The Molecular Reinscription of Race: A Comment on “Genetic Bio-Ancestry and Social Construction of Racial Classification in Social Surveys in the Contemporary United States”

Abstract

In an article in the February 2014 issue of Demography, Guo et al. claimed that their research “establishes geographic genetic bio-ancestry as a component of racial classification” (p. 141). In doing so, they argued that their work has “a larger theoretical significance on identity studies” (p. 169) by providing racial classification categories with a concrete, “measurable,” and “logical” basis against which social construction should be analyzed. Instead, I argue that their main accomplishment is the “molecular reinscription of race” (Duster 2011:104). In this article, I review the existing critiques of this type of work.