The UNESCO Statements on Race of the early 1950s are understood to have marked a consensus amongst natural scientists and social scientists that ‘race’ is a social construct. Human biological diversity was shown to be predominantly clinal, or gradual, not discreet, and clustered, as racial naturalism implied. From the seventies social constructionists added that the vast majority of human genetic diversity resides within any given racialised group. While social constructionism about race became the majority consensus view on the topic, social (...) constructionism has always had its critics. Sesardic (2010) has compiled these criticisms into one of the strongest defences of racial naturalism in recent times. In this paper I argue that Sesardic equivocates between two versions of racial naturalism: a weak version and a strong version. As I shall argue, the strong version is not supported by the relevant science. The weak version, on the other hand, does not contrast properly with what social constructionists think about ‘race’. By leaning on this weak view Sesardic’s racial naturalism intermittently gains an appearance of plausibility, but this view is too weak to revive racial naturalism. As Sesardic demonstrates, there are new arguments for racial naturalism post-Human Genome Diversity Project. The positive message behind my critique is how to be a social constructionist about race in the post-genomic era. (shrink)

A. W. F. Edwards famously named “Lewontin’s fallacy” after Richard Lewontin, the geneticist who showed that most human genetic diversity can be found within any given racialized group. “Lewontin’s fallacy” is the assumption that uncorrelated genetic data would be sufficient to classify genotypes into conventional “racial” groups. In this chapter, I argue that Lewontin does not commit the fallacy named after him, and that it is not a genuine fallacy. Furthermore, I argue that when Edwards assumes that stable classification is (...) all it takes to vindicate racial naturalism, he commits a fallacy of his own: Edwards’ fallacy. The ability to create a classificatory system, and then reliably sort things within that system, is not enough to make that system scientifically respectable. I show that Edwards’ fallacy is rife in debates about the existence of human biological races. (shrink)

Racial disparities in health outcomes have recently become a flashpoint in the debate about the value of race as a biological concept. What role, if any, race has in the etiology of disease is a philosophically and scientifically contested topic. In this article, I expand on the insights of the new mechanistic philosophy of science to defend a mechanism discovery approach to investigating epidemiological racial disparities. The mechanism discovery approach has explanatory virtues lacking in the populational approach typically employed in (...) the study of race and biomedicine. The explanatory constraints that form an integral part of the new mechanistic approach enable mechanism discovery to avoid the epistemic and normative shortcomings of the populational approach. The methodology of mechanism discovery can fruitfully be extended to the treatment and reversal of epidemiological racial disparities. (shrink)

Noah Rosenberg et al.'s 2002 article “Genetic Structure of Human Populations” reported that multivariate genomic analysis of a large cell line panel yielded reproducible groupings (clusters) suggestive of individuals' geographical origins. The paper has been repeatedly cited as evidence that traditional notions of race have a biological basis, a claim its authors do not make. Critics of this misinterpretation have often suggested that it follows from interpreters' personal biases skewing the reception of an objective piece of scientific writing. I contend, (...) however, that the article itself to some degree facilitates this misrepresentation. I analyze in detail several verbal and visual features of the original article that may predispose aspects of its racial interpretation; and, tracing the arguments of one philosopher and one popular science writer, I show how these features are absorbed, transformed into arguments for a biological basis of race, and re-attributed to the original. The essay demonstrates how even slight ambiguities can enable the misappropriation of scientific writing, unintentionally undermining the authors' stated circumspection on the relationship between cluster and race. (shrink)

U svojoj inačici filozofije biologije Neven Sesardić izvodi dalekosežne moralne i političke posljedice određenih genetičkih istraživanja. On pretpostavlja da su uočene razlike u kvocijentu inteligencije između crnih i bijelih studenata urođene i da one ne mogu biti objašnjene niti promijenjene bilo kakvim utjecajem iz okoliša. Na toj osnovi on razvija teoriju o genetski određenoj inferiornosti crne rase. Teorija tvrdi da su svi podaci o društvenim i ekonomskim nedostatcima crne rase učinak njihovog lošeg biološkog nasljeđa, a ne društvene segregacije ili rasne (...) diskriminacije. Prema tome, bilo koja politika usmjerena na smanjivanje ili eliminiranje društvenih i ekonomskih razlika između siromašnih i bogatih ljudi, kao što je politika pozitivne diskriminacije, osuđena je na propast. U ovom se članku suprotstavljam Sesardićevu filozofskom tumačenju genetike i njegovim izvodima koji se tiču politike i društva. Pokazujem da mnogi relevantni genetičari ne prihvaćaju takvo filozofsko tumačenje i njegove političke posljedice. Suprotno Sesardićevoj tvrdnji da su svi environmentalisti zaraženi ljevičarskom političkom ideologijom, pokazujem da njih njihova znanstvena istraživanja, a ne apriorna politička uvjerenja, navode na odbacivanje jednostranih hereditarističkih filozofskih tumačenja i njihove političke primjene. Posebno sam usmjeren na povijest ropstva u Americi i na aktualne izvještaje o rasnoj diskriminaciji kao na važne elemente društvenog okoliša koji ne mogu biti zanijekani u bilo kojem ozbiljnom pokušaju objašnjavanja klasnih i rasnih odnosa u suvremenoj Americi. (shrink)