Questions of Race, and how we deal with it (or not), prompted by a TV show

[capri0mni]

Bill Nye is a scientist who has created a television personality known as "Bill Nye, the Science Guy;" for six seasons, in the mid 1990s, he hosted a show of that same name aimed at elementary school kids.

In 2005, he wrote and hosted a thirteen-episode program aimed at older teens and young adults, where he focused on one socially relevant issue, and the scientific ramifications of the same, per episode, called The Eyes of Nye.

Last Friday night (or early Saturday morning), I watched his episode on "Race," and the things we've learned about it since the mapping of the human genome.

Conclusion: biologically speaking, "race" has no basis to exist; there's as the same level of genetic variation between two random people of the "same" race as there is between two random people of "different" races.

Therefore, Nye reasoned, in his little Op-ed monologue at the end, "Race" is only a cultural construct. And so we should be able, culturally, to deconstruct it.

Which leaves me wondering: How? How, exactly, do you deconstruct a cultural bias (especially one that has lead to extreme violence and exploitation as "race" has), without sidelining the voices of people who've suffered the most under that construct?

I don't have the answers. But I felt the need to get that question out there.

(It's also a bit problematic, at least in perception, when the person voicing this conclusion was born into the class of White Priveledge.)

Comments

[indefatigable42.livejournal.com]

To say that race is a cultural construct probably means that the divisions that form the basis for hatred and discrimination are a cultural construct. I would strongly doubt that he actually means to dismiss the fact that different races construct different cultures based on their experiences, or to imply that we should ignore or throw away cultural differences.

Yeah, it's a bit of a beginner view that could be expected from someone with a background of white privilege and science education, but I don't think he's quite crossed the line of saying that we can solve racism by ignoring race. The problem with that approach is that it doesn't take into account people who really do believe in racial superiority and act accordingly, and Nye is addressing that point directly here by saying that there's no scientific basis for considering one race to be better than others.

[capriuni.livejournal.com]

Oh, I have full faith that Bill Nye is sincere, and understands how complex the issue of Race is, and that it cannot simply be ignored or "Put behind us" quite so neatly.

But that understanding of his runs headlong into his famously glib rhetorical style. My own reaction to: "Race is a social construct, so we are free to deconstruct it" (especially as the closing couplet of the episode), is: "That's easy for you to say!"

My question is an equally sincere: "Okay, now, how exactly, can we do that?" And, more specifically: "How can I, who was born into the world of White Priveledge, contribute to the deconstruction of the concept of 'race' without engaging in problematic behaviors, myself?

That's the question that his closing couplet put in my head. And that's the question I just want to put out there.

[trinalin.livejournal.com]

We're having an interesting discussion in my science ethics class right now about whether race/ethnicity should be considered a variable when doing medical research or when diagnosing patients. It's been a fascinating discussion. I'm currently on the side of "no one can agree on race, so let's not use it as a variable in research" and stick with using DNA markers instead.

I'll show you my DNA profile if you'll show me yours! ;-)

[uncacreamy.livejournal.com]

What about things that show up for certain types of people? Black people get sickle cell far more than white, for example, and Irish/Scottish folks get hemochromatosis more often than others. It isn't useful to look for the things that that ethnic group falls prey too more often, when diagnosing things?

[capriuni.livejournal.com]

*nods* On the web page dedicated to the episode, Nye does provide links to two different articles from Scientific American that addresses this question of race in terms of medicine and diseases in specific populations.

That said, there are sub-populations of people in Sweeden (for example), and other places around the world, that just do not seem as susceptible to certain cancers, and they're a) studied for their genetic makeup, and b) not looked at as if they are members discrete "race" based on their skin color...

[trinalin.livejournal.com]

I responded to this in my class. Alas, I'm not as eloquent as some of my classmates. But the conversation has been interesting on all sides.

I wrote: What if you have someone who's not obviously from one of the "typical races" that get a more race-specific disease? If a diagnostician is focusing on the race question, they may not get to Tay Sachs or another prognosis until far too many other options are tried. However, if they ignore apparent race & stick with the symptoms, they might reach the conclusion sooner. I can envision the other happening too - someone with an apparent race looks like they might have, say, sickle-cell anemia and the symptoms fit, so the search is over, right? But what if it isn't over? What if that's not what's really going on. I see apparent race as more of a stumbling block than an assist. Treat the symptoms, not the race.

*doh* wrong italics tag in my original post.

[capriuni.livejournal.com]

Yes. This. Also, through generations of thinking of "Black African" as a "single race," coming to the conclusion that sickle cell (For example) is "racial" disease could be an unintential bias that blinds us to important factors, such as what the genetic markers for the disease really are...

Ugh. I don't have the vocabularly or examples at the tip of my brain to talk, or even think about this clearly...