O, mankind! We created you… and made you intonations and tribes that you may know each other, not that you may despise each other. – The Quran
It is a subject that ignites such passions that it is rarely broached in polite company. Some Americans would rather not acknowledge its presence. Others cannot resist it as a way to lord over those they see as less than themselves. Still others cannot escape it as that all-important thing that defines who they are – for better or for worse.
Race is a very real part of American life. Yet there is a growing body of scientific evidence that suggests race may not exist.
In this country, the common social definition of race comes from the 19th century, when the practice of assigning groups of people to categories based on skin color, facial features, hair texture, the shape of the head and even skeletal specifications originated. This system, which historically, has included identifying people as black even if they are 15/16 European and only 1/16 black African has been rife with problems.
“It was often used as a way to exclude people and to perpetuate a concept of purity and superiority,” said George W. Gill, professor emeritus of anthropology at the University of Wyoming. Yet in the capacity of a forensic anthropologist for the state of Wyoming, he finds current race classification methods – based on phenotypic (physical) traits – an essential and reliable tool for his high success rate in identifying human remains, even though these contemporary techniques are an outgrowth of the earlier, more objectionable practices.
“Biological traits are adaptive,” Gill said. “They developed in our ancient ancestors as a way for them to adapt to their environment and climatic changes. We’re sometimes unsure about where the balance is between environment and genes, on some of the traits we work with in forensics. But just because we don’t know the exact genetics of a trait doesn’t mean it is not genetic and that what we call race isn’t real. There’s such a tiny portion of DNA that produces these morphological differences that we just haven’t found where they are yet.”
But when it comes to the question of whether race is more than a biological, social and cultural construct influenced by geography, Gill stands somewhat apart from what is emerging as the standard view held by many geneticists: there is no genetic basis for racial classification.
Evidence supporting this view began to surface in 1972, when Harvard geneticist Richard Lewontin showed that there is more variation within so-called racial groups than between such groups. “It implies that Africans, for example, are more internally diverse than they are different from, say, Europeans,” said Fatimah Jackson, a professor of anthropology and genetics researcher at the University of Maryland. “That means that race as a scientific concept doesn’t exist.”
Following that line of thinking, people who identify themselves as black, white, Asian or Native American, based on their physical characteristics may find that they’re something else entirely. And with the growing public interest in researching ancestry through DNA, many people have been compelled to re-examine their attitudes about race.
Curiosity about her ethnic roots led Monica Wilson, an African-American chemical engineer in Cleveland, Ohio, to participate in the Genographic Project, a five-year initiative launched in 2005, sponsored by the National Geographic Society and IBM. Supporting the belief that all people are related, geneticists have collected DNA samples from indigenous groups worldwide to determine more precisely how we’re related and the paths of migration taken by our early ancestors. As part of the project, the general public is invited to submit DNA samples, and once the results come in, participants are given the option to share them with Family Tree DNA, the United States’ first genealogy-driven DNA testing service.
Wilson’s results revealed her maternal ancestry as “Haplogroup B,” the genetic designation assigned to an ancestral clan of hunter-gatherers who arose in Central Asia between 40,000 and 50,000 years ago and migrated eastward with their food source across Eurasia and into the Americas. These were the ancestors of North and South American Indians.
“My mother’s family are Creoles from Louisiana, where I understand it wasn’t uncommon for Native Americans and African slaves to mix,” Wilson said. “And family lore has it that my great-great grandmother was a Native American who wore a long black braid down her back. But we never knew her name and no one ever spoke about it. Still, I was surprised to find this group in my background.”
When Wilson shared her results with her mother’s sisters, she described their reactions ranging from indifference to defiance. “One aunt declared, ‘I ain’t got no damn Indian in me,’” Wilson recalled. “We all laughed, but I had an odd feeling. I always scoffed at blacks who said, ‘I got Indian in me,’ as if it were something special. I looked at it as having just another tragic history and was not moved to find out more.”
Wilson’s reaction is grounded in a legacy of black pride mixed with racial discrimination. “As a child of the Sixties, I grew up in the heart of ‘Say it loud! I’m black and I’m proud!’” she explained.
“I love that saying.” But knowing how her parents suffered discrimination growing up in segregated Detroit, being denied access to public facilities, has also affected her attitudes about race. “The white majority has been very cruel and prejudiced,” she said. “The disproportionate numbers of black people in jail, the high percentages of impoverished African-Americans and discrimination on the job, all reflect systematic racism that is now in place. I’ve seen it and been a part of it. The white majority seems to see us as separate as opposed to all [Americans] being one nation. Any problem we have in this country is a problem for us all.”
When Family Tree DNA matched Wilson’s DNA to a list of Polynesian and Asian “genetic cousins”(Haplogroup B also includes these groups) she was startled to learn that her maternal lineage may instead be Polynesian. “It still doesn’t change my attitude about race,” she said. “But I’ve had the opportunity to travel internationally, and I’ve come to the conclusion that we’re not just similar; we’re identical people. We all want things like love, security and sex. The differences are superficial.” However, in light of the Polynesian revelation, Monica Wilson has changed in one way: she wants to learn more.
So does Carrie Dunson, a retired criminal justice professor from Lee’s Summit, Missouri., (near Kansas City.) Dunson’s DNA test results also placed her in Haplogroup B, pointing to Polynesian maternal ancestors. “I was overwhelmed,” she said.
“I never thought that my results would show anything other than African. It is been two years since I submitted my sample, and I’m still trying to get used to it. But it is exciting to find out that there’s something else that makes up who I am.”
Her surprise is just that. Although she grew up in the segregated 1950s, Dunson never developed “that thing about one race being better than another. It might have been as a means of survival,” she said. “I graduated from high school in 1964, the same year the Civil Rights Act passed. But it wasn’t until about 1966 that blacks were allowed to go to Kansas City’s Fairyland amusement park other than on the one designated day a year. I was living in a period of transition in racial attitudes.”
Despite the challenges of discrimination, which Dunson still occasionally encounters, she tries not to look at life as hopeless. And she extends that hope to her grandchildren, some of whom are biracial.
“We just don’t discuss the ugly things that people tend to focus on when it comes to race,” she said. “These kids have healthy attitudes. They don’t use the negative slang and terminology for other people because it is simply not a part of who we are.”
Defining who he is, has been a life’s work for Phil Grant, a computer systems administrator in Vacaville, California, (near Sacramento.) Born in South Africa to an Italian-Indonesian-Malaysian mother and an African-American father, he and his family were classified as “coloureds” under apartheid’s divisive system. Not black. Not white.
A couple of years later, in 1965, the family moved to New York, where the people he encountered determined his race based on what they saw – which was white. “I grew up in a mixed neighborhood and went to a predominantly black elementary school and church,” he said. “During all the years I lived there, I spent most of my time with my family and the black friends I grew up with.”
In multicultural New York, Grant never perceived any particular display of prejudice. “When I was wandering around downtown with my dad, I never noticed if people looked at us [in a] funny [way],” he said. “Maybe I was wearing blinders. He was my dad, and that’s all that mattered to me.”
When forced to choose a racial category on a government form, Grant checks “multiracial.” But if not given the choice, he selects “black,” following the one-drop rule – you’re black if you have one drop of African blood – that has been prevalent in the United States for so long. He admits that most people look at him and judge him at face value, assuming that he’s white.
“Though I consider myself black and relate to black culture, I know I’ve been spared what other blacks deal with day,” he said. “People don’t cross to the other side of the street when they see me coming, and women won’t clench their pocketbooks if I step into an elevator.”
That makes it somewhat easier for Grant, a self-described loner, to keep race from becoming a big deal in his life.
“I don’t bring my race up if I’m not asked,” he said, “But I’m sensitive to the situation if someone makes a negative racial remark. I decided when I was a kid to never deny that I’m half black or to consciously try to pass for white.”
Grant is also sensitive to the way the media and others in the United States refer to people who are part black.
“It bothers me that whenever biracial people like Barack Obama or Halle Berry are recognized, they’re referred to as black. Why does it have to be a choice? Why invalidate their other side? I don’t want to dismiss either side of my heritage.”
The answer may lie in the approach taken by Grant’s younger sister, Adrianne, who – in direct contrast to her brother – looks black.
“I’ve always made a point to be self-defined and not adhere to a cultural entity,” she said. “I define myself as an individual who God created for a specific purpose. And I remain strong in that.”
Although Adrianne Grant, a New York videographer and educator, said she has not experienced bigotry in the United States, she has certainly been the subject of curiosity.
“At one point my brother and I were in college together,” she said. “Naturally, we spent time together and showed affection toward each other. And since we had the same last name, people tended to ask if we were married. When we responded that we were brother and sister, they then asked which one of us was adopted. Recently, someone asked if we had the same parents.”
But the siblings take such attitudes in their stride.
“With so many cultures intertwined, we’re moving more toward a Mocha Nation,” she said.
The University of Maryland’s Fatimah Jackson agreed. “Our findings are dealing a deathblow to notions of white supremacy and genetic justifications for white privilege,” she said. “And that’s good because there is no superiority of one color over another or one ethnic group over another. Intelligence and stupidity are evenly distributed across the planet.”
Still, there’s much to learn in the future. “I look forward to a time when we can break the stereotypes and prejudices,” Adrianne Grant said, “and realize that we are more the same than different.”
MY PERSONAL DNA STORY
Something didn’t add up. I’d reviewed my maternal DNA results from the Genographic Project designating me as Haplogroup B. The report described my early ancestors as a group of hunter-gatherers, who, originating about 60,000 years ago, eventually settled in the Americas. They were among the first Native Americans. That part made sense. It matched the stories I’d heard about my mother’s colorful great aunts, Harriet Barrett Phillips and Patient Barnett, who – with their high cheekbones and long black hair – were said to be part Indian. That was not an uncommon claim among black people in the Piney Woods region of East Texas where both my parents grew up.
But after transferring my results into Family Tree DNA’s database, I was puzzled when I received a list of genetic matches. My “DNA cousins” had names like Faamuli, Leilani, Gherardi, Chazotte-Louvat and e-mail addresses from as far away as Tahiti and New Zealand. They were Maori, Samoan, Tahitian, Chinese and Hawaiian.
My work as a writer for National Geographic magazine gave me access to geneticist Spencer Wells, director of the Genographic Project. He and a few colleagues took a closer look at my genetic sequence, just to rule out any errors in my test. Their conclusion: I have no Native American maternal DNA. My haplotype subgroup is B4, making me predominantly Polynesian on my mother’s side.
Although I was surprised at this unexpected news, I wasn’t put off by it. Certainly, I’ve experienced my share of racial bigotry, but I’ve always judged people based on their character rather than the color of their skin or the shape of their eyes. And I approach each day hopeful that others will judge me the same way. Still, an unfortunate side effect of growing up black in the United States is that by the time black children are old enough to understand the English language, they’ve already developed an acute instinct for detecting discrimination. And it is tested every day thereafter. We simply pick and choose what to respond to and what to ignore.
I admit that my detector was in active mode when I first made contact with my DNA cousins. As I received their e-mails and photos, it was clear that none of them looked anything like me. So I braced for polite rejection when they would finally see my black face. But being the great people they are, they welcomed getting to know me, as I did them. Now we’re working together to solve the mystery of when and how our genes intertwined. One New Zealand cousin, Adrienne Giacon, even said, “You look just like the Maori we see here every day!”
To my mind, the argument surrounding the validity of the concept of race need not rest on an either/or conclusion. Both concepts can coexist in our everyday lives. How hard is it for me to accept my Polynesian relatives the same way I embrace my African-American family and – by extension – others who are outwardly or culturally different from me? Not difficult at all. It simply requires an open mind and an open heart.
About author: After 18 years as a senior writer/editor for National Geographic magazine, Cassandra Franklin-Barbajosa is now a freelancer. She and her husband, Alejandro, live in Cheverly, Maryland.