Ranthropologist

Tag: race

  • Daily Reads: Religious Racism

    Daily Reads: Religious Racism

    I have become a huge fan of the writings of Arthur Chu, whom most people know as the guy who pissed people off with his winning strategies on Jeopardy! His articles are very well written and always thought provoking. In this contribution to Salon, Chu discusses how racism and religious intolerance are being conflated into extremely disturbing and sometimes violent acts of harassment towards those who are assumed to be associated with Islam – in particular, Sikhs. Chu correctly notes that many apologists for religious intolerance claim that it is not racist, since religions are not races (which, while technically true, does not provide a reasonable excuse for targeting people based on their religion). But the very harassment that targets Sikhs (or other people who appear exotic or foreign to many Americans) shows that people do associate religion with race – that is, a person who looks a certain way must be a Muslim, and therefore, a terrorist.  Chu’s overall point is that, while it is possible to rationally disagree with the tenets of Islam, it is not accurate to say that there is no racial/ethnic basis for people’s assumptions about who is Muslim; therefore, it is a dangerous perpetuation of racism to claim that disagreement with Islam has no racial basis or consequences. (For more on race and why it has no basis in biology, but is clearly very relevant culturally, read this post).

    I wrote about something similar in this post, and I still hold to what I said there: I think it is disingenuous to claim that people committing terrorism in the name of their religious beliefs are not true practitioners of that religion. A Muslim terrorist is a Muslim, even if the majority of Muslims disagree with the terrorist’s radical interpretation and the acts committed in support of it. But I also agree with Chu that we are wrong – so very wrong – to attack every individual who we perceive to be of that faith. Read the article. It’s important.

    Targeted for “looking Muslim”: The Dawkins/Harris worldview and a twisted new hypocrisy which feeds racism

  • Daily Reads: Color Blind

    Daily Reads: Color Blind

    This Daily Read relates directly to my last post about race, but focuses more on the social dimensions of racial categories and how people are perceived. Jenée Desmond-Harris of Vox reviews a study that shows that white people perceive lighter-skinned people of color to be more successful and intelligent than their darker-skinned peers. Even with everything else being equal – education, achievement, social class, etc. – darker-skinned people were still categorized as less intelligent and capable of success. This is exactly what I was talking about in my last post when I explained ascribed status. This is highly problematic for the way it categorizes people based on purely arbitrary physical characteristics. As the article says, “It’s reasonable to conclude that this type of thinking  — whether it’s conscious or the result of implicit bias — could taint decisions about everything from hiring and promotions, awards and internships, to mentorship and all of the other judgments that determine the trajectory of a person’s life.” I think it’s important to be aware of these unconscious biases so we can try to bring them into the realm of consciousness and hopefully be less likely to act on them.

    Study: lighter-skinned black and Hispanic people look smarter to white people

  • (R)anthropology Class: The Myth of Race

    (R)anthropology Class: The Myth of Race

    I have decided to start a new series that I am calling (R)anthropology Class. I draw on my anthropological training in so many different ways, and I know that this training is what has helped me view the world in a critical and objective way. Because I know that most people have never taken an anthropology class – or if they have, it was long ago – I have decided to focus some of my posts on some of the most basic, but important, anthropological concepts. These usually occur to me when I am in the midst of trying to make sense of some new idea or trying to explain my point of view to others. That was the case recently when I was trying to explain to someone why DNA ancestry tests can be extremely misleading for people who don’t know much, if anything, about population genetics. So with this inaugural (R)anthropology Class rant, I will sketch in the basics of why a commercial DNA ancestry test cannot tell you your race.

    There is no question that race is a real thing. All we have to do is look at the people around us to know that this is true: different skin colors, hair textures, facial characteristics, even height and body type show us that people are different from one another. Yet, from a genetic standpoint, race is not a real thing at all. Instead, what we call race is a cultural construct that reflects the human need to seek and identify patterns in our surroundings that help us to understand and categorize our world. Race, in other words, is cultural rather than biological.

    How can I say such a thing? All you have to do is look at someone to know what race they are – right? Dark skin = African. Epicanthic folds in the eyelids = Asian. Blue eyes = European.** And if a person happens to have parents of two different races, then that person will show a blend of different racial characteristics from his or her parents. Or if a person is descended from several different races, they will still show some traits that help you identify those ancestral races – or so we like to think. But ask any person who identifies as mixed race and you will find that their lives are full of mistaken assumptions about what their race is – and concomitantly full of different types of treatment depending on what people might unconsciously assume their race to be. Again, this is all entirely based on cultural categories, and is part of what anthropologists call ascribed status. An ascribed status is a status that a person can’t do anything to change – such as age, gender, or in this example, race. But people make mistakes in the statuses they ascribe to others all the time. When I teach my students about this in my lecture on race, I ask them if they have ever been mistaken for a race other than the one they assign to themselves. The hands of my students of color always, without fail, shoot into the air. And, sometimes, my students who look white raise their hands, too – and they surprise their classmates by identifying as having African-American, non-white Hispanic or Latino, Asian, or some other non-white racial ancestry.*** I have Filipino students tell me they are mistaken for Latino or Middle Eastern; I have Asian students describe how they are always ascribed to the Japanese or Chinese category when they are actually Korean or Vietnamese or Thai; I have students with roots in countries throughout South America tell me that nobody seems to know that there are countries other than Mexico south of the US border.

    Here’s the deal, biologically: humans are 99.999% genetically identical. That means that only one out of every 1000 DNA nucleotides is different between any two individual humans. But that tiny .001% difference is reflected in some very recent, visible physical differences between human populations. Human physical traits – called phenotypes – have evolved based on adaptation to specific geographic regions and the pressures of natural selection within those regions. So, natural selection results in phenotypic variation in traits like skin color. Skin color has evolved in response to sun exposure and vitamin D metabolism – the further north a population lives, the less sun they get, which means the less essential vitamin D they are able to metabolize. So by virtue of natural selection, lighter skin color that allows for more efficient vitamin D absorption has evolved in human populations that live in low-sunlight areas, whereas the melanin that causes darker skin has remained abundant in populations closer to the equator. Hence, populations in equatorial Africa are very dark, whereas populations in far northern Europe are very light. This same sort of natural selection has operated on other genes as well, resulting in a wide variety of phenotypes throughout the world. And naturally, those phenotypes remain clustered within the populations where they evolved, which makes it simple for pattern-seeking humans to use those phenotypes to categorize people into the physical types that we have labelled “races.”

    Another important point about phenotypic variation is that it is continuous. In other words, there is no sharp, clear dividing line between different types. If you were to line up every person in the world in order from palest skin to darkest, where would you draw the line between dark and light? Or even if you came up with more categories – pale white, medium white, light tan, dark tan, light brown, etc. – where would you put those lines? It’s like trying to pinpoint the exact spot in a rainbow where the color turns from red to orange – it can’t be done! And yet the rainbow continuously shifts in colors until you go all the way from red at the beginning to violet at the end. Continuous human phenotypes operate in exactly the same fashion. Consider, also, that if you were to draw skin color lines in the human rainbow, you would find individuals from several different races or ethnicities within a single skin color category – Australian aborigines, east Indians, and sub-Sarahan Africans could all be found within one dark-skinned group! A bottom-line way of putting it is this: there is no single trait that can be found in one so-called racial group that does not also exist in some other so-called racial group. You can find dark skin in several groups, epicanthic folds in several groups, and blue eyes in several groups. Race as biology is a cultural fiction.

    So, what does this have to do with DNA ancestry tests? I have serious misgivings about the way these tests are marketed because they trade on people’s lack of knowledge about the biological fiction of race and give them the impression that they are finding out about their own supposed racial ancestry. In fact, if not strictly unethical, I think that the companies who peddle these tests are at best taking advantage of people’s forgivable ignorance about the complexity of genetics. Now, I’m not saying that people can’t or even shouldn’t research their ancestry if it interests them; it would be fascinating to find out that what you thought was your completely European ancestry actually had, say, a branch from a part of Asia. But when I say that, I’m talking about genealogical, not genetic, ancestry research. Genetic ancestry research cannot tell you that you have an Asian ancestor; it can only tell you if you have genetic markers that are associated with particular broadly-defined genetic populations.

    DNA ancestry tests use what are called haplogroups to assess genetic ancestry. A haplogroup is a group of similar genes – called haplotypes – that reflect single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) mutations. What is important about SNP haplogroups is that they can be used to broadly delineate genetic populations. This goes back to the discussion above about phenotypic traits that arise in particular geographic regions in response to specific selective pressures. These haplogroups can be traced in two ways: either on the Y chromosome, which is only present in males; or in mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), which is a separate set of DNA from the nuclear DNA that codes for our particular physical traits. Mitochondrial DNA is only found in our cells’ mitochondria, and we get it only from our mothers. Both Y haplogroups and mtDNA haplogroups are very stable and have a very slow rate of mutation, so they remain relatively unchanged for long periods of time. This means that we can compare these haplogroups in people today to ancient haplogroups associated with particular regions and populations. Commercial DNA ancestry tests look at an individual’s haplogroups and compare the results to known population haplogroups.* These results are used to complete a statistical analysis of a person’s possible ancestry. So, if you have a haplogroup associated with Asia, your DNA test results will say so.

    Here’s where things get problematic. Most people don’t know all the things about DNA and populations genetics that I am writing about in this post, so when they see a result of, say, 12% African, they think it means they are “part Black.” I can’t stress enough that this is not what these results mean. What it means is that the person has a haplogroup that is associated with known ancestral African genetic populations. It’s a statistical correlation, not an absolute. And things get even trickier when you realize that Y and mtDNA haplogroups can be incredibly diverse even within a seemingly homogenous regional population. In fact, population geneticists know that there is more variation within the groups we call races than there is between the groups we call races. I am just as likely to share identical mtDNA ancestry with someone from Asia – where I have no ancestors that I know of – as I am to share it with someone from Sweden, where I know my immediate ancestors came from. Don’t get me wrong – I’m not saying we can’t learn anything from comparing haplotypes – we can. But it is completely wrong to say that you are “part Black” or “part Native American” or “part Asian” based on DNA ancestry testing. All it tells you is that you have a haplogroup that could have entered your genetic lineage thousands of years ago that derived from that part of the world.

    This has been a long post, and it is a complicated subject. I have no doubt that some people will read this and misunderstand. Let me part with this: if you want to get a DNA ancestry test, feel free. Just don’t make the mistake of thinking it is telling you anything about your race – it’s not. And finally, never forget that even though what we think of as race is not biologically real, it is still a complex, vital, and unmistakable social reality. We continue to treat people differently on the basis of it; and some people even still insist that the behaviors we associate with race and ethnicity have a genetic basis. We are not that far from the days when the civil rights of African Americans, Native Americans, and other people of color were denied because of the belief that they were genetically inferior to white people. In that sense, race is historically, culturally, and painfully real.

    *Since I wrote this post in February 2015, the technology used by commercial testing companies has expanded to include autosomal DNA haplogroups. Autosomal DNA is the DNA found in the nucleus of all your body’s cells. You get 50% of your autosomal DNA from your mother and 50% from your father. Using autosomal DNA allows a DNA test to see your results from both your maternal and paternal lineages, but it does not automatically mean you will get a more accurate picture; because of the process of meiosis, which is how sperm and eggs are made, each sperm or egg only has half of a person’s DNA. That means that every sperm and egg is essentially unique, and does not contain every possible haplogroup that is part of a person’s autosomal DNA. So, the sperm and egg that made YOU does not have every one of your parents’ haplogroups; and if you have kids, they won’t have all of your haplogroups, either. This is why even full siblings often will not have the exact same results, because each person carries a unique combination of DNA. (Edited January 27, 2018)

    **A comment from a reader pointed out that there are problems with the use of the term Caucasian – problems, embarrassingly, that I had never considered, but which seem obvious to me after a little bit of reading and reflection. I have edited the post to replace the word Caucasian with European or white. This article by Yolanda Moses provides a compelling and succinct explanation for why we need to stop using the term. (Edited February 13, 2018)

    ***A comment from a reader pointed out a lack of clarity here, given that there is a subset of Latino and Hispanic that falls within the white European racial category. (Edited January 8, 2019)

  • Straightjacketing

    Straightjacketing

    The purpose of a straightjacket is to hold its wearer immobile so that she is unable to harm herself or others. It restricts movement so that arms cannot flail and balance cannot be easily kept. It can eventually induce a sense of calm in its irrational and/or panicked wearer, subduing her into a more manageable state. For some, I would imagine that the straightjacket becomes a source of comfort. It allows the wearer to feel that she is being cared for and watched to make sure she stays out of trouble. She believes that those who put her into the straightjacket have her best interests at heart, and eventually the wearer may choose to spend more and more of her time in the jacket.

    The straightjacket analogy is an apt one for those who voluntarily lock themselves in to a particular ideology. The straightjacket of beliefs keeps the wearer calm and gives him a sense of control over his world. Those who constructed and applied the jacket are clearly looking out for the best interests of not just the wearer, but everybody. Alas, this is only comforting when we are surrounded by other people who are wearing the same jacket – that is, those who believe what we believe. When we are confronted with those who think differently, the world can again become a remarkably frightening place, and we retreat to our belief jackets and take comfort there, wrapped immobile in our own ideas.

    This is a false comfort. The straightjacket may be soothing and familiar, but it restricts our ability to engage with other points of view. Remember, the straightjacket is meant to calm and immobilize a person who is a danger to himself or others. The analogy starts to break down if you take it too far, but I think it is safe to apply it to the idea that we may be so accustomed to our jackets that we don’t even realize we are wearing them. Instead, those with whom we disagree or by whom we feel threatened are the ones we think are, or should be, wearing the jacket. This is to protect ourselves, not them. It is much easier to believe our ideological opposites are crazy and dangerous than it is to acknowledge our own jackets. I believe we need to step away from the straightjackets and take our chances with the sometimes frightening, irrational, and crazy world as it is. If we engage with others perhaps we will see that they are not as dangerous as we thought – and vice versa.

    Sadly, even when people are faced with evidence that what they thought to be true actually isn’t what they thought, they remain straightjacketed in their beliefs and will turn to increasingly strident rationalizations for maintaining their original belief. I recently felt the restraining pressure of my own straightjacket when I made the mistake of immediately accepting a conclusion in a news story that aligned neatly with my already formed beliefs. The case of actress Daniele Watts being detained by the LAPD for alleged inappropriate sexual behavior in public was presented as a matter of clear racial discrimination in this article from Jezebel. I read the article and was instantly outraged. I posted the article to Facebook and defended my position that the LAPD had acted inappropriately by essentially accusing Watts of “kissing while black,” in particular because the man she was kissing was white. It turns out, based on new information, that I had knee-jerked to the wrong conclusion. The investigating officers were answering a call from a member of the public who believed Watts and her husband were having sex in public. The responding officers requested both of their IDs. The husband, Brian James Lucas, complied. Watts did not, claiming that since she had done nothing wrong she was not required to present ID. This is technically true in some circumstances in California, but not when officers have reason to believe a crime may have been committed, which is the case when a citizen makes a call to the police. Audio recorded by the responding officers shows that Watts immediately escalated their request into an accusation of racial discrimination. She ended up in handcuffs as the officers verified her ID, and then let both Watts and Lucas go on their way.

    When I heard the audio I immediately realized I had made a mistake. I do not believe that there was any racial motivation in what happened. I am open to new information on the incident potentially changing this conclusion, but based on other things I have read I do not believe the LAPD officers were acting on bias. I also believe, not incidentally, that just because there was no apparent discrimination or bias in this case does not mean that discrimination and bias by cops never happens. I ABSOLUTELY believe that it does. But I do not want to let that belief straightjacket me into thinking that every single interaction between a cop and a person of color is discriminatory, or even potentially discriminatory. As I am so fond of saying to others, you have to gather the facts. You have to get context. As your opinion forms it must be provisional and await further evidence before solidifying. I did not do that in this case, and I am ashamed of myself for it.

    My mistake has been a lesson to me about recognizing my own straightjacket. It is hard to escape our own places of comfort but it is vital that we do. Remember that the straightjacket is NOT for comfort – it is meant to restrict us. Don’t let your straightjacket lull you into a false sense of security. Instead, we should shrink from ideological straightjacketing and learn to be comfortable in a world that is sometimes infuriating, frightening, or irrational. We need to keep our minds free.

  • Shifting Perspective: Word Power

    Shifting Perspective: Word Power

    Consider the following brief life histories of two 18-year-olds:

    A was a sullen, withdrawn child. She seemed predisposed to depression early in life, and caused her parents concern when she would run through their house claiming she was being chased by invisible monsters. She had school friends, but at different times in her young life she considered a doll she made out of leaves; a rock; and a small glass bottle to be her closest friends and most prized possessions. By the time she reached sixth grade, her parents were divorced. A lived closer to the working class part of town than the upper middle class areas many of her classmates inhabited. At 13 she was smoking pot with older kids in the neighborhood and was busted at a local discount store for shoplifting. In high school, A held her own but had some difficulties. Math in particular gave her trouble, and she nearly failed freshman algebra, chemistry, and geometry. She participated in very few extracurricular activities and seemed to shift deeper into depression. At one point an incident with a kitchen knife and a suicide threat caused her parents to seek professional help for her. By 15, A had a boyfriend who was already out of school and spent most of her time with a group of older boys, staying out with them until the morning hours. As high school drew to a close, A’s guidance counselor told her that she would not gain entrance into the state university system because of her poor math grades. A did not apply to any colleges during her senior year. After high school graduation she found a low-level job as a receptionist.

    B was a precocious child who was reading adult fiction by second grade. In fourth grade she was allowed into the school-wide spelling bee – typically restricted to 5th and 6th grade students – because she had already completed the spelling and reading lessons through the 6th grade level. Junior high school saw B widening her circle of friends but also maintaining a reputation as an exceptionally bright student. In 8th grade she missed making the county spelling bee by just one word. By high school B was enrolled in honors courses and did well in them with little effort. She was one of only 3 students to earn the highest possible grade on the Advanced Placement exam in English. B was also an accomplished athlete, earning MVP honors for her performance on the swim team during her sophomore year. She participated in clubs as well, including the French Club, Key Club, and Oceanography Club. Her friends were mostly honor students who spent their free time enjoying board games and role playing games. During B’s senior year, her guidance counselor called her to his office to tell her that her score on the verbal portion of the SAT exam was the highest one of his students had ever achieved. At graduation, B chose to spend a year working at a local art gallery and saving money before starting college. She was accepted into a small but prestigious private college the following year.

    Now that you’ve considered the stories of A and B, where do you think they will each end up in life? A sounds troubled, while B sounds accomplished. A has been involved with drugs, crime, and older boys, while B spent her school years studying and participating in extracurricular activities. A was a mediocre student who was discouraged from college by a guidance counselor. B was an honors student who was praised by a guidance counselor and admitted to a prestigious college. Yet, A and B are so very much alike – so alike, in fact, that they are the same person: me.

    That probably wasn’t much of a twist for those of you who know me. The point I am illustrating here is the power of words. The details you pick out of a person’s life story can cause you to view them as a hero or as a villain; as a troublemaker or as a model student; as having a dead end path in life or as being on the road to a successful future. As I’ve said before, humans are pattern-seeking animals, and we don’t often look for all the contextual information we need to flesh out our first impressions.

    The power of words to change our views is something we should be very aware of. It is relevant to so much of what we hear, see, and read in the world today, particularly in news reporting. I bring this up because of the different ways in which people are represented and how subtle those word choices can be. This pertains, in the moment, to the case of Michael Brown (and a few years ago, the case of Trayvon Martin). What we read is what we see, and both of these dead black teenagers have been portrayed as potential thugs and gangsters (and also as angelic innocents). There are multiple examples of how the power of words shapes our perception of events. If you want to find them, there are many articles and commentaries you can read about how people of color are portrayed more negatively in the media than white people.

    I don’t particularly feel like dissecting the racial divide that still exists in our society in this post. Mostly I wanted to engage in the exercise of writing about my own life in two different ways. I challenge you to do the same, and to ask yourself how you might be portrayed if you were the subject of media attention. It behooves us to remember that every single person is more than a single event, a single photograph, a single conversation. They say there are two sides to every story – I say that’s the minimum. Let’s try to consider as many of those sides as we can.