On race theory and norms.

• Author: Sundquist, Christian
• Position: Symposium: Defining Race

This is, of course, a hard act to follow; we let the beat build for a while, and I hope that the energy is on the rise as opposed to waning. In any event, while I am not going to talk about computer games and the like--even though I am a bit of a gamer--there are certainly some linkages between what I am going to talk about and what Neil just spoke about.

Generally, I am going to address the judicial acceptance of DNA random match estimates, which is using DNA analysis to estimate the likelihood that a criminal defendant is the source of genetic material that is found at a crime scene that rely on race, how such a re-inscription of race as a biological entity threatens the modern conception of race as a social construction, and how those estimates should be rejected as inadmissible on a doctrinal level under the Federal Rules of Evidence. (1)

But before I get into the nitty gritty, before I get into the science itself, I am going to discuss for a few minutes a very rough sketch of the historical development of the race concept, since I think having this history in mind is extremely important in how we view current efforts to ascribe a genetic dimension to how we understand race. Of course some of the earliest theories of race came about--and this is somewhat disputable--during the early 1700's. (2) Carl Linnaeus, who was a Swedish taxonomist, introduced a taxonomy of human groups and split it up into divisions which--using neo-words--body primitives, which we still retain today: africanus, europus, americanis, asianic. (3) And he also associated these groups with specific mental characteristics. Europeans were regarded as being gentle yet inventive, and all the other non-European groups had quite negative attributes associated with them. (4)

When Johann Blumenbach continued this division of humans into four groups, he changed the terminology a bit, and this terminology is enduring. He introduced the term "Caucasian," for instance, and of course, this terminology has no real scientific basis. (5) He decided to call Europeans "Caucasians" because he felt that the people he met from the mountains of Caucasus were the most beautiful in the world and so, thus, should be known as Caucasians. (6) These early theories of race and racial merit were proposed by many, and of course by Linnaeus and Blumenbach, and soon became the basis for acceptable science during the age of enlightenment. (7)

During this time there came a focus on empiricism, especially the tabulation of human differences--how do we scientifically document how humans are different from one another--and also a focus on rationality, which at least leads to an explanation of these human differences as being the result of some innate biological differences. Finally, Aristotle's notion of a Great Chain of Being was also an important concept during this time and in the development of the race concept generally--the idea that the natural order of things is inequality. (8) This led some to believe that some races were necessarily inferior to other races. So what we have is that this engendered a shift from a pre-modern understanding of difference and identity, that at the time was rooted in religion and preserving wealth through noble lineage, to understanding difference in terms of race, or racial identity. This was, in turn, used to justify economic inequality, and also played a pivotal role in understanding the rights of private property.

So fast-forward a little bit to chattel slavery in the United States. Of course, science was employed to justify unequal treatment and slavery on grounds of biological differences and biological inferiority. Various disciplines--biology, chronology, anthropometrics, and so forth--were invoked and called upon to verify these folk-notions of racial inequality, and they purported to do just that. (9) So we have an instance here where science was utilized to reconcile this apparent conflict between natural law and social inequality that arose in the age of enlightenment with the fact of physical bondage in the United States and the assertion of property rights towards those bound as property.

Fast-forward a little bit further to the nineteenth century and Darwinism. This of course led to the infamous race-science that took place during the nineteenth century. Darwin's theory of evolution was co-opted in some ways by social Darwinists to explain...