Abstract
In the early 2000s, Esteban Burchard and his colleagues defended a controversial route to the view that there’s a racial classification of people that’s (epistemically) useful in medicine. The route, which I call ‘Burchard’s route,’ is arguing that there’s a racial classification of people that’s useful in medicine because, roughly, there’s a racial classification with medically relevant genetic differentiation (Risch et al. in Genome Biol 1–12, 2002; Burchard et al. in N Engl J Med 348(12):1170–1175, 2003). While almost all scholars engaged in this debate agree that there’s a racial classification of people that’s useful in medicine in some way, there’s tremendous controversy over whether any racial scheme is useful in medicine because there are medically relevant genetic differences among those races (Yudell et al. in Science 351(6273): 564–565, 2016). The goal of this paper will be to show that Burchard’s route is basically correct. However, I will use a slightly different argument than Burchard et al.’s in order to provide a firmer foundation for the thesis, both metaphysically and genetically. I begin by reviewing Burchard’s route and its critics. Second, I present an original argument for establishing Burchard et al.’s conclusion using a Burchard-like route. I call it ‘Spencer’s route’. I reply to major objections along the way, and I end with a summary.
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Notes
From here on, I will drop ‘epistemic’ and ‘people’ as modifiers for ‘useful’ and ‘racial classification,’ respectively. Instead, I will just assume that the usefulness under consideration is epistemic and the racial classification under consideration is human racial classification. Also, since I’m being careful, I should clarify that by ‘human’ I mean ‘Homo sapiens’.
The name and characterization of this debate is from Spencer (2014, 41).
However, note that Burchard and his colleagues still adopt this argument today. For evidence, see Bustamante et al. (2011).
Also, see Risch et al. (2002, 5).
Also, see Risch et al. (2002, 6).
Also, see Risch et al. (2002, 3).
Also, see Risch et al. (2002, 6).
Also, see Risch et al. (2002, 11).
It can be shown that this argument is deductively valid when correctly translated into a symbolic logic that’s appropriate for doing metaphysics. The one I used was quantified modal free logic with necessary identity and a T interpretation of necessity. See Girle (2009, 14–15, 39, 107–108, 133) for the syntax and semantics of this logic.
For evidence, see Grieco and Cassidy (2001, 2–3).
Even though the OMB uses ‘Hispanic’ and ‘Latino’ interchangeably to refer to Hispanics, I will only use ‘Hispanic’ to refer to Hispanics in this paper. This is not only for concise writing, but also because the Pew Hispanic Center has discovered that ‘Hispanic’ is the preferred name for Hispanics among Hispanic Americans who care about the issue by more than a two to one margin (Taylor et al. 2012, 3).
With that said, the OMB is currently reviewing its racial classification to decide whether any changes should be made. The major items of review are whether Hispanics should be added as a race, and whether Arabs or (but not both) Middle Easterners and North Africans (MENA) should be added as a race (OMB 2017). Nevertheless, this paper is about the OMB’s 1997 racial classification.
The OMB is notoriously ambiguous about what they mean by ‘racial groups.’ Sometimes the OMB uses ‘racial groups’ interchangeably with ‘races’ and sometimes they use the term interchangeably with ‘ethnic groups.’ For evidence, see OMB (1997a, 36886, 36894, 36924). However, when the OMB talks about Black racial groups, they use ‘racial groups’ interchangeably with ‘ethnic groups.’ For that reason, I’ll interpret the use of ‘racial groups’ in the OMB’s “definition” of ‘Black’ as interchangeable with ‘ethnic groups’. Also, note that the OMB intends to pick out a skin color, not a race, with its use of ‘black’ in its “definition” of ‘Black.’ Otherwise, the “definition” would be viciously circular.
For a detailed and critical discussion of what counts as a subspecies among contemporary systematic biologists, see Spencer (2018b).
I’m borrowing the term ‘continental populations’ from Richard Cooper et al. (2003, 1167). Also, a biological population in the population-genetic literature is typically understood to be a breeding population (e.g. a panmictic group of organisms) or a genealogical population (e.g. a haplogroup) (Gannett 2003, 997). For clarity, a haplogroup is a group consisting of the first organism to possess a specific nucleotide sequence in its genome and all of its descendants that also possess that genomic sequence. An example is mitochondrial haplogroup M in humans.
For a more detailed and precise discussion of the fuzzy set-theoretic assumptions embedded in this research, see Spencer (2016, 793–794).
Unfortunately, geneticists are not careful when talking about a person’s genome. Sometimes, geneticists talk as if every non-reproductive cell of a person has its own genome. However, at other times, geneticists talk as if there is a single set of DNA that represents an individual’s genome. However, in order to be clear, I will operationally define a person’s genome as her inherited DNA from the nucleus in a randomly selected non-reproductive cell in her body together with her inherited DNA from a randomly selected mitochondrion from that same cell. Nuclear DNA in humans is typically divided into a pair of sex chromosomes (one from each parent) and 22 pairs of other chromosomes (the autosome). While geneticists usually only sample alleles from autosomes in human genetic clustering studies, that’s not a huge problem because the autosome usually comprises 94.0% of a person’s genome (as measured in nucleotide base pairs). This count comes from the Ensembl genome database project, and specifically, page http://useast.ensembl.org/Homo_sapiens/Location/Genome, which was accessed on January 26, 2018. One last point is that an allele in this context is just a sequence of nucleotides (even as small as one nucleotide) at a locus in a genome.
Average membership grades are in parentheses.
The term “structure-like programs” is from Weiss and Long (2009, 704).
Here, the term ‘extension’ is intended to be used in Quine’s (1951, 21) sense, which is that of “all entities of which a general term is true.”
I’m borrowing the term ‘mismatch objection’ from Joshua Glasgow (2009, 94).
By ‘reifying’ I mean ‘attributing an actual or concrete existence to something that doesn’t exist or only exists abstractly.’
‘HGDP-CEPH’ stands for the Human Genome Diversity Project of le Centre d’Etude du Polymorphisme Humain. It contains 1063 cell lines from 1056 people from 52 ethnic groups (Cavalli-Sforza 2005, 337–338).
However, it’s worth noting that Pemberton and his colleagues did not use a structure-like clustering method. They used a non-fuzzy method called ‘multidimensional scaling.’ For a large and diverse human genetic clustering study (300 people from 142 ethnic groups) that confirms Rosenberg et al.’s K = 5 result using a structure-like clustering program (admixture), see Mallick et al. (2016).
At K = 6 in Rosenberg et al.’s (2002, 2382) study, the Kalash separated from Caucasians to form their own cluster.
A clade is a group consisting of an ancestor and all of its descendants.
In addition, note that Kalinowski’s (2011) famous critique of the reliability of structure at low K values is non-threatening to (2) as well because his computer simulations assume that the accurate genetic clusters are clades, which is an unreasonably high standard for biological reality in this context.
The details of this story are from Smart (1946).
1 kya is equivalent to 1000 years ago.
AMOVA is a technique that separates the total genetic variance in a group of organisms into three components by proportion of the total: genetic variance within local populations, genetic variance among local populations, and genetic variance among genetic clusters.
Bastos-Rodrigues et al. used short indels (insertions or deletions that are just a few nucleotides in length) and Li et al. used SNPs (single-nucleotide polymorphisms), while Rosenberg et al. used microsatellites (short nucleotide sequences that are repeated in a genome). For nice a discussion about how allele type choice can affect an AMOVA, see Rosenberg et al. (2003). Also, a polymorphism (in the genetic context) is an allele that has greater than 0% but less than 100% frequency at its locus in a population (Hartl and Clark 2007, 321).
These data were retrieved from https://www.ucl.ac.uk/mace-lab/resources/glad on January 24, 2018.
Actually, Haslanger (2012, 259) calls the link between “HbS carriers” and “relatively recent Sub-Saharan African ancestry” ‘accidental,’ but her concern applies here as well.
Both of these data are from GLAD’s website, accessed on January 24, 2018.
This calculation is from page 7 of the supplementary material from Spencer (2015).
Interestingly, the OMB (1995, 44687, 44688) also rejected “multiracial” and “Hispanic” as races because they were “too heterogeneous” “for health researchers.”
Down syndrome is a genetic disorder caused by an extra whole chromosome 21 or a translocated segment of chromosome 21 in all or some of a person’s non-reproductive cells.
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