individuals in groups/populations), that would not cut it either. Because I’m Mexican by birth and with generations of Mexican relatives as far as I can trace back, I’m a product of admixture by geographically disparate populations. I say Euro-Amerindian because that’s what I know for certain, but Mexicans can very well be Euro-Afri-Amerindian or virtually any combination given the history and emigration to the country from many parts of the world. That makes things more complicated but more interesting as well.

I asked the question about dropping the notion of race not to suggest a way to avoid the sociopolitical connotations but because so far in our remarks, we haven’t really considered phenotype more broadly, something that scholars like Cavalli-Sforza do. That is for me personally and intellectually important in discussions of race and human variation more broadly. On the biological side, we don’t have a comprehensive understanding of admixture dynamics. On the other side is our extended phenotype (in Dawkin’s terms). Given the dynamic movement of people in recent history (and indeed, our species is very young) AND the movement of resources, culture (ideas, beliefs, and values), and behaviors and traditions, our extended phenotype is not only harder to quantify but is also mutable across time and space for individuals and populations alike. Arguably the variation in our extended phenotype is much greater than our morphogenetic variation and the problem is we have even less tools and methods to understanding it.