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June 2, 2014
It takes only a few vigilantes to cow the whole campus.
Academic researchers won’t touch the subject of human racefor fear that their careers will be ruined. Only the most courageous will publicly declare that race has a biological basis. I witnessed the effects of this intimidation during the 10 years I was writing about the human genome for The New York Times.Nicholas Wade, In Defense of A Troublesome Inheritance
Posted by gerardvanderleun at June 2, 2014 11:03 PM. This is an entry on the sideblog of American Digest: Check it out.
Your Say
I suppose you could define race in terms of genetics, but I would say that (1) the set of races you could then define is rather arbitrary (you could have hundreds, if you wanted to), and (2) even if you did, 'race' would remain a term of technical jargon in the field of genetics. It would not have much to do with the meaning of race as defined by common usage. In particular, it would not add any value for the race hustlers.
I think it would be rather provocative, in the worst sense of the word, to choose the word 'race' for some new bit of technical jargon since it already carries so much emotional baggage in common usage. It would get even worse if you further muddied the waters by using existing words like 'white', 'asian', etc, for specific genetically races. Imagine the outcry if they defined one set of genetic markers and collectively called them 'nigger', or another set of markers and called them 'aryan'. I think it would be hard to hind behind the defense that these are merely technical terms of jargon, unrelated to common usage. Though it might be fun to watch the fur fly, if you are into schadenfreude ...
Posted by: Grizzly at June 3, 2014 5:44 PM
Well, there's always Eugenics.
Posted by: chasmatic at June 4, 2014 4:12 AM
Chas, you scared me. I thought you said Ebonics. I can't understand them now.
Posted by: Vermont Woodchuck at June 5, 2014 1:11 PM