On Assumptions in Evolutionary Genetics Today

Mashaal Sohail 

I n one of our reading group sessions, a question was posed, “are there genetic differences among populations?” which led to one of the many difficult conversations we had as a group. This particular conversation led us to think about the meaning of “genetic,” “differences,” and “populations” as units worthy of our consideration. Many of us left the conversation concluding that the question relies on some very specific assumptions about the world, that are loosely related: 1) That the “genetic” influences on a trait exist as independent of environmental context. 2) That there are innate and immutable “differences” among groups of people, and 3) that humanity exists as “populations.” In the rest of this  essay, I will consider these assumptions, and what was revealed about each of them in our readings and discussions. Depending on the reader and their own journey in life, these assumptions may be to some degree or another close to common sense, or very clearly reflecting a particular world view. With the historical lens to guide us, in the end, we will consider how to imagine a world without these assumptions.  

Vibrant debates were had between scientists that insisted on an innate basis for trait differences among races, and those that demonstrated otherwise by invoking the environment.

For the first point, as a geneticist, I appreciate the following, that I have a genetic code that has something to do with the near and distant ancestors I have had, and that provides a blueprint for my various ways. I also understand that my diet, exercise and stress levels, and physical and cultural history and environment affect my traits in a manner mediated by my genes. In the reading group, I came to understand the following. There has been, in the last few centuries, a slow rise in racial thinking that accompanied and helped justify European colonialism. Historicizing race traces its use from philosophy to natural history and anthropology and ultimately to biology and genetics, all of which played a role in creating an intellectual framework in the western world that saw that world as divided into races or types, of which the European Type or Race was considered the most superior. The writings of Charles Darwin, Francis Galton, among many others, establish this beyond a doubt. The scientists and thinkers working in Europe or the United States lived in a time when a large part of the world remained colonized or living under color-based segregation as in the 19th and early to mid 20th centuries. This was the legacy inherited by the young sciences of genetics and statistics which developed with the aims and ideas of eugenics and race science in the hands of Pearson, Fisher, Davenport and others. The readings helped fill in the missing pieces of history such as the Conference on Racial Differences, and the Second International Congress of Eugenics held at the American Museum of Natural History in 1921.  Vibrant debates were had between scientists that insisted on an innate basis for trait differences among races, and those that demonstrated otherwise by invoking the environment. Boas argued against the presence of race as a natural unit, and for the importance of the environment through demonstration of time-series data on immigrants. He was challenging scientific theories about the permanence of racial traits proposed by figures like Davenport who wrote “Race crossing in Jamaica,” in which he argued for the unsuitability of “hybrids,” using data he collected and analyzed. We were drawn to resonances in debates being had today, and to the long lineages of concepts used today such as continental ancestry.

While eugenic and racial views are prevalent in the academic works of Galton, Pearson, and Fisher among others, we also see the struggle and tensions within academic fields of study as more fine-scale sampling and biological studies were not confirming the pre-existing view that “humanity exists in a few pre-fixed groups with innate differences.”

This brings forth the second point, where a key realization on our collective part was that geneticists and anthropologists who used “race” as an academic term and as an object of study both inherited it and helped give it natural and scientific value, and that this was not a fringe movement within the science. In the early 20th century, there was a focused effort to understand “differences between blacks and whites”, with a focus on data collection and methodology, as under the auspices of the Committee on Race Characters, and the Committee on the Study of the American Negro among others set up by the National Research Council of The National Academy of Sciences of the United States. It is helpful here to note that modern historiographies of race as it is used today place its origin to the beginnings of the 18th century when it was first used to justify the inferiority and thus slavery of Africans by people from Europe. While people have been enslaved throughout history, this was the first imposition of a racial ideology.  Later, in the 19th  and  20th centuries, scientists helped establish race further along ideas of a separate white and “negro” species, and gave ideas about “negro inferiority” a scientific backing. This is also when IQ came to be used for mass testing, shifting the public’s perception to one that embraces such testing as an accurate measurement of innate intelligence. We become cognizant of the effort made by some scientists such as Davenport (Director of Cold Spring Harbor Lab) to popularize their racial and racist views with what they claimed was the backing of science, shaping its place in the popular imagination. While eugenic and racial views are prevalent in the academic works of Galton, Pearson, and Fisher among others, we also see the struggle and tensions within academic fields of study as more fine-scale sampling and biological studies were not confirming the pre-existing view that “humanity exists in a few pre-fixed groups with innate differences.” We learned of a terrible climax in the form of the Nazi movement, slowly followed by the civil rights movement in the United States and independence struggles around the world, which led to a decline of explicit race science and a transformation within genetics.

 It is key to realize that populations as used in evolutionary genetics today were tied directly to race in the hands of Dobzhansky. Race went from being an object of study in the pre-WWII period to becoming more subtly embedded in the population-focused methodology of the science post-WWII. It is in that sense, and with this history in mind, that racial thinking pervades our science and our lived experience today.

The third assumption comes into central focus now. We learn that “race science” becomes mostly relegated to the fringes of science past World War II, and continues through venues like the Mankind Quarterly and the Pioneer Fund. Within the fields of human genetics and evolutionary biology, we learned of the critical role of Theodosius Dobzhansky as he struggled with the race concept in a changing world. He tried to define race in population rather than typological terms, saying that “races can be defined as populations which differ in the frequencies of some gene or genes.” It is key to realize that populations as used in evolutionary genetics today were tied directly to race in the hands of Dobzhansky. Race went from being an object of study in the pre-WWII period to becoming more subtly embedded in the population-focused methodology of the science post-WWII. It is in that sense, and with this history in mind, that racial thinking pervades our science and our lived experience today. There is increasing awareness now in various venues, our reading group only being one, of the racial history of our present societies and of our field of study, and a desire to move beyond racial structures, which are rooted in colonial ideas about human varieties in our intellectual work. Learning and acknowledging this history is a first step towards determining the ways in which it shapes the lens through which we view the world today, as scientists and as people. Seeing this lens clearly will help us do better science, which is why I am an advocate for such reading groups to become a part of the intellectual work required by practicing scientists today.