Genetics and Racial Justice

I want us to think about how to distinguish between appropriate and inappropriate uses of racial categories in genetic contexts. From clinical bench to bedside, from forensics to ancestry tracing, the most consistent attribute of those using race is a stunning inattention to the complexities of the category. It is perhaps, the very given-ness of our social understandings of race that enables such a casual approach to race in these diverse fora. 'Self-identification' has become a fig leaf that covers a broad array of biologized conceptions of race. Genetic research and practice generally suffers from an attitude of 'genetics is complex, race is obvious.' I argue that we need to inject the same sort of care that scientists show for genetic data into their production, interpretation and circulation of racial data.