Genetics and the Unsettled Past: The Collision of DNA, Race, and History

371 Pages·2012·1.48 MB·English

by  Keith Wailoo, Alondra Nelson and Catherine Lee (eds)

Genetics and the Unsettled Past
Rutgers Studies in Race and Ethnicity
Controversies in race and ethnicity cannot be fully understood through a single
analytical lens or disciplinary approach. Such issues require sustained, collabora-
tive analysis—drawing on insights from law to history, from sociology to literature,
from labor studies to anthropology, from political science to health-related
scholarship, and from biology to cultural studies. Focusing primarily on edited
volumes, the series aims to bring multiple theories, methods, and approaches to
bear on how racial and ethnic politics, identity, culture, structures, and social
relations function in the modern world. Through innovative critical commentary
and sustained policy engagement, this series encourages scholarship aimed at
expanding and deepening the study of these issues in the United States and
around the globe. Organized by the Rutgers Center for Race and Ethnicity, the
series is an outgrowth of the breadth, depth, and strength of the field at the
University and is committed to new collaborative scholarship that bridges bound-
aries. Readers will find a deep and expansive understanding of the intricate and
often unrecognized ways in which race and ethnicity shapes and is shaped by
modern societies.
Series Editors: Keith Wailoo, Karen M. O’Neill, Mia Bay, and Lisa Miller
Keith Wailoo, Karen M. O’Neill, Jeffrey Dowd, and Roland Anglin, eds., Katrina’s
Imprint: Race and Vulnerability in America
Keith Wailoo, Alondra Nelson, and Catherine Lee, eds., Genetics and the Unsettled
Past: The Collision of DNA, Race, and History
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Genetics and the
Unsettled Past
The Collision of DNA,
Race, and History
EDITED BY
KEITH WAILOO
ALONDRA NELSON
CATHERINE LEE
(cid:2)(cid:2)(cid:2)(cid:2)(cid:2)(cid:2)(cid:2)(cid:2)(cid:2)(cid:2)(cid:2)(cid:2)(cid:2)(cid:2)(cid:2)(cid:2)(cid:2)(cid:2)(cid:2)(cid:2)(cid:2)(cid:2)(cid:2)
RUTGERS UNIVERSITY PRESS
NEW BRUNSWICK, NEW JERSEY, AND LONDON
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Genetics and the unsettled past : the collision of DNA, race, and history / edited by
Keith Wailoo, Alondra Nelson, and Catherine Lee.
p. cm. — (Rutgers studies in race and ethnicity)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978–0–8135–5254–5(hardcover : alk. paper) — ISBN 978–0–8135–5255–2
(pbk. : alk. paper) — ISBN 978–0–8135–5336–8(e-book)
1. Human population genetics. 2. Genomics. 3. Gene mapping. 4. Genetic
markers. 5. Race. 6. Ethnicity. I. Wailoo, Keith. II. Nelson, Alondra.
III. Lee, Catherine.
GN289.G463 2012
611(cid:2).0181663—dc23
2011023491
A British Cataloging-in-Publication record for this book is available
from the British Library.
This collection copyright © 2012by Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
Individual chapters copyright © 2012in the names of their authors
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means,
electronic or mechanical, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without
written permission from the publisher. Please contact Rutgers University Press, 100Joyce
Kilmer Avenue, Piscataway, NJ 08854–8099. The only exception to this prohibition is
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Visit our Web site: rutgerspress.rutgers.edu
Manufactured in the United States of America
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction: Genetic Claims and the Unsettled Past 1
KEITH WAILOO, ALONDRA NELSON, AND
CATHERINE LEE
PART ONE
History, Race, and the Genome Era
1
Who Am I? Genes and the Problem of Historical Identity 13
KEITH WAILOO
2
Reconciliation Projects: From Kinship to Justice 20
ALONDRA NELSON
3
The Unspoken Significance of Gender in Constructing Kinship,
Race, and Nation 32
CATHERINE LEE
PART TWO
Decoding the Genomic Age
4
A Biologist’s Perspective on DNA and Race in the
Genomics Era 43
ABRAM GABRIEL
5
The Dilemma of Classification: The Past in the Present 67
LUNDY BRAUN AND EVELYNN HAMMONDS
6
The Informationalization of Race: Communication,
Databases, and the Digital Coding of the Genome 81
PETER A. CHOW-WHITE
v
vi CONTENTS
7
Forensic DNA Phenotyping: Continuity and Change in the
History of Race, Genetics, and Policing 104
PAMELA SANKAR
8
Forensic DNA and the Inertial Power of Race in American
Legal Practice 114
JONATHAN KAHN
9
Making History via DNA, Making DNA from History:
Deconstructing the Race-Disease Connection in Admixture
Mapping 143
RAMYA RAJAGOPALAN AND JOAN H. FUJIMURA
10
Waiting on the Promise of Prescribing Precision: Race in the
Era of Pharmacogenomics 164
SANDRA SOO-JIN LEE
PART THREE
Stories Told in Blood
11
French Families, Paper Facts: Genetics, Nation, and Explanation 183
NINA KOHLI-LAVEN
12
Categorization, Census, and Multiculturalism:
Molecular Politics and the Material of Nation 204
AMY HINTERBERGER
13
“It’s a Living History, Told by the Real Survivors of the
Times—DNA”: Anthropological Genetics in the Tradition of
Biology as Applied History 225
MARIANNE SOMMER
14
Cells, Genes, and Stories: HeLa’s Journey from Labs to
Literature 247
PRISCILLA WALD
15
The Case of the Genetic Ancestor 266
JENNIFER A. HAMILTON
16
Making Sense of Genetics, Culture, and History:
A Case Study of a Native Youth Education Program 279
MICHELLE M. JACOB
17
Humanitarian DNA Identification in Post-Apartheid
South Africa 295
JAY D. ARONSON
CONTENTS vii
Conclusions: The Unsettled Past
18
Forbidden or Forsaken? The (Mis)Use of a Forbidden
Knowledge Argument in Research on Race, DNA, and
Disease 315
REANNE FRANK
19
Genetic Claims and Credibility: Revisiting History and
Remaking Race 325
KEITH WAILOO, CATHERINE LEE, AND
ALONDRA NELSON
Contributors 335
Index 341

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Drawn together by a common interest in race, history, and science, the editors
of this volume—Keith Wailoo, Alondra Nelson, and Catherine Lee—along with
Mia Bay, organized a conference on “Race, DNA, and History” in late 2007. Sub-
missions for the conference came in from scholars across many disciplines,
indicating the ways in which questions concerning the genetic view of race
stretched across fields in the humanities, social sciences, the sciences, and the
professions. The essays in this collection were among the most compelling essays
in the conference, and a subsequent meeting of the authors transformed the
often disparate questions of race, genes, and history across law, medicine, culture,
and society into one multidimensional conversation. This book is the product of
those rich conversations tracking the unfolding problems of genes and identity.
We must first thank Mia Bay for her contributions toward the conceptualization
and organization of the conference. Helpful as well were the contributions of
Eviatar Zerubavel, Nadia Abu El-Haj, Julie Livingston, Stephen Pemberton,
Ann Jurecic, and Sumit Guha. The logistical challenges of the conferences and
planning the volume were deftly handled by Mia Kissil, the senior program
coordinator at Rutgers Center for Race and Ethnicity. We could not have held the
conference nor put together this volume without the financial support of the
Center for Race and Ethnicity and Rutgers University more generally. The center
also provided sustained commentary, insight, and organizational energy of the
graduate research assistants over many years who offered incisive comments and
administrative support. They are: Jill Campaiola, Elizabeth Reich, Simone
Delerme, Sonja Thomas, Anantha Sudhakar, Jeffrey Dowd, Dora Vargha, Bridget
Gurtler, Fatimah Williams-Castro, Melissa Stein, Stephanie Jones-Rogers, Fred
Hanna, Isra Ali, Nadia Brown, Dana Brown, and finally, Shakti Jaising, who offered
extraordinary editorial insight at multiple stages of this project. We are also grate-
ful for the helpful evaluations of two anonymous reviewers for their critical
questions and trenchant comments. We also wish to thank the Russell Sage
Foundation, the James S. McDonnell Foundation (Centennial Fellowship in the
History of Science), Yale University, Columbia University, Rutgers University,
colleagues in the Rutgers History Department and Sociology Department, and
the Institute for Health, Health Care Policy, and Aging Research for many years of
ix