showed me our misconceptions about race and science arise from a habit of the mind
Thu 26 Dec 2019
It has been common for several years now to assert that science shows the concept of race has no biological basis, and that we must see it instead as a social construct. That case was argued, for example, by Kenan Malik in his 2008 book
Strange Fruit, and it is presented, too, in Angela Saini’s
Superior (which I reviewed for the Guardian in July), a popular choice on many “books of the year” lists.
I used to be sceptical about this claim. I have all the liberal lefty’s revulsion at racism, but I couldn’t help thinking: “If we insist that race is not biologically determined, won’t that just confuse people, given that it is so blindingly obvious that characteristic markers of race are inherited?” The usual argument is that genomics has identified no clusters of gene variants specific to conventional racial groupings: there is more genetic variation within such grou