Introduction:BiologizingCulture/CulturingBiology 33
them some coming from the purportedly most advanced and most
prestigious field of scientific research. The Human Genome Project has
revealedthat99.9percentofthegeneticequipmentofhumansisshared
byall(Jones622;Holt11).^25 Thereisawidespreadscholarlyconsensus
todaythat"race"cannotanddoesnothaveanunequivocal,scientifically
established biological foundation. Racial skeptics such as Kwame
Anthony Appiah (1995, 1996) or Naomi Zack (1993, 2002) argue that
because races have found to be non-existent, the term itself should also
be taken out of use. Race constructivists, on the other hand, insist that
sinceracializedconstructs,evenifbiologicallynonexistent,stillexistin
"human culture and human decisions" (Mallon 94), where they produce
material differences in life chances so that the term should be kept in
use. As Terrence Epperson says: "Race may not be real, but racism is"
(103). Overall, "in U.S. culture, the fiction of race continues to operate
as a fact" (Zack qtd. in Jones 612), as one of the most salient ways in
which social inequality in the U.S. is arranged and lived, in
biointersectional contexts, without sufficient access even to elementary
socialservices.Inthisfashionandevenafterits"natural"basishaslong
been discredited and the historical conditions of its emergence in
European Enlightenment no longer exist, race nonetheless has
"survived," has (been) reproduced in many forms and guises and thus
"perpetuate[s]itselfeveninthemomentofitsdisavowal"(Surin10).^26
Among the mostrecentforms and guises in which this is the case is
genome research concerned with those 0.01 percent of genetic
equipment not shared by other human beings. African Americans (and
otherpeopleofcolor)thusgetsimplicatedinawholenewpoliticsoflife
that is developing in the shadow of molecular biology. Richard Jones
lists among the areas of inquiry that a revised, bioreflective
25
QuitetheoppositehasbeenarguedbyTheNewYorkTimessciencejournalist
Nicholas Wade in his highly controversial bookTroublesome Inheritance
(2014). His principal argument is that there is a genetic basis for race which is,
however,disavowedinthespiritofpoliticalcorrectness. 26
SuchadisavowalwasatstakeinthedebateinitiatedbyDavidA.Hollinger's
reflections on a post-ethnic resp. post-racial America. Cf. Hollinger, David A.
"Obama,theInstabilityofColorLines,andthePromiseofaPostethnicFuture."
Callaloo:AJournalofAfricanDiasporaArtsandLetters31.4 (2008): 1033-37.
Print.