Shay-Akil McLean | University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (original) (raw)
Publications by Shay-Akil McLean
ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 2021
While “race is a social construction” has become a mantra in the U.S., contemporary racial format... more While “race is a social construction” has become a mantra in the U.S., contemporary racial formation theory and critiques of biological race concepts (BRCs) have yet to demonstrate this truism. This deadlock is most confounding in research on race(ist) health inequities and human genetics. Attempts to understand the relationships between race and differential health outcomes reproduce in lieu of disrupting racism and racialization. While some argue that race should be phased out of human genetics, others contend that the race variable is needed to highlight the effects of racism. With these issues in mind, I ask, “How do we study race without socially reproducing racism?”
In this dissertation project, I argue that the root of the problem is the use of ahistorical definitions and theories that separate race from racism and Euro-colonialism. Without critical historiography, scholars use incorrect information to understand how external conditions shape and produce the environments that racialized peoples live in. This problem extends to how geneticists model and describe contemporary patterns of human genetic variation. Consequently, scientific critiques of BRCs abandon the historical information needed to demonstrate the social construction of race/ism and the evolutionary thinking required to interpret human genetics.
Utilizing a Du Boisian historiography, I analyze dynamic events or sites of the social construction of race/ism to show how race is a product of racism, what I call race/ism. Race/ism is an issue of power, not phenotype. Created by and for Euro-imperialism, race/ism is a socio- political system that co-opts, marks, and groups people to regulate the reproduction and inheritance of “population-specific modes of colonial domination through time” (Wolfe 2016:10).
Using these insights, I analyze genetic and sociodemographic data collected in the Midwest region of the U.S. to isolate distinct variables often used as “race proxies” in genetics research: self-identified race/ethnicity, internalized response to externalized racialization, and genetic ancestry. Each race proxy captures the dynamic interactions of racialization, or rather, the doing of race/ism, structured by effective human actions and social milieux. I use genotype, phenotype, and sociodemographic data to explore the relationships between race/ism, blood pressure, and candidate polymorphisms associated with hypertension. I’m interested in the presence of gene by environment interactions (GEI) because they both refute reductionism and demonstrate complex relationships between genetics, biology, and society. Through modeling race/ism as an ecological phenomenon that shapes the conditions in which people live and die, I present an evo- ecosocial theory of disease distribution for understanding the biological consequences of race/ism.
Human Biology, 2020
Isolation-by-distance models are part of the institutional creed of antiracialism used to critiqu... more Isolation-by-distance models are part of the institutional creed of antiracialism used to critique claims of biological race concepts (BRCs). Proponents of antiracialism appeal to isolation-by-distance models to describe patterns of human genetic di ferences among and between groups as a function of distance. Isolation by distance has been referred to as the pattern that human genetic variation ts, distributing the di ferences we see as race throughout geographic space as a series of Gaussian gradients. Contemporary scienti c critiques of BRCs fuse social constructionist race concepts with a description of the distribution of proportions of human genetic variation in geographic space as a function of distance. These two points are often followed by statements noting that there is only one human race. How these two concepts connect to each other, and whether or not they connect at all, is unclear in both academic and nonacademic spaces. Consequently, scientists and the public lack an understanding of human population structure and its relationships to varying systems of human interactions. This article reviews isolation-by-distance models in population genetics and the use of these models in the modern problem of human di ference. The article presents a historical and conceptual review of isolation-by-distance models and contemporary scienti c critiques of BRCs, followed by examples of the use of isolation-by-distance models in studies of human genetic variation. To address the shortcomings in the scienti c critique of race, the author proposes combining Du Boisian demography with Darwinian evolutionary biology. From a Du Boisian demographic perspective, race is a product of racism, or race/ism, and is a heredity and inheritance system based on rules of partus sequitur ventrem and hypodescent. Race marks individuals and groups them to reproduce unequal relationships into which Europeans co-opted them. This synthesis propounds a new racial formation theory to understand the more general consequences of racism on genes and health outcomes. The greatest di culty we face is rst of all to excavate our actual history.-James Baldwin Contrary to what you may have heard or learned, the past is not done and it is not over, it's still in process, which is another way of saying that when it's critiqued, analyzed, it yields new information about itself.-Toni Morrison
Practicing Anthropology, 2020
While "race is a social construct" is a common saying, the meaning of social construction escapes... more While "race is a social construct" is a common saying, the meaning of social construction escapes contemporary scientific critiques of biological race concepts. As a result, the social construction of race is often not enough to challenge the proponents of biological race concepts. Now, even anti-racist racialists agree that race is a social construct while also being biologically based. Needed to address this problem is both a critical historiography of race and racism and evolutionary biology to understand the relationship between race, racism, bodies, and biology. In this paper, I demonstrate the importance of what I call the historical grounds of the social construction of race and racism. This is done by presenting a settler-colonial critique of racial formation theory revealing racism as the etiological foundation of race by reviewing the temporal relations between historical events central to the social construction of race and racism.
Social Problems, Structural Issues, and Unsettling Science, 2019
A descendant of displaced and dispossessed Africans, I was born in Tetiohoseró:ken (Buffalo, New ... more A descendant of displaced and dispossessed Africans, I was born in Tetiohoseró:ken (Buffalo, New York), occupied Tsonontowane'´ a:ka (Seneca) territory. I grew up in a low-income Black neighborhood in one of the poorest and most racially segregated cities in America. We never had much, but I had my library card. I spent my time reading, learning, experimenting, and asking too many questions. My good grades were not enough to keep me out of trouble. I was a multiply neuro-divergent child, misgendered at birth, in a low-income religious family racialized as Black. To avoid the consequences of rejecting patriarchal norms, I folded inward and was forced to perform colonial femininity. I am not, nor have I ever been, a Black woman. Being misgendered and treated like a Black woman is not akin to what my gender is, nor my sexuality. Identities and culture change; that is why I spoke about my experiences and sociopolitical positions without referring to them. These are issues of power, not identity. Performing race and projected racial nostalgias about identity have nothing to do with the value of my contributions to science. Bragging about progress and making me the face of their diversity initiatives is fine, as long as I don't actually say anything. To put it simply, counting racial identities will not upend a more than five-hundred-year-old settler-colonial system. As I grew into a scholar, I started asking questions about the co-constructive relationships between historically contingent political processes and the biology of humans, among other organisms. The denial of my self-determination by re-fashioned colonial domination coupled with a lifelong interest in biology have made me distinctly aware of the dangers of the dichotomy of ideal and problematic bodies in human biology. My first master's thesis sought to investigate the ways that racial residential segregation, food swamps, and poverty influenced dental health. Racism. Inequality. History. Biology of the human condition. My work was all of the things anthropology advertises on their glossy fliers featuring the smiling faces of many racialized peoples. My committee members, however, claimed that the connections I drew between racism, inequality , and health outcomes were baseless and insulting to the field of anthropology. Incoherently, I was then told that
AAPA Statement on Race & Racism, 2019
Executive Summary: Race does not provide an accurate representation of human biological variation... more Executive Summary: Race does not provide an accurate representation of human biological variation. It was never accurate in the past, and it remains inaccurate when referencing contemporary human populations. Humans are not divided biologically into distinct continental types or racial genetic clusters. Instead, the Western concept of race must be understood as a classification system that emerged from, and in support of, European colonialism, oppression, and discrimination. It thus does not have its roots in biological reality, but in policies of discrimination. Because of that, over the last five centuries, race has become a social reality that structures societies and how we experience the world. In this regard, race is real, as is racism, and both have real biological consequences.
Humans share the vast majority (99.9%) of our DNA in common. Individuals nevertheless exhibit substantial genetic and phenotypic variability. Genome/environment interactions, local and regional biological changes through time, and genetic exchange among populations have produced the biological diversity we see in humans today. Notably, variants are not distributed across our species in a manner that maps clearly onto socially-recognized racial groups. This is true even for aspects of human variation that we frequently emphasize in discussions of race, such as facial features, skin color and hair type. No group of people is, or ever has been, biologically homogeneous or “pure.” Furthermore, human populations are not — and never have been — biologically discrete, truly isolated, or fixed.
While race does not accurately represent the patterns of human biological diversity, an abundance of scientific research demonstrates that racism, prejudice against someone because of their race and a belief in the inherent superiority and inferiority of different racial groups, affects our biology, health, and well-being. This means that race, while not a scientifically accurate biological concept, can have important biological consequences because of the effects of racism. The belief in races as a natural aspect of human biology and the institutional and structural inequities (racism) that have emerged in tandem with such beliefs in European colonial contexts are among the most damaging elements in human societies.
A common trope in recent Black popular literature compares pastors and pimps on the grounds that ... more A common trope in recent Black popular literature
compares pastors and pimps on the grounds that
both collect money from their dependents. We frame
this comparison in terms of regimes of value
operating in U.S. inner cities, where the commercial
economy and legal system commonly fail to affirm
the personhood of the racialized poor. Drawing on
fieldwork in Buffalo, New York, we show that in
eliciting tithes and protection money, pastors and
pimps combine care and exploitation in ways that
assert the value of their own and others’ lives
against heavy odds. We extend the concept of
“human economy” developed by David Graeber to
these transactions, arguing that pimps and pastors
construe the money they gather in terms of its
power to recognize the value of the lives of givers,
askers, and receivers. [regimes of value,
Pentecostalism, charismatic gifts, care, human
economies, urban United States]
ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 2021
While “race is a social construction” has become a mantra in the U.S., contemporary racial format... more While “race is a social construction” has become a mantra in the U.S., contemporary racial formation theory and critiques of biological race concepts (BRCs) have yet to demonstrate this truism. This deadlock is most confounding in research on race(ist) health inequities and human genetics. Attempts to understand the relationships between race and differential health outcomes reproduce in lieu of disrupting racism and racialization. While some argue that race should be phased out of human genetics, others contend that the race variable is needed to highlight the effects of racism. With these issues in mind, I ask, “How do we study race without socially reproducing racism?”
In this dissertation project, I argue that the root of the problem is the use of ahistorical definitions and theories that separate race from racism and Euro-colonialism. Without critical historiography, scholars use incorrect information to understand how external conditions shape and produce the environments that racialized peoples live in. This problem extends to how geneticists model and describe contemporary patterns of human genetic variation. Consequently, scientific critiques of BRCs abandon the historical information needed to demonstrate the social construction of race/ism and the evolutionary thinking required to interpret human genetics.
Utilizing a Du Boisian historiography, I analyze dynamic events or sites of the social construction of race/ism to show how race is a product of racism, what I call race/ism. Race/ism is an issue of power, not phenotype. Created by and for Euro-imperialism, race/ism is a socio- political system that co-opts, marks, and groups people to regulate the reproduction and inheritance of “population-specific modes of colonial domination through time” (Wolfe 2016:10).
Using these insights, I analyze genetic and sociodemographic data collected in the Midwest region of the U.S. to isolate distinct variables often used as “race proxies” in genetics research: self-identified race/ethnicity, internalized response to externalized racialization, and genetic ancestry. Each race proxy captures the dynamic interactions of racialization, or rather, the doing of race/ism, structured by effective human actions and social milieux. I use genotype, phenotype, and sociodemographic data to explore the relationships between race/ism, blood pressure, and candidate polymorphisms associated with hypertension. I’m interested in the presence of gene by environment interactions (GEI) because they both refute reductionism and demonstrate complex relationships between genetics, biology, and society. Through modeling race/ism as an ecological phenomenon that shapes the conditions in which people live and die, I present an evo- ecosocial theory of disease distribution for understanding the biological consequences of race/ism.
Human Biology, 2020
Isolation-by-distance models are part of the institutional creed of antiracialism used to critiqu... more Isolation-by-distance models are part of the institutional creed of antiracialism used to critique claims of biological race concepts (BRCs). Proponents of antiracialism appeal to isolation-by-distance models to describe patterns of human genetic di ferences among and between groups as a function of distance. Isolation by distance has been referred to as the pattern that human genetic variation ts, distributing the di ferences we see as race throughout geographic space as a series of Gaussian gradients. Contemporary scienti c critiques of BRCs fuse social constructionist race concepts with a description of the distribution of proportions of human genetic variation in geographic space as a function of distance. These two points are often followed by statements noting that there is only one human race. How these two concepts connect to each other, and whether or not they connect at all, is unclear in both academic and nonacademic spaces. Consequently, scientists and the public lack an understanding of human population structure and its relationships to varying systems of human interactions. This article reviews isolation-by-distance models in population genetics and the use of these models in the modern problem of human di ference. The article presents a historical and conceptual review of isolation-by-distance models and contemporary scienti c critiques of BRCs, followed by examples of the use of isolation-by-distance models in studies of human genetic variation. To address the shortcomings in the scienti c critique of race, the author proposes combining Du Boisian demography with Darwinian evolutionary biology. From a Du Boisian demographic perspective, race is a product of racism, or race/ism, and is a heredity and inheritance system based on rules of partus sequitur ventrem and hypodescent. Race marks individuals and groups them to reproduce unequal relationships into which Europeans co-opted them. This synthesis propounds a new racial formation theory to understand the more general consequences of racism on genes and health outcomes. The greatest di culty we face is rst of all to excavate our actual history.-James Baldwin Contrary to what you may have heard or learned, the past is not done and it is not over, it's still in process, which is another way of saying that when it's critiqued, analyzed, it yields new information about itself.-Toni Morrison
Practicing Anthropology, 2020
While "race is a social construct" is a common saying, the meaning of social construction escapes... more While "race is a social construct" is a common saying, the meaning of social construction escapes contemporary scientific critiques of biological race concepts. As a result, the social construction of race is often not enough to challenge the proponents of biological race concepts. Now, even anti-racist racialists agree that race is a social construct while also being biologically based. Needed to address this problem is both a critical historiography of race and racism and evolutionary biology to understand the relationship between race, racism, bodies, and biology. In this paper, I demonstrate the importance of what I call the historical grounds of the social construction of race and racism. This is done by presenting a settler-colonial critique of racial formation theory revealing racism as the etiological foundation of race by reviewing the temporal relations between historical events central to the social construction of race and racism.
Social Problems, Structural Issues, and Unsettling Science, 2019
A descendant of displaced and dispossessed Africans, I was born in Tetiohoseró:ken (Buffalo, New ... more A descendant of displaced and dispossessed Africans, I was born in Tetiohoseró:ken (Buffalo, New York), occupied Tsonontowane'´ a:ka (Seneca) territory. I grew up in a low-income Black neighborhood in one of the poorest and most racially segregated cities in America. We never had much, but I had my library card. I spent my time reading, learning, experimenting, and asking too many questions. My good grades were not enough to keep me out of trouble. I was a multiply neuro-divergent child, misgendered at birth, in a low-income religious family racialized as Black. To avoid the consequences of rejecting patriarchal norms, I folded inward and was forced to perform colonial femininity. I am not, nor have I ever been, a Black woman. Being misgendered and treated like a Black woman is not akin to what my gender is, nor my sexuality. Identities and culture change; that is why I spoke about my experiences and sociopolitical positions without referring to them. These are issues of power, not identity. Performing race and projected racial nostalgias about identity have nothing to do with the value of my contributions to science. Bragging about progress and making me the face of their diversity initiatives is fine, as long as I don't actually say anything. To put it simply, counting racial identities will not upend a more than five-hundred-year-old settler-colonial system. As I grew into a scholar, I started asking questions about the co-constructive relationships between historically contingent political processes and the biology of humans, among other organisms. The denial of my self-determination by re-fashioned colonial domination coupled with a lifelong interest in biology have made me distinctly aware of the dangers of the dichotomy of ideal and problematic bodies in human biology. My first master's thesis sought to investigate the ways that racial residential segregation, food swamps, and poverty influenced dental health. Racism. Inequality. History. Biology of the human condition. My work was all of the things anthropology advertises on their glossy fliers featuring the smiling faces of many racialized peoples. My committee members, however, claimed that the connections I drew between racism, inequality , and health outcomes were baseless and insulting to the field of anthropology. Incoherently, I was then told that
AAPA Statement on Race & Racism, 2019
Executive Summary: Race does not provide an accurate representation of human biological variation... more Executive Summary: Race does not provide an accurate representation of human biological variation. It was never accurate in the past, and it remains inaccurate when referencing contemporary human populations. Humans are not divided biologically into distinct continental types or racial genetic clusters. Instead, the Western concept of race must be understood as a classification system that emerged from, and in support of, European colonialism, oppression, and discrimination. It thus does not have its roots in biological reality, but in policies of discrimination. Because of that, over the last five centuries, race has become a social reality that structures societies and how we experience the world. In this regard, race is real, as is racism, and both have real biological consequences.
Humans share the vast majority (99.9%) of our DNA in common. Individuals nevertheless exhibit substantial genetic and phenotypic variability. Genome/environment interactions, local and regional biological changes through time, and genetic exchange among populations have produced the biological diversity we see in humans today. Notably, variants are not distributed across our species in a manner that maps clearly onto socially-recognized racial groups. This is true even for aspects of human variation that we frequently emphasize in discussions of race, such as facial features, skin color and hair type. No group of people is, or ever has been, biologically homogeneous or “pure.” Furthermore, human populations are not — and never have been — biologically discrete, truly isolated, or fixed.
While race does not accurately represent the patterns of human biological diversity, an abundance of scientific research demonstrates that racism, prejudice against someone because of their race and a belief in the inherent superiority and inferiority of different racial groups, affects our biology, health, and well-being. This means that race, while not a scientifically accurate biological concept, can have important biological consequences because of the effects of racism. The belief in races as a natural aspect of human biology and the institutional and structural inequities (racism) that have emerged in tandem with such beliefs in European colonial contexts are among the most damaging elements in human societies.
A common trope in recent Black popular literature compares pastors and pimps on the grounds that ... more A common trope in recent Black popular literature
compares pastors and pimps on the grounds that
both collect money from their dependents. We frame
this comparison in terms of regimes of value
operating in U.S. inner cities, where the commercial
economy and legal system commonly fail to affirm
the personhood of the racialized poor. Drawing on
fieldwork in Buffalo, New York, we show that in
eliciting tithes and protection money, pastors and
pimps combine care and exploitation in ways that
assert the value of their own and others’ lives
against heavy odds. We extend the concept of
“human economy” developed by David Graeber to
these transactions, arguing that pimps and pastors
construe the money they gather in terms of its
power to recognize the value of the lives of givers,
askers, and receivers. [regimes of value,
Pentecostalism, charismatic gifts, care, human
economies, urban United States]