Traitism

The availability of home genetic testing kits has made it possible for large numbers of people to explore their ethnic and racial backgrounds. These tests sometimes yield surprising results, and people find that their genetic backgrounds differ from their assumed family histories and beliefs about their heritage. For example, someone who's name, family lore, and known histories are Italian are surprised to learn that their genetic origin is only 20 or 30% "Italian." While such findings may result in subjective surprise, the phenomenon itself is not unexpected. Over the centuries, persons whose remote family origins were from such places as Gaul, central or eastern Europe, northern Africa, Greece or the Middle East may have had occasion to live in Italy. While someone whose family has Italian roots that go back tens of generations understandably considers himself to be of Italian origin, that period of time is insufficient to Italicize genes that originated elsewhere. One would not expect a person who traces both parental lineages to early settlers of Alabama to be genetically Alabamian.

If one accords the theory of evolution, and origin of species credibility, one may suspect that very few people belong to a formal race at all. It may be recalled that Darwin's opus "On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection" had a subtitle, and this was "The Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life." Putting aside for the moment that the concept of a "favored race" is disquieting in contemporary discourse, the theory remains that race arises in populations that interact in a geographically defined area with a relatively stable environment over many generations. If a person is able to trace both parental lineages to such an area and environment over hundreds of generations it is reasonable to ascribe a defined "race" to that person. If, however, in such history an ancestor had origins that did not fill these conditions the concept of race makes less sense. The notion of "mixed race" would seem to be of little utility since there are virtually innumerable ways that such mixing may occur. This would seem to create problems for modern racial issues since only full siblings might be expected to have the same racial background. If all of a person's ancestors save one, through 50 generations, came from the same region of Scotland, it matters if that single exception occurred 22 as opposed to 20 generations ago, at least in terms of the fundamental idea of race.

The foregoing is significant only to the extent that one attaches significance to strict details of race, what race means and where race comes from. This however is not apparent from contemporary discussions of race. When people discuss matters of race, to distinguish the experiences of what our only colloquially referred to as races, what is actually of importance are racial traits. Barack Obama, whose mother was white, or at least appeared white, noted that if he was trying to hail a cab, he was black. This notion gets amplified when issues that are nominally racial are infused with the notion of "lived experience." If someone has significant outward racial traits, suggesting for example that they are from a far Eastern race, and their life experiences are culturally and ethnically Japanese, it may seem quite natural for them to adopt racial interests that are associated with the Japanese, even though their genetic background may include a significant amount of Swedish or German DNA. The person's subjective experience is Japanese; however what is perceived by others are traits. When we discuss treating people differently based on race, we are discussing no more than treating them differently based on racial traits. Let's call it traitism and realize that racial traits vary even among persons considered to be of the same race.

It may seem that this is a merely academic or semantic discussion, however it does have some bearing on the way racial issues are treated in contemporary discourse. For example, when certain academicians talk about racial disparities in intelligence, personality and behavior, these discussions would appear to make unjustified assumptions about how inherently isolated races are. Attempts to correlate traits with racial characteristics would seem to be exceedingly difficult given that a person of one racial background can produce fertile offspring by mating with someone from a different racial background. The genetic variation introduced by sexual reproduction makes one wonder why someone would try to detect variances in populations that are not clearly defined.

This also has implications for the epithet of "racism" since the concept of race is too malleable for serious people to use as a basis of discrimination. As mentioned, racial traits are therefore used as a surrogate, but even these traits very significantly, even among siblings. The upshot of this is that solemn conversations about race, racial disparities, and other significant issues produce diminishing returns. If one were to treat someone who has one quarter African ancestry the same as someone who has 100% African ancestry, the matter of African ancestry would seem to be rather irrelevant. This is in fact most likely the case, as the concept of human dignity and basic humanity does not require, nor even accommodate, considerations of either race or racial traits. The more that people of different racial backgrounds or with different racial traits interact and produce offspring, the more ridiculous discussion of "race" become. The lazy epithets of "racism" or "racist" would become anachronisms if people would attend first to respecting and recognizing the humanity of the people they encounter in their everyday lives regardless of race, rather than indulging in abstract doctrines and identity politics grievances.