According to The New York Times Seeking Ancestry in DNA Ties Uncovered by Tests is the most emailed article today. As I've stated before, I believe this area of science & technology is driven by psychology. The same drive which has led men and women to enter into the time consuming hobby of genealogy for hundreds of years. Below, NuSapiens offers the opinion that the new technology will undermine the current orthodoxies and mentalities in regards to race. Unfortunately, I don't believe that anymore...I just think people are too driven by their intuitive pattern matching & categorization schemas to properly digest statistical information. This is a lot like the prayer & heart disease study, one of the main reasons people threw 2.5 million dollars into the topic was because they had a priori psychological needs that needed to be met. No doubt we'll be funding prayer & medicine studies indefinitely, inconclusive results won't stop us. One of the reasons that scientists are so fascistic about seemingly arbitrary p-values is that the urge to see a "trend" is within us all.
Like NuSapiens I once thought that genetic testing would start to undermine our current legal framework of racial classification. My reasons were political, I oppose affirmative action, and if you could replace a quasi-Platonic system (undergirded by truisms like hypodescent) with a statistical system I thought that legal implementation would be very difficult. Just because something is statistical doesn't mean that it renders previous truths null & void, they are simply modulated and given a more subtle texture. The law doesn't work this way, there is a reason that statistical evidence of group discrimination in death penalty cases involving black Americans was rejected by the Supreme Court, because cases are to be viewed individually. Similarly, the attempt by some to have the US Census use more accurate sampling techniques to get a better picture of the American population in 2000, as opposed to the standard "head count," failed because of the chasm between legalistic standards and statistical methodologies.
I don't believe that a "statistical revolution" in human consciousness will occur anytime soon. I don't even think our elites are interested in, or smart enough, to "get it." Instead of looking back, let's look forward. Just like people have a credit rating, I think they should have an "affirmative action rating." We all know of individuals who are "Native American" but have "All American" looks. I certainly know of white Americans who could pass as some sort of Middle Easterner (how many stories of swarthy good ole boys getting scrutinized after 9/11 do we have to hear?). One of the problems with standard affirmative action programs is that they are clunky, and they are often taken advantage of by those who don't really "deserve" a break. There are bizarre cases like Jews whose Polish ancestors emigrated from Spain after 1492 claiming to be Hispanic. Or that 1/4 of Harvard students who are "black" are biracial. Why does this matter? There is some evidence of non-trivial differences in discrimation based on skin tone among black Americans, so light skinned blacks (as biracial individuals generally are perceived to be) would experience less negativity than dark skinned blacks, and yet still be labelled in the catchall "black" category. Then there is the reality that many Latinos are operationally white, while others are black and others brown. These groups are lumped together for affirmative action benefits when it seems that a near-black Dominican would have experienced much more discrimination than a white Cuban.
The new sciences aren't perfect, while paternity is now no longer theory, ascertainment of racial heritage is more sketchy. But, I'm actually not thinking about genetic tests. In terms of race I think that people should have pictures taken and based on skin color and facial features given a "affirmative action credit" contignent upon their "matching" an averaged face of racial "prototypes" in features, with a parameter giving more credits to darker individuals. Additionally, we have millions of social scientists in this country, why not engage in a massive program of ascertaining the extent and depth of bias across this nation in various circumstances? This way the credit could have conditionalities (so for example, Asian American credits might go further in Nebraska than in Hawaii). It seems plausible to me that Japanese Americans should receive a smaller credit than black Americans. Poor whites who habitually wear wife-beaters might have to receive a credit, though monitoring of their dress is an issue. Southerners might get a credit because their accent kind of makes them sound dumb to most other Americans (you know what I'm saying). There are now computer programs which can model movement and behavior, so a "queer meter" could be set up so that we can distinguish between "straight acting" and "queeny" gay men, as the latter no doubt are on the receiving end of far more hostility than their brothers who blend in. Some more masculine looking women might have to receive less credit than more feminine looking women in executive corporate environments where the latter aren't taken seriously, while if they were secretarial assistants the more feminine looking ones might have a leg up. Also, less attractive people would get a credit (attractive people make 5-10% more all variables controlled). We can record facial symmetry and what not pretty well at this point, and also have weighting parameters given to "masculinity" and "femininity" dependent on gender. There are borderline iffy cases, like body mass or clothing. These two are obviously in part the responsibility of the individual, but, some people have genes that bias them toward fatness, while groups like Sikhs have to dress a weird way because of their religion, and we have to be sensitive to religions because people have an habitual predisposition to believe in made up beings in the sky. These are details that will need to be hashed out.
I know that this seems like it might be a bureaucratic morass. But such is the cost of the just society! What is social science good for if we can't utilize it in refining social engineering?
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For god's sake man, don't give them ideas!
Then again, if one could get credit for social aloofness, I might be persuaded to get on board...
"Victim Credits: A Modest Proposal"
Excellent program! Now, if I could only figure out how to be the guy who sits in the office where all the various factors get weighted ...
How about a credit for the prematurely aged? Cancer patients? Guys named Mohammad? Stutterers? Down's syndrome definitely. Flat chested women? Poor dental hygene maybe?
Hey, the Online Journalism Review told me Gene Expression "stay[s] away from cultural and political commentary altogether".
And I fear with those words the Apocalypse is upon is.
Don't forget my people . . . the Fuglies. Plus, we must establish the genetics defense for those with the violence gene, monoamine oxydase-A L.
Mend it. Don't end it. And call it Absolute Communism.
This is a funny reductio ad absurdum.
IMO, the real answer is that people are going to learn to "just get along" very slowly. Not by government intervention, but by us normal little people interacting (Encountering, to use a more pretentious philosophical word) in daily life.
Official classifications of people by "race" is simply not compatible with a modern, Enlightened egalitarian democracy.
Racial harmony on Earth might take a thousand years or more - we've been working on it through most of history, in fact. The end result will probably be humans that don't look quite like *any* existing race.
If anything, we seem to be evolving towards a more sexy version of the "grey aliens" from 1950's sci fi and 1980's tabloids.
You could get more or less the same effect, in the end, and with a lot less work, by offering a "swing voter" credit.
The funny thing (or perhaps not-so-funny-thing, depending on your point of view) is that we are now 37 years into federally mandated quotas and the absurdities inherent in any affirmative action system have been pointed out over and over again, but the general trend around the world is toward _more_ affirmative action, with even ideological holdouts like Brazil (home of their much vaunted "racial democracy") and, now, France (home of individualism and anti-communalist citizenism) moving toward it.
Affirmative action is a natural reaction to diversity, in particular to diversity of talents, which, in some cases, do not appear to be going away.
reductio ad absurdum
ok, it was a little of a reductio ad absurdum, but, not totally. one of the biggest problems with affirmative action is the perception that a lot of people are using the system improperly. i had a redneck friend whose mother was a member of a native american tribe who got a full ride + nice stipend for college. he had no cultural attachment to being native american but saw it as a meal ticket. additionally, not only was he a redneck, he was a redhead, so it wasn't he had to deal with racism for looking nonwhite. similarly, how many times do i have to hear about about the individual who had a wealthy parent from spain and so they get some bonus points for "diversity" intended for brown-skinned latin americans? these systems get gamed, and they'll always get gamed, but a lot of the resentment would be mitigated if the "gaming" was dampened by modern techniques. i think facial analyzers (for attractiveness and race) and measure of inner arm skin reflectance would be a good way to means test affirmative action instead of putting them in a pool. i knew a kid from mississippi who was very dark skinned, he would tell me how lighter skinned blacks would make fun of him for being a 'skillet blonde' and a 'jungle bunny.' i don't see the justice of those lighter skinned blacks, who are often from a higher SES, getting the exact same breaks as him to remediate for discrimination which he probably faces to a far greater extent in his day to day life.
Very interesting post.
"But such is the cost of the just society!"
Whenever there are discussions of a *just society*, Capitalism, exploitation & Meritocracy should be given their proper attention. Meritocracy is a system where people rise to power & status based on merit. Fair enough. Well, even this system is unfair or unjust to those who see the initial disparities as evil. Meritocracy is obviously the best system for the cream of the crop who rise to the top.
"What is social science good for if we can't utilize it in refining social engineering?"
It's good for understanding things that we may never have the ability to change, and it's good for bringing attention to unsettling realities. Plus, it's very interesting.
But knowing the nature of the human animal, a society too just seems unfair to him.
How much do the men high up in the control hierarchy want a just society? Men do not care what is just and what is not when they desire something. America, the most prosperous of the prosperous, was founded on stolen Indian land. It's probable that all land everywhere in the world is stolen land, many times over. But we don't look back. Justice does not rule in this world; Power does. Pure power. More money, better lawyer:)
How much power can Social Science really ever have?
Affirmative action makes it easier for nonwhites to get access to the predominantly white corporate/political/academic power structure. I.e., The Establishment - as in, The [White] Man.
A deeper question is should everyone simply imitate the old power structure, or should they build new centers of power? Pluralism can also be *economic* pluralism. Not everyone wants to live in the Dilbert-like world of cubicles that the Man has built for himself. In practice, Affirmative Action is about the right to be an Acme brand person, which is what is generally required for success in the Establishment.
And by the way, rednecks are not part of that Man or that Establishment. That Man doesn't "speak Southern" - not anymore.
You've left out advantageous accents. Anyone with a Harvard-style twang is automatically fined. Take that, Ted Kennedy! English accents, at least the Upper type, should be taxed even more heavily, as they give the possessor a great advantage in America. The wearing of a tweed jacket with leather elbow patches should be a felony. I would add smoking a pipe, but that's hardly possible any more, unless the pipe is filled with something more interesting than tobacco.
As to "stolen land", theft is not possible between nations, with no overarching legal system. Conquest is the ultimate arbiter of territorial disputes.
That's true. I shouldn't have said "stolen land" I probably should have said "taken land".
Just as in the future i will avoiding using the word murder when homicide would be the appropriate choice. Many people will say that there cannot be any injustice in the state of nature since justice is a political/legal concept. This pretty much makes colonialism ok because there is no legal system binding the conquerer & the conquered in any way. Why don't we just revise our school textbooks with the idea that Colonialism wasn't as bad as it seemed because legalism didn't enter into the context. Men in the State of Nature aren't legally accountable to/for anything. Of course, *is* is not ought. But i don't think philosophical reflection will change the human animal.
Ok, i've learned my lesson here thoroughly. Justice is much meaningless in the grand scheme of things. Passion will continue to drive men as much as ever. Even the legal system is a farce insofar as it allows privilege for the wealthy.
Again, i remain skeptical about the utility of social engineering in the future. What will social science ultimately accomplish in a practical sense? We have libertarians calling for minimal(minarchists?) or no governmental oversight/intervention. To many of them, welfarism & a potent governmental regulation system is the true evil. Cronyism has already emerged between Gov & Corp into what we can now call "complexes". In my view, if our future is a Libertarian one, i see dollars & profits being the arbiters of all, even more so than today.
Really, though, how much *influence* can even well-meaning, Super-IQ academics/scientists ever have in a world such as ours, where the Almighty Dollar rules over all else? The ball will always be in the Alpha-Capitalist's court, who can almost buy his legislators. In my prediction of the future, scientific advancements will mostly be used as goodies for mercantile ends. I don't know. Maybe i am wrong/dumb about all of this?
Razib, it's time for you to write a satiric novel!