Abstract
We begin with a typology of Americans’ understanding of the links between genetic inheritance and racial or ethnic groups. The typology has two dimensions: one running from genetic determinism to social construction, and the other from technology optimism to technology pessimism. Construing each dimension as a dichotomy enables four distinct political perspectives on the possibilities for reducing racial inequality in the United States through genomics. We then use a new public opinion survey to analyze Americans’ use of the typology. Survey respondents who perceive that some phenotypes are more prevalent in one group than another due to genetic factors are disproportionately technology optimists. Republicans and Democrats are equally likely to hold that set of views, as are self-identified blacks, whites, and Latinos. The article discusses the findings and speculates about alternative interpretations of the fact that partisanship and group identity do not differentiate Americans in their views of the links between genetic inheritance and racial inequality.
Highlights
Challenges surrounding the design of large-scale genotyping projects ... illustrate the complexities and ambiguities associated with the use of group labels in genomic research
The questions for this article are, How do Americans currently perceive links between genetic inheritance and race or ethnicity? How do they evaluate the societal role of genomic science? and How are those understandings related to group-based hierarchy? The importance of these questions lies in the possibility that Americans can use genomic science to develop a new framing for linking genomics and race or ethnicity “without reaffirming old prejudices”—as contrasted with the possibility that some Americans will use genomic science to recreate old tropes that portray other Americans as inherently, biologically different and inferior
The second is affective, ranging from technology optimism to technology pessimism about societal uses of genomic science. Construing these dimensions as dichotomies enables us to construct a stylized 2 x 2 table, in which each cell presents a distinctive way to understand and evaluate the role of genetic explanations in societal discourse. We use this typology to organize an analysis of a new public opinion survey with a focus on Americans’ views of whether some diseases, traits, or behaviors are more prevalent in one racial or ethnic groupi than others due to genetic factors.ii In the third section, we discuss the results of that analysis to shed light on major social groupings’ views of the links between genetics and race or ethnicity
Summary
Challenges surrounding the design of large-scale genotyping projects ... illustrate the complexities and ambiguities associated with the use of group labels in genomic research. For this article we analyze responses to two sets of GKAP questions: on perceptions that certain phenotypes are highly prevalent in a particular racial or ethnic group due to genetic inheritance, and on pessimism or optimism about the impact of societal use of particular forms of genomics research.
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