How Richard Lewontin's (1929-2021) Work Weakened The Case For Race Being A Biological Category

Read part one of this three-part series here:

In the early 1970s, scientists had developed methods that allowed them to quantify genetic diversity with exceptionally high accuracy. In 1972, Lewontin published a paper 'The Apportionment of Human Diversity.' Using the then available advanced molecular genetic technologies, he studied 17 polymorphic sites in seven 'races' which were: Caucasian, Black African, Mongoloid, South Asian aborigines, Amerinds, Oceanians and Australian aborigines.

The year was 1972. Four years earlier Rev. Martin Luther King had been assassinated. The Civil Rights Movement was challenging the racial prejudices in the social milieu of the United States. Lewontin's above-mentioned paper in 'Evolutionary Biology' had carved a niche for itself in the humanist emancipation movement in the West. The concluding lines of Lewontin in that paper have become a sort of declaration of human emancipation:

Not all in the science community agreed though. Even so, not all who disagreed were racists. While calling this view of Lewontin as the 'near-universal orthodoxy in scientific circles', Richard Dawkins nevertheless agrees with two key points. One: that our perception of relatively large differences between the human race is indeed a biased perception; and two: that human racial classification is of no social value and is positively destructive of social and human relations. But where he disagrees is with the statement of Lewontin that race is of 'virtually no genetic or taxonomic significance.‘ (The Ancestor's Tale A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution, 2005, pp.406-7)

In 2004, geneticists Lynn Jorde and Stephen Wooding of the School of Medicine of University of Utah reviewed the results of genetic analyses that dealt with larger data than that of Lewontin. They arrived at three important points:

(1) that humans are genetically homogeneous;

(2) that whatever variations exist are 'geographically structured, as expected from the partial isolation of human populations during much of their history' and 'as traditional concepts of race are in turn correlated with geography, it is inaccurate to state that race is 'biologically meaningless'' and;

In plain language, there are genetic differences between populations that are relatively geographically isolated and hence to that extent these populations have genetic significance. At the same time, there has always been gene flow between these populations and hence the concept of race as a completely distinct entities is wrong.

It is not that are no biologically significant variations among localized populations. There are. Evolutionary biologist and botanist Massimo Pigliucci and philosopher of science Jonathan Kaplan point out:

But these 'significant biological races', Pigliucci and Kaplan particularly point 'have little or nothing in common with folk races'. They even propose that the word 'race' be dropped and the term 'ecotype' be used.

What is ultimately important is that the essentialist conceptualization of human races which spread like contagion throughout the world, affecting our societies, interpersonal relations etc., permeating political discourse and creating extreme human suffering, today has lost its basis in genetics.

Up till now, we have only dealt with Lewontin's genuine scientific feats. However, by political belief, he was a Marxist. In the third and final part of this series, read how a great biologist allowed Marxism to colour his scientific view.