Advances in genetic sequencing are giving rise to a new era of scientific racism, despite decades of efforts to reverse attitudes used to justify the slave trade and Nazi theology, experts said on Friday.

New forms of discrimination, known as neoracism, are taking hold in scientific research, spreading the belief that races exist and are different in terms of biology, behavior and culture, according to anthropologists who spoke at the annual American Association for the Advancement of Science conference in Chicago.

"Genome science can help us a lot in the individualization of medical practice," said Nina Jablonski, an anthropology professor at The Pennsylvania State University.

But she warned that science could be "misused" to propagate the belief that people inherently have different abilities based on skin color or ethnic background.

She cited new research urging that children be identified based on their genetically predetermined educational abilities and then put in separate schools that could be used to foster different kinds of learning.

"We have heard this before and it is incredibly worrying," she said, recalling the segregation era when blacks and whites were schooled separately and African Americans were considered inferior.

A matter of distortion?

"The educationalists who are proposing this meant this in a positive way but it is something that could be easily distorted if it were implemented."

Many distinguished scientists in the United States recognize that race itself is not a biological variable, but they still buy into the notion that shared ancestry can impart certain biological characteristics, said Joseph Graves, an associate dean for research at the University of North Carolina.

Published research has shown that blacks are more likely than whites to have a blood type that causes sickle cell disease and can protect against malaria, and are more likely to have a certain gene called APOL1, which protects against a parasite that causes sleeping sickness.

While Graves did not dispute these findings, he said it is wrong to imply that genetic differences account for the vast health disparities between whites and blacks.

"The assumption is that African ancestry predisposes one to greater disease and mortality profiles in the United States," Graves said at the conference.

"This is what I call the myth of the genetically sick African."

Instead, social factors are more likely to blame for poorer health among blacks in the United States, he said.

"Americans continually conflate socially defined and biological conceptions of race," Graves added. "Neoracism results in part from this confusion."

Another concern is the ancestry tests that are now commonly sold online, a trend which feeds the notion that one's ethnic heritage may indicate the state of one's health, said Yolanda Moses, a cultural anthropologist at the University of California, describing these tests as "misleading."

Race and criminal justice

Over the past decade, the expansion of DNA databases which include genetic profiles from people arrested -- but not convicted of crimes -- is also a concern, she said.

"Genetics have a profound impact on race and the criminal justice system," she said.

Ironically, a new focus on race as a basis for genomics began when the National Institutes of Health -- the world's largest funder of research -- mandated all its genetic studies to have as diverse a representation as possible, in an effort to eliminate health disparities and include more people of color in clinical trials.

When the Human Genome Project first started in the 1980s, this was not the case.

"We went from a world where genome mappers did not want to touch race with a 10-foot pole, to one in which projects and drugs could no longer survive without reframing their reason for being as a minority rights campaign," said Catherine Bliss, assistant professor of sociology at the University of California, San Francisco.

"What we have is an ethical and a fiscal pressure to racialize research and applications across the board," she said.

Source: Agence France-Presse
http://news.discovery.com/human/genetics/new-forms-of-racism-arising-in-research-140215.htm

well there definitely are races and they are genetic/biological definitions. There are health "predispositions that are related to race. They are updated and refined from time to time but anyway anyone who thinks "race" does not exist is existing in a dream

but race is no reason - no excuse for anything ability related or anything but equal treatment under the law

Actually the hypothesis you're making was published back in the 80s and soundly falsified by the scientific community, which used actual findings from tens of thousands of specimens taken all over the world, which clearly showed as much genetic variation within any "race" grouping as there exists outside the grouping.
That literally concludes that racial labelling is cosmetic and non-sequiteur.




@OP
This was predicted back in the 90s, it was termed "neo-Eugenics" back then.
What it ultimately relates to is an ill-informed but apparently well meaning social movement which has produced a pseudoscience combining urban celebrations like animal husbandry, pop-psychology and commercial-media cooked ideas about genetic research.
What it really boils down to is you just have to want to impose races, and then you try to find ways to argue yourself to satisfaction (delusion), at which point you tell others.
The whole thing is the product of racists that don't think they're racists. Real racists never do, they just pass laws for cosmetically selective sociopolitical infrastructure and shrug with their arms in the air when pickets result.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is a biomedical research facility primarily located in Bethesda, Maryland, USA. An agency of the United States Department of Health and Human Services, it is the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and health-related research. The NIH both conducts its own scientific research through its Intramural Research Program (IRP) and provides major biomedical research funding to non-NIH research facilities through its Extramural Research Program. With 1,200 principal investigators and more than 4,000 postdoctoral fellows in basic, translational, and clinical research, the IRP is the largest biomedical research institution on Earth,[2] while, as of 2003, the extramural arm provided 28% of biomedical research funding spent annually in the US, or about US$26.4 billion.[3]

One thing to keep bouncing in conscious thought when dealing with passionate topics which do have genuine scientific association, is that All Groupings Present Diverse Variation. Just as true for scientific direction and individual personal agenda within the same fields of science.
For example within archaeology, palaeontology and social sciences most of all exists distinct politics to such a degree that subcultures exist within the field with completely different opinions relating to the facts present.
In palaeoanthropology the British universities teach that hominid civilization began with the worship of religion, demonstrated by burial of the dead and construction of altars. The American universities teach that civilization began with the development of speech, significant of cognitive communication.
Makes for interesting arguments, and also means you can still disagree with a scientific opinion whilst being perfectly scientific, but it's uselful to have some peer reference or be prepared to show a lot of math.

Why do these things keep popping up? What is it in human nature, or what is it in society, that still lets these outcroppings spring up, in the learned circles in all places? From my own talks with people, racism is less tense with common people, but now these high docs. and all seem to be contorting their faces again whenever they see an apparent difference. If they had true eyes, they would not see this as anything other than different suitability, or small perks.