A few weeks ago (here) I wrote about racial identity and DNA testing, taking off from an article in the New York Times that should have been (but wasn’t) titled “DNA Tests and the Racial Spoils System.”
There was a 4-hour PBS special on this topic, now released on DVD. According to an article in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, the show featured Harvard’s Henry Louis Gates reconstructing the identities of nine “black” Americans.
Gates follows the paper trail to reconstruct nine family trees, including his own. Oprah Winfrey wipes away tears as she hears about hardships her grandparents faced.
The show saves the best for the last hour. Results of DNA tests are revealed. Composer Quincy Jones learns he is 34 percent European. An amazed Gates finds his ancestors were 50 percent African and 50 percent European.
And Gates’s response?
“Do I still qualify for affirmative action?” he says.
John, what do you think of the arguments by the “racial realists” (not of the Derrick Bell variety, of the Steve Sailer one) that are making their case in the comments on race v. racialization? Feel free to join in. The thing I’m trying to figure out is why they’re using a very different definition of race than has ever been offered before, yet still insisting on talking abut “racial differences” rather than “human genetic diversity.”
This is not a very well-written article. I find it easy to believe that Oprah’s grandparents faced hardships that would cause all of us to wipe away tears if we heard about them. But they aren’t saying they found those hardships in her DNA, are they?
One should not be judged on the hardships faced by one’s grandparents, for people of any race can no doubt could find such hardships. If we want to give benefit to those who actually face contemporaneous hardship, we are headed down a much more rational path. But it would be ridiculous to say that Oprah’s children, born to a multi-million capable of buying the best private education, faces greater hardship than a poor white student whose parents live in a trailer park and attend an underfunded school (or, let’s say, the 10% of inner-city Detroit students who happen to have white skin). And “societal discrimination” aside (Cobra, come on, I want to hear you argue the subtle racism Oprah’s children might face outweighs the huge start that they have in life being born into a wealthy family), class is still the predominant factor. I do acknowledge that there is racially-statistical disparity in class measures, but the underlying problem is a cycle of poverty.
Fix the schools and other causes of income-divergence, don’t paper over the universities!