3 Is race about ancestry?
One answer to the question ‘what is race?’ is that race is a matter of ancestry. The idea that race has something to do with ancestry is fairly widespread, and you might find this idea appealing. After all, people often think of someone’s race as connected to their parents’ and grandparents’ race. It could also be that ancestry itself is a proxy for genetics: that race is really about genetic differences between groups. Some might argue that ancestry is a good proxy because these genetic differences arose out of the migration of different groups of humans to various parts of the globe. This kind of thinking – that race is about genetic differences, and ancestry is a good proxy for this – is widespread.
Access to at-home DNA tests that claim to provide information about our ancestry is a good illustration of the common assumption that race is determined by biology – specifically, genetics (and thereby ancestry). There have been several cases of people taking these tests and reporting their surprise at finding out they are ‘really’ another race than the one they thought they were. If someone thinks that a DNA test can tell them what race they ‘really’ are, then this suggests that they think race has something to do with genetics (and, therefore, ancestry).
If race is a matter of ancestry, then the racial categories that really exist are those that are based on differences in ancestry. Furthermore, what race an individual is will depend on facts about their ancestry. Finding out about someone’s ancestry will tell you what race that person ‘really’ is.
Ancestry seems to play some role in many people’s understanding of what race is. However, this doesn’t necessarily mean that race is fundamentally a matter of ancestry, or that what makes someone a particular race is their ancestry.
One objection to race being a matter of ancestry comes from Joshua Glasgow (2019). Glasgow thinks there is a mismatch between how people can be grouped based on ancestry, and how people are generally grouped based on race. Such a mismatch could arise in a case where, for example, someone was classified as Black by others based on their physical appearance, but a DNA ancestry test revealed that they have majority European ancestry.
Glasgow emphasises this point by introducing a thought experiment.
Thought experiments
Thought experiments are hypothetical or imaginary scenarios that are used to put an idea or position to the test. Thought experiments are common in philosophy, and can play an important role in philosophical arguments. Thought experiments can allow us to think through the potential consequences of a particular position, claim or principle. Reasoning in this way can clarify our intuitions, bring to our attention inconsistencies or tensions between claims, or demonstrate consequences of a claim.
This is Glasgow’s thought experiment: imagine that one day, because of a chemical introduced to the water supply, the physical appearance of everyone in the world is transformed, so everyone looks like the Dalai Lama. In this thought experiment, there are no longer any visible physical differences. However, there are still facts about people’s ancestry – some people have recent ancestry from Africa, some from Asia, and so on. Are there still races? Glasgow thinks not: according to his definition, races must have visible physical differences – race is about how we look. So, once everyone looks the same, races would no longer exist. Someone who thinks that race is based on ancestry would think that races do continue to exist, because differences in ancestry continue to exist.