I would like to expand on and reinforce Valarie Anderson’s heartfelt perspective in her March 11 guest column. It is true, as Anderson notes, that all humans on Earth share around 99.9% of the same DNA, meaning that their genomes have nearly all the same genetic codes in the same locations. But the variation in the remaining one tenth of a percent, equaling around 300 million genetic codes, is very consequential. It accounts for all of the observable and internal differences among people. Eye color, hair color and texture, skin color, height, allergies, body shape and intelligence are all common examples of these variable genetic traits.
Where does variability come from? It is inherited. For every individual, traits came from a mother and father blended into a new genome. The parents passed along genetic material they inherited from previous generations stretching back thousands of years. Today we can glimpse our own patterns of inheritance by submitting a DNA sample to commercial companies like Ancestry, 23andMe, or CRI Genetics, to name a few. Through this kind of analysis we can learn where our ancestors came from geographically and about some of the traits that we inherited from them.
Thousands of human genomes from all over the world have been sequenced and analyzed and one finding is clear: Some human variations are not homogenously distributed. They arose through evolution in isolated populations during the great dispersion of humans out of Africa beginning some 50,000 to 60,000 years ago. Humans alive today have traces of these ancestral populations, including for some of us, even traces from Neanderthal forbearers. To varying degrees we still carry genetic variations contributed by these distant relatives. I can enjoy the milk in my latte because a milk tolerance genetic mutation occurred and spread in one of my ancestral lineages about 8,000 years ago.
Now let’s tie this information back to the concept of race as used in common parlance. I agree with Ms. Anderson that the concept is poorly defined, lacks a sound biological foundation and has been politicized into total uselessness. But its demise does not imply that there are no meaningful differences in ancestral populations. Though the historical study of human population genetics is still in its infancy, the increasingly wide-scale use of genome sequencing is sure to reveal many important details about our family trees. But one thing is already certain from a genetics perspective: Skin color is irrelevant (except insofar as a high level of melanin is protective for direct sun exposure).
As for the collection of information about race, I prefer the French model where no such self-report information is collected by government institutions at all. If this “universalist” approach was applied here, every citizen would simply be considered an American — emphasizing unity. Such a change would go a long way toward reducing the negative effects of identity politics.
For a deeper dive into ancestral populations and genomic research, I recommend Charles Murray’s book, "Human Diversity: The Biology of Gender, Race and Class" (2020) and my own textbook, "A Field Guide to Humans: The Natural History of a Singular Species, Second Edition" (2020).
Ronald M. Smith lives in Bend. He has a B.A. in the earth sciences and an M.A. in experimental psychology. He spent more than 30 years working in education.
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