The following excerpt is from the Princeton Alumni Weekly, October 25, 2000. "Of Genetics, race, and evolution: What the director of Princeton's new institute for genomics has to say". http://www.princeton.edu/~paw/features/features_05.html
**************************************** Racial differences on the genetic level Another realization coming from the genome project might have a profound effect on social understanding. "From a scientific perspective," [Shirley M.]Tilghman said, "there is no such thing as race. You cannot scientifically distinguish a race of people genetically from a different race of people. Now you can find a gene that affects skin color, and you can show that this gene has one form in people of African descent and is different form of people, let's say , of Danish descent. But that's just one little change. That doesn't make them a race. If you look at all the other things in their DNA that determine all the ways in which we're the same, in fact the two DNAs are indistinguishable. So it seems that there is only one race: the human race. "There are variants," Tilghman said, "and the variants we pay more attention to are the variants that are visible to us. But in fact the variants that probably matter much more than whether your skin is black or your skin is white are variants that predispose you to breast cancer. And those occur in all populations; variants that predispose you to heart disease; variants that predispose you to Alzheimer's disease. And those do not track by race. So the important ones are not the visible ones." **************************************** The following is an excerpt from the Atlantic Monthly, April 2001, "The Genetic Archaeology of Race". http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2001/04/olson-p1.htm **************************************** There's a simple way of describing our genetic relatedness. Not only do all people have the same set of genes, but all groups of people also share the major variants of those genes. Geneticists have never found a genetic marker that is of one type in all the members of one large group and of a different type in all the members of another large group. That's why ethnically targeted biological weapons would never work. Every group overlaps genetically with every other. The extreme interpretation of this observation, now popular in academia, is that biological groups do not exist. That's obviously absurd. The ways in which typical Nigerians, Koreans, and Norwegians differ physically belie any claim that all human groups are somehow "socially constructed." But the development of morphological differences in a widely distributed species is a biological commonplace. Whenever the members of a group are more likely to mate inside the group than outside, the frequency of particular genetic markers within that group can become higher or lower. In most cases these changes are entirely random, as with the blood-type distributions that Cavalli-Sforza studied in Italian villages. But natural selection can also be a factor. To take the classic example, as modern human beings moved from equatorial regions into more-northern latitudes, dark skin was no longer needed to protect the body from the sun's ultraviolet rays, and light skin made it possible for the body to produce more vitamin D. The resultant lightening of skin color seems to have occurred at least three times during human history: when Africans moved north into the Middle East and then into Europe; when dark-skinned people living on the islands and mainland of Southeast Asia migrated into what is today China; and when people from southern India moved north into the Punjab (genetics research is demonstrating that migrations of European people into the Subcontinent have had much less biological significance than is commonly assumed). "What we see is the surface of the body, but the surface of the body is determined by climate," Cavalli-Sforza says. "Adaptations to climate have to be superficial, because those are the parts of the body that are exposed to the outside world." New Guinea highlanders and sub-Saharan Africans are about as different from each other genetically as any human beings on earth. Yet they have physical similarities because of where they live, including dark skin to protect against the rays of the sun. **************************************** -- Sue Frantz Highline Community College Psychology Des Moines, WA 206.878.3710 x3404 [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://flightline.highline.ctc.edu/sfrantz/ > -----Original Message----- > From: Rod Hetzel [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] > Sent: Friday, January 18, 2002 9:36 AM > To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences > Subject: two questions about race and culture > > > In class today we were talking about culture, ethnicity, race, and the > genetic theory of evolution. Two questions came up that I could use > some help with. > > 1. My students had a hard time understanding the following > statement in > our marriage and family textbook: "From a strictly scientific > perspective, then, so-called racial differences do not exist. Skin > color, for example, can be defined only on a continuum, just as the > colors black and white exist on a continuum, with gray in the > middle and > no clear-cut distinctions in between." I was able to help them > understand how cultural and ethnic identity are more useful and > informative concepts than race, but many students had a hard time > understanding how racial characteristics "do not exist." One of my > students, who is an honors biology major specializing in genetics, > stated that our marriage and family textbook contradicts what she has > learned in her genetics courses. Can anyone offer me some specific > suggestions for making these concepts more clear to my students? ... > Rod > ______________________________________________ > Roderick D. Hetzel, Ph.D. > Assistant Professor of Psychology > LeTourneau University > President-Elect, Division 51 > American Psychological Association --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
