What's the Use of Race? by Jones David S. Whitmarsh Ian

Author:Jones, David S.,Whitmarsh, Ian [Whitmarsh, Ian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780262514248
Publisher: MIT Press
Published: 2010-06-14T16:00:00+00:00

7 The Genomics of Difference and the Politics of Race in Canada

Amy Hinterberger

Developments in understanding and analyzing human genomic variation with regard to health and disease have reignited concerns, especially in the United States, about the rebiologization of race. As noted by Joan Fujimura et al. (2008, 644), “in the context of American race politics, folk-understandings of race, and the history of racist scientific investigations in the United States, it is not surprising that members of the media and other public groups have read the genetics of difference as the genetics of race.” Yet what has been less discussed is whether the “genetics of difference,” spawned from research on human genomic variation, have been read as the “genetics of race” in other contexts. In an article exploring the relationships between race, genomics, and identity in contemporary Brazil, Ricardo Ventura Santos (2004, 364) points out that although human genomic variation projects may be similar insofar as they address genomic difference, there may be significant distinctions between these projects from “the point of view of geography, the populations involved, the ethical clashes, the scope of the explanations (local, national and international) or reception by society.” This chapter, then, seeks to push this point in relation to exploring how the categories of race, ethnicity, and population feature and are used in Canadian research projects addressing human genomic variation.

When considering the impacts and developments of human genomic variation studies outside of the United States, one needs to be attentive to any unmediated exportation of U.S. racial politics and technologies, which can sometimes pose categories and experiences as universal, rather than as part of specific historical or contextual developments. In other words, I am wary of the explanation or assumption that race is the primary category of concern in biomedical genomics research. The chapter thus seeks to make two interrelated points. First, sustained attention needs to be given toward how different nations draw on and reject, often simultaneously, aspects of their colonial histories in forming a contemporary approach to health and difference in the life sciences. While the race and genomics debate in the United States does indeed reflect where the majority of research on human genomic variation in relation to health and disease is occurring, it should not necessarily be cast as the dominant frame for understanding and evaluating human genomic diversity. Second, in drawing distinctions between the United States and Canada, the contrast I want to draw out is not one of biracial versus multicultural/ethnic pluralism; rather, I aim to demonstrate that both countries manage heterogeneity through selective discourses of mixing and homogeneity.

The overall goal of the essay is to bring sustained attention toward how different nations contend with the legacy and continuing aspects of their colonial histories as a condition of their transition to postcolonial or multicultural societies, in which governing is increasingly becoming linked to the life sciences. Specifically, the chapter traces how racialized histories have come to shape the politics of inclusion in contemporary population genomics projects in Canada. The

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