Race is not a social construct

We all know, because the media tell us, that troglodytic right-wing Christians are enemies of science. The truth is that more than a few traditional Christians are not at all enemies of science, but rather of scientism, which is science-as-ideology. Scientism entails the idea that science is a privileged way of knowing. What responsible Christian critics say is not "Ugh, science bad," but rather draw attention to the fact that science, when not bounded and led by a strong moral sense, can be put to horrible ends. Why this is a controversial observation I have no idea. It seems to me that history more than justifies that caution. It furthermore seems to me that many on the left wish to deride religious conservatives when they raise this ad hominem objection in an attempt to derail a policy goal preferred by the left.

The New York Times, though, raises the question of what discoveries in genetics are doing to our understanding of race.:

But new research is exploring the remaining fraction to explain differences between people of different continental origins.

Scientists, for instance, have recently identified small changes in DNA that account for the pale skin of Europeans, the tendency of Asians to sweat less and West Africans’ resistance to certain diseases.

At the same time, genetic information is slipping out of the laboratory and into everyday life, carrying with it the inescapable message that people of different races have different DNA. Ancestry tests tell customers what percentage of their genes are from Asia, Europe, Africa and the Americas. The heart-disease drug BiDil is marketed exclusively to African-Americans, who seem genetically predisposed to respond to it. Jews are offered prenatal tests for genetic disorders rarely found in other ethnic groups.

Such developments are providing some of the first tangible benefits of the genetic revolution. Yet some social critics fear they may also be giving long-discredited racial prejudices a new potency. The notion that race is more than skin deep, they fear, could undermine principles of equal treatment and opportunity that have relied on the presumption that we are all fundamentally equal.

Some liberals, according to the Times story, are saying that rather than denying what science is telling us, and may yet tell us, about genetics and human capabilities, we should prepare for it and make provision for those who are genetically predisposed to be weaker in certain areas. Others -- and this is pretty much my view -- say we shouldn't pretend these differences don't exist, but that we should more or less ignore them:

“Regardless of any such genetic variation, it is our moral duty to treat all as equal before God and before the law,” Perry Clark, 44, wrote on a New York Times blog. It is not necessary, argued Dr. Clark, a retired neonatologist in Leawood, Kan., who is white, to maintain the pretense that inborn racial differences do not exist.

“When was the last time a nonblack sprinter won the Olympic 100 meters?” he asked.

“To say that such differences aren’t real,” Dr. Clark later said in an interview, “is to stick your head in the sand and go blah blah blah blah blah until the band marches by.”

But notice: Dr. Clark appeals to transcendent morality to deny drawing certain social-policy conclusions from scientific data. It would be immoral and ungodly, he says, to treat people differently because of their genetic code. That's what the church teaches -- and when the Catholic Church and fundamentalist Protestants protested against eugenics policies in the early 20th century on precisely those grounds, they were denounced as hicks by progressives.
Absent an authoritative commitment to these principles, how do we keep science that shows cognitive differences between races from being used oppressively?

The Half Sigma blog has some interesting and provocative commentary on the possible meanings of these findings. Most conservatives, I think, don't believe in a theory of egalitarianism that treats cognitive differences between people as solely the function of environmental conditioning. But it's also true that most conservatives would rightly recoil at the idea that people ought to be treated differently under the law, or morally, because of their genes.

This, by the way, is why I'm opposed to affirmative action: I don't think a person who has proven his or her superior capability for doing academic work should be denied the opportunity to do so simply because he or she is not part of a favored minority group -- and if that means my white European children miss out on a place at ABC University because a Jewish or Asian kid took it, so be it. (In fact, it has been shown that if race-conscious admissions policies were abandoned at elite universities, it wouldn't affect white enrollment much, but Asian enrollment would go through the roof. Why, then, is affirmative action's injustice to Asians not an issue?)

On the other hand, I've heard arguments that precisely because nature doesn't distribute intellectual capabilities equally, some kind of affirmative action will always be necessary to keep social peace in a pluralistic society like our own. I find this an interesting point to explore. Jeremy Beer has a chapter in the excellent new Wendell Berry essay anthology in which he discusses the moral problems with meritocracy. I haven't read it yet, but I will.

Anyway, we can be reasonably sure that science that delivers news that freaks liberal out won't be paid much attention to -- which is a shame, because we have to talk about this stuff intelligently and without illusion. All I would hope for -- all I think it's reasonable to hope for -- is an acknowledgement that gaining scientific knowledge isn't a wholly positive phenomenon, and that we as a society should proceed with extreme caution on these findings, given human nature and the potential for abuse. Unfortunately, I'm afraid we'll get nothing more than more crack-brained lunacy like this from San Francisco, in which educrats are calling for a conference whose unstated purpose seems to be to find some politically acceptable reason to explain away dramatically lower scholastic achievement among white and Latino students. Excerpt:

Also on center stage will be Glenn Singleton, the coach O'Connell hired for the Education Department's racial sensitivity classes. Singleton runs a San Francisco consulting firm called Pacific Educational Group and is the author of "Courageous Conversations about Race: a Strategy for Achieving Equity in Schools."

Contrary to widely held views that parents play a strong role in whether their children do well academically, Singleton believes the schools, not parents, are the biggest influence.

"If we were to say that black or brown kids don't perform as well because of their parents, we're saying black and brown parents aren't as effective as white parents," Singleton told The Chronicle. "That's pretty much a racist statement."

At schools with large numbers of black and Latino students, white teachers are not only culturally unfamiliar with their students, they are often the "least seasoned and skilled" at teaching, he said.

In other words a) it is not permissible to suggest that the parenting styles or cultural norms of black and Latino parents have anything to do with the fact that their children aren't achieving on parity with whites and Asians, and b) it's whitey's fault, straight up. Depressing.