This little slice of ‘Genomania’ slipped under the radar last week. The New York Times reported (bugmenot) on a trainwreck of bad science and well meaning bureaucracy:
Alan Moldawer’s adopted twins, Matt and Andrew, had always thought of themselves as white. But when it came time for them to apply to college last year, Mr. Moldawer thought it might be worth investigating the origins of their slightly tan-tinted skin, with a new DNA kit that he had heard could determine an individual’s genetic ancestry.
The results, designating the boys 9 percent Native American and 11 percent northern African, arrived too late for the admissions process. But Mr. Moldawer, a business executive in Silver Spring, Md., says they could be useful in obtaining financial aid.
“Naturally when you’re applying to college you’re looking at how your genetic status might help you,” said Mr. Moldawer, who knows that the twins’ birth parents are white, but has little information about their extended family. “I have three kids going now, and you can bet that any advantage we can take we will.
The remainder of the article documents some other ways in which genes are used to substantiate people’s claims about their identity, usually in order to gain material wealth. In the attached video – which is well worth a look – the journo speaks of the basic urge people have to find out about their ancestry as though identity politics was somehow a natural phenomenon. A few thoughts: the first story really makes a mockery of affirmative action and shows how clumsily science can be used and abused.
Leaving the sampling issues in gene mapping aside, there are some striking fallacies at work in dividing your identity into neat genetic squares in order further your political standing:
- Genes, rather than social institutions, are repositories of discrimination
- Variations in genotypes and phenotypes are reducible to a handful of geographical areas
- The relationship between place, culture and biology is a simple one
Secondly, anyone familiar with Richard Titmuss’s work will probably be unsurprised that commodifying and instrumentalising the vitals of life will tend to foster friction rather than social cohesion.
Third, and OT, the little boxes in which people’s ancestry is divided echo a certain aesthetic tradition. (via Barista)
For those wanting to do more reading, this website should be familiar to most LP readers.
NB. I borrowed the term ‘Genomania’ from Roger Lancaster’s fist-shaking at neoliberalism essay which documents other episodes of bad bioreductionism.
(Original article via Tim Blair)
Elsewhere: Rex at the inimitable Savage Minds points to some nice articles by Jonathan Marks.
I think it is probably inevitable that affirmative action programs involve moral hazard. As PJ O’Rourke put it, if you give out free catfood, you get a lot of kittens.
Bismarck, you say that like it’s a bad thing.
Some of us think an absence of affirmative action programs involves a far greater moral hazard. Great post, dk.au, v thought-provoking. Brilliant summary of the 3 fallacies.
PC, I don’t think I said it was a reason not to have them. The idea is to structure them so as to avoid the problem of free riders.
Agreed. That really was a repulsive story about the attitude of the man with the adopted twins.
Yes, assuming there was a socio-economic basis for the adoption, it could be said they’ve had their affirmative action already.
On AA in general, I’ve always wondered how I’d feel as an underpriveleged white in America. I believe the theory is fairly sound (if not the practice) but it is unavoidably racist.
It’s not really the affirmative action program here that’s the problem, of course, it’s that some people have a really shallow grasp on science, ideas about “race” (as social construction vs. genetic markers), privilege, and also a complete lack of ethics.
I think the story is a completely understandable reaction to the incentives, and no different to people I know here who, after someone in the family has discovered aboriginal heritage have claimed Abstudy etc. Note that wasn’t the reason they did the genological research as in this story, but it was used to the same effect.
Personally I think it shows that affirmitive action based on racial grouping is flawed, and should rather be targeted at people who would be struggling to acheive from actual disadvantaged backgrounds.
F. David Bower, I don’t think you can discount the fact that there have always been scholarships, equity programs etc for poor white students in the US.
Of course, AA (as I think we are talking about it here) is not about economic disadvantage, it’s about evening out automatic discrimination based on skin colour. So if you are from a poor white family, you are still automatically ‘better off’ than a poor black person because you are white — you won’t be actively discriminated againts because you have dark skin. So AA is meant to address a world where even the brightest black student would miss out because they were black, while white people would get in, just because they were white.
Of course, disadvantage doesn’t map out along race/class lines perfectly and nor is AA without issues… but I think calling AA racist is to kinda miss the point. Yes, it doesn’t fix all sorts of economic and other sorts of disadvantage, but it does address one particular disadvantage.
Well Steve we all know stories about people rorting the system, but does it prove wholesale the whole idea is flawed?
It’s a misuse of the term “racist” really. Racist means discrimination on the grounds of an attitude that sees one group as inferior to another. Affirmative action is trying to treat people differentially in order to remedy the historical and contemporary ramifications of discrimination.
But within AA’s own internal systems, grants and other assistance are not available to people of certain races regardless of need. That is racist in the common sense of the word.
Racism isn’t just about seeing inferiority. To assume that a black man will be brilliant at basketball is racist. There are all kinds of racism, and they’re not all necessarily bad (in any sense comparable to the really bad stuff – not giving jobs or uni places to black people etc.).
Actual individual white people see their kid miss out on a place they can’t afford, while another equally gifted and equally disadvantaged black kid gets the gig. It’s quite reasonable to describe this as racist but still (as I do) believe that on balance it’s a good thing.
As long as you’re a utilitarian!
And to say that a white kid can never be as underpriveleged as a black kid is simply absurd.
Affirmative action is basically a blunt instrument that goes some way to solving a problem, but which will obviously have some problems of its own.
As with any blunt instrument, surely the focus should be on sharpening it, rather than using it to say “look, it can be abused, let’s abandon it!â€? Of course it can be abused, as can pretty much any program or service or benefit.
A good starting point would be to acknowledge that if you need DNA testing to prove your “race�, then it’s pretty unlikely that you will have suffered much discrimination due to it.
Whoops, I just deleted my own comment. Of course not, FDB, but we’re talking about groups now not individuals.
Yes, for a white child to not to go to uni because a black child with less ability gets in thanks to AA — well it sucks to be the white kid. But, in general, not as much as it sucks to be a black person born into a racist society in the first place.
I don’t think AA is the perfect solution to every problem and as I said, disadvantage is a complicated equation that cuts across race/class/gender. A black person from a middle class background — say, someone like Condi Rice — is better off than a white person born into extreme poverty. If Condi Rice had a child, I would in no way suggest that that child should benefit from affirmative action policies. But nor should that child be denied anything due to their skin colour.
I still don’t think calling AA ‘racist’ is useful or helpful. AA is not being used to keep white people, as a group, disadvantaged. AA is not about black people being better than white people. AA is not about black people trying to maintain a power differential over white people. AA tries to counter-act the discrimination against black people that has existed and still exists in the US, and when it is applied in Australia, the same deal applies.
There’s another conflation here – as Anna implies – the biological notion of race (look, I tested my DNA!) and the social reality of racism.
Yes Kim which made me think of notions of ‘passing’.
Yes, me too, Kate.
Of course, “passing” also demonstrates how socially constructed the whole thing is – as lighter skinned people who can “pass” as white often faced social ostracism from their darker skinned families/communities.
Yes, I understand all that, and as I said I support affirmative action. I was just pointing out a side-effect which I see as unavoidable. And unpleasant. It’s a shit of a world when unfairness must be institutionalised to combat a greater unfairness. But it should, nonetheless.
It’s just that unlike a most things I believe in, it has this yucky aftertaste.
Clearly, any AA sheme should still be means-tested, in the sense that if you’ve never had to suffer much racial discrimination you should be eligible.
And certainly not if you need a lab to work out your race.
Like the cheapo scotch I had last night.
INeligible
Kate,
My point is they aren’t rorting the system. The system is set up this way.
In the example I gave the people do really consider themselves aboriginal and to qualify, as I understand it, have to be accepted by a community as aboriginal, which they have. They would consider themselves aboriginal without the money, although you’ll take it if you can get it. However the point remains they in no way face the discrimination that these programs are meant to address.
I agree with Anna that AA is a blunt instrument and I agree with its goals. I do think though we can do better, and that targetting purely economic disadvantage would be a preferable way to go.
To the extent that modern political spheres were built on the image of a particular person (Anglo, male, able bodied etc.) I think having schemes like Abstudy set up to catch those at the margins is completely worthwhile. Though I do agree with Steve that there is a need for schemes purely for the economically disadvantaged, but I don’t see why these couldn’t compliment existing schemes rather than replace them.
I saw an episode of Living Black the other night. It’s pretty eye opening stuff for naive liberals like myself.
Yes but economic disadvantage isn’t the only sort of disadvantage that exists Steve. Suppose you come from a middle class family and you’re black and you try to go to a uni only the admission person decides because you’re black, you’re more likely to drop out and become a drug user/criminal? So there’s no point even admitting that person even if they’re results are ok? In this case it’s not a question of financial aid but
I’ll admit it’s not a very good example but my point is that racism isn’t just about poverty, it’s about attitudes, and in part, AA is also designed to combat certain structural attitudes.
A better example is equal employment opportunity legislation in Australia, which is meant to stop people from saying: “I won’t hire such and such because she’s aboriginal and we all know they’re lazy.”
The point isn’t that people are being rewarded for being black or aboriginal, it’s that initial disparities in opportunity are being redressed and attitudes are being forced to change.
Anyway, I do think AA and EEO is open to being misused. Unfortunately, I think it’s unfortunate that people attack AA rather than attacking the reasons why we have AA in the first place. Fix inequality, and we wouldn’t need to have affirmative action, and no-one could rort it or misuse it.
(Yes yes fantasyland and all but hopefully you get my point.)
Kate, I don’t think your examples are very clear. For a start, I don’t know if there is any problem with EEO legislation (other than the occasional bit of nuisance litigation). AA isn’t so much about attitudes as about encouraging participation in areas where certain groups are traditionally under-represented. A problem arises when those who aren’t necessarily disadvantaged can claim membership of the group and get a free ride, which diverts resources from those whom the policy is meant to benefit. A moral hazard (in the economic sense) can also occur when the policy provides a disincentive to higher academic achievement at school because a university place is more-or-less guaranteed by virtue of group membership.
It might be worth thinking a little about the mixture of motives behind affirmative action admissions policies among the top shelf American colleges. Some of these institutions are concerned to get and keep a mix of races among the student body primarily because without it they cannot maintain their own power and authority and prestige. Imagine how it would impinge on the political influence of say the Harvard or Yale or Princeton alumni network if those places did not make a point of visibly extending the privilege of their education to non-WASP students?
That’s right, Laura. However, it is not only an image issue. Those big American private institutions have their own sense of noblesse oblige, and I expect that a substantial number of privately-funded scholarships come with strings attached in terms of target beneficiaries. Don’t forget that there are many ‘historically black’ universities as well, largely privately funded.
I think Laura mentioned on another thread the way Princeton etc. feel just a tad guilty about having not admitted Jews til well into the 20th century…
Kim – and so they should! I’m not having a go at affirmative action, just saying that it can have perverse results. You don’t junk a whole idea because of moral hazard, otherwise the insurance industry wouldn’t exist. But you do need to keep an eye on it to ensure your plan does what it’s meant to do. That’s why insurers ask so many questions.
Bismarck, I haven’t kept up with it, but there’s been quite a lot of tweaking with AA in the States over the last few years as a result of both Supreme Court decisions and concerns about unintended consequences. If anyone’s really interested, it’d be worth putting some time in to research this. It certainly isn’t as simple as “add x to your SAT score if you’re a minority” nowadays…
The story dk.au linked for us would seem to suggest that intercultural adoption isn’t generally factored into AA calculations, right? I wonder how comfortably off you need to be in the USA to be permitted to adopt a baby from outside the country.
With university admission in particular the benefits of AA (when it works well) should work to counter both the individual’s personal disadvantage (past) and the community’s unbalanced distribution of minorities in hierarchies of power (future). If the intention is to get more people of colour into higher positions then I guess it’s irrelevant how privileged the individual’s background is.
True Bismarck but I was trying to address the idea of removing AA and just addressing economic disadvantage, as suggested by Steve. I was trying to suggest that economics is only a part of the equation. Clumsily.
Good points Laura.
Affirmative Action programs, irrespective of their merits, have an ability to create a backlash. Of course this doesn’t mean they should be abandoned altogether. Nonetheless I would argue that a badly constructed AA program might be worse than none at all.
I have no problem with affirmative action for Aboriginals, but I think that affirmative action for women is now only appropriate in a very narrow set of circumstances. For instance, I would have no problem with AA to get more women into trades like plumbing and carpentry (provided such a demand exists).
I have mostly worked in the Australian Public Service (APS) and the official EEO target groups are women, Aboriginals and people from a non-English speaking background. I’m fine with the latter two but the first no longer seems appropriate. In my 15 years in the APS I never detected any bias against females being promoted nor did I hear any women complain of such a bias.
I also find it hard to believe that a female from a wealthy family who went to an elite private school and then on to Melbourne University is disadvantaged against a poor white trash male from a dysfunctional family in the boondocks.
Ardent female supporters of Affirmative Action in the Victorian Greens caused serious divisions in the party in the lead up to the last Federal election. I’ll leave that story for another post!
Steve, it’s not necessarily bias that’s at issue with regard to female employment. It’s got to do with how female employment is overwhelmingly concentrated in occupations with “soft skills” as opposed to “hard skills” which are paid less and valued less. There’s a whole range of social factors causing this, including women’s own socialisation as to their employment choices.
It’s worth looking at some stats on public sector employment. I haven’t had time to do lots of research, but here’s two quick papers we can set side by side.
First, it’s true that of the statistical employment categories, government administration is one of the more gender equal.
Secondly, and to qualify this, research on the Queensland public sector found that women were concentrated in the lower paid “soft skills” occupations.
I’d be surprised if the picture were radically different in the APS, but you could always go looking for some figures to test it.
Well, no doubt it is hard to believe. But this is the rub – AA programs concentrate on addressing structural disadvantage (that is, disadvantage suffered by large statistically measurable groups) not on comparing individuals. The unintended consequences and controversy usually comes from the interface between the two.
The problem with affirmative action is that it supposed to be implicit evidence of a racist society. In fact, it’s evidence of a society that is losing all identity of itself. It’s an act of self-subversion.
In what sense?
I think with a moniker like ‘thordaddy’ we know what to expect, Kim {cringe…)
Yeah, quite possibly, Jason!
The Human Genome Project and the New York Times and Nature seems to be guilty of the ghastly sin of bio-reductionism. Obviously these rotten conservative biological realists should just shut up and leave the field open to constructivist sociological idealists who have done such a brilliant job figuring out what makes people tick.
Long live Comrade Lysenko and Citizen Derrida!
That must be the shorter version of the Euston Manifesto.
Glad you checked in, Cmdr Reducto. Now point me to the clinical applications of the HGP, and we’ll be on our way to perpetual motion city.
Oh, we were promised a brave new world! We were promised …
Jason,
Thor is my middle name and daddy is my occupation. Is there something you would like to say about this or would you like to address what was said about AA and the reason “liberals” and its minions cling to it like Linus does his blanket?
If we don’t have AA then how can liberals imply our racist society?
I apologise for reading too much into your moniker, thordaddy.
You can check out more of thordaddy’s schtick at Antievolution Forum
Wash your hands afterwards, kiddies.