Beyond a Shared History: A Biosocial Perspective on Sociogenomics and Racism in Germany

Abstract

AbstractRecent advances in sociogenomics offer new opportunities to integrate genetic and epigenetic measures into social science research on human lifespan development. Now, German social science cohorts have followed suit with this global trend. We anticipate that the integration of genetic measures into German social science cohorts is likely to be met with hesitation and dismay. Historically, racialized pseudo-science disguised as genetic research was used to justify the political exploitation, oppression, and genocide conducted by colonial and Nazi Germany regimes. In response, German institutions and social sciences actively avoided race-related research. However, avoiding the intersection of socially constructed race and genetics may stall the deconstruction of enduring racial discrimination and the identification of racialized social inequalities. Recent survey studies show that half of the German population still believe in the existence of biologically distinct human “races” and that racism is rampant. This article is aimed at providing a biosocial perspective on sociogenomics and racism in Germany. First, we discuss the biologistic construction of race that became prevalent in colonial and Nazi Germany. We argue that racist legacies are sources of social inequality in contemporary German society. We further review recent human genomic science that clearly demonstrates that there is no biological basis to socially constructed race. Second, we propose a biosocial perspective that integrates how genes “get out of the skin” and racism “gets under the skin”. Transactional genetic effects, which involve human behavior and interactions between people in society, are expected to depend on environmental inequalities tied to systemic racism. We summarize recent sociogenomics studies using polygenic indices and epigenetic profile scores showing that a) genes contribute to complex human traits and b) the expression of genetic variation is affected by socioeconomic and racialized inequality. Finally, we offer a roadmap toward race-critical biosocial research that breaks with the historically informed avoidance of race to reconstruct race-critical concepts, datasets, and scientific systems.