Clarifying the Forensics of Anatomy and Race

I had a great talk with an anatomy teacher and another science teacher.  I also spoke with a science department chair from another high ranking high school.  They helped clarify that yes forensic anatomy can be used to help identify a person but that you cannot biologically separate people into distinct races.  Here is what I found:

 There are 2 very important caveats to understanding the forensic anatomy lab.  First, forensic science is not determinative - in other words it is not able to distinctly place people into a racial group.  It is more of an educated guess or a probability.  Secondly, the data must be compared to the types of people in the United States.  This is not a categorical definition that applies to people around the world.  It only applies to people in the U.S. because of our heritage and our terminology, which are social creations.

The forensics analysis is really analyzing different gene pools of certain traits for groups of people who are in the U.S.  Using forensic evidence, one can cross reference the likelihoods of different characteristics that a person might have.  Then the forensic anthropologist correlates those characteristics to a region of the world.  Finally, this region can be compared to how Americans define race.

For example, look at the genetic traits that are on the Race Power of Illusion website (see the maps below or click on the link then on physical appearance for more info).  The maps show that certain traits (such as head size or nose width) are more likely in different populations of people.  A forensic anthropologist might try to pinpoint what geographic region of the world has the highest  concentration of the overlapping traits.  In other words, he might put layers of evidence that do not line up with "race" on top of each other in order to determine the most likely location of genetic ancestry of the person.  Then using this approximate location, the forensic anthropologist might take that geographic region and say, "What would someone from this region be called in the U.S.?"  From that he might say black or white or Asian, but that doesn't mean that all people in that group would contain that combinations of traits.

Here are just two traits to correlate:

In the above maps, imagine forensic evidence that finds a large skull (see the head size map directly above).  Where might that person be from? Scotland, West Africa, or Southern India.

Now, look at the top map and imagine that the evidence also showed that the skull had a broad flat nose (92-97).   Where is the probability highest that  this skull be from?  Southern and Western Africa or Australia.

A forensic anthropologist might say then that the probability is most high that the person is of West African origin because that is where the two data points correlate.  Then, the anthropologists might say that in the United States, a person from West Africa is likely called "black or African American".  Note that this is only a probability and only works because of the population of West Africans who were forced to the U.S. in slavery.  But if the evidence revealed a medium head size and a long narrow nose (66.9-71.9) the person might be from Scandinavia, Eastern Russia or the Horn of Africa.  These places all have these genetic traits correlating in higher probability.  Obviously this would be a much more difficult task.  These traits help to point to a specific region of the world where there is a high probability that an individual's ancestors came from, but it doesn't define biologically what "race" is.

I hope this helps clarify the anatomy lesson for you and reconcile it with the idea that people cannot be grouped biologically into "races".  However, it also validates the idea that forensics helps to identify the probability that a person is from a certain gene pool/geographic region.

Tomorrow we will explore how that gene pool gets labelled as a "race".

For more info, a number of experts answer the following question:
If race isn't biological, how do forensics investigators determine a person's race using their bones or DNA?

To see their answers click here.

To see more FAQs click here.

To read about the experts, click here. 

Race and Anatomy: Don't Misunderstand the Science!

Students always misunderstand their forensic unit in anatomy.  Anatomy misleads students into thinking that there are 3 "pure" races based on evidence from hair, cranium and femur.  There are 2 very important caveats to understanding this lab.  First, forensic science is not determinative - in other words it is not able to distinctly place people into a racial group.  It is more of an educated guess or a probability.  Secondly, the data must be compared to the types of people in the United States.  This is not a categorical definition that applies to people around the world.  It only applies to people in the U.S. because of our heritage and our terminology, which are social creations.  For clarification, Let us turn to the Lab, the textbook and other resources.

The Lab
Anatomy provides important disclaimers within the lab itself.  However, it seems that these disclaimers get downplayed because students never mention them.  Let me quote from the lab itself and emphasize these points:

It can be extremely difficult to determine the true race of a skeleton. This is due to several factors: First, forensic anthropologists generally use a three race model to categorize skeletal traits: Caucasoid (European), Mongoloid (Asian/Amerindian), and Negroid (African). Although there are certainly some common physical characteristics among these groups, not all individuals have skeletal traits that are completely consistent with their geographic origin. Additionally, there is the issue of racial mixing to consider. Often times, a skeleton exhibits characteristics of more than one racial group and does not fit neatly into the three-race model. Also, the vast majority of the skeletal indicators used to determine race are non-metric traits, which, as stated earlier, can be highly subjective.

First of all, most of the above paragraph is explaining why race is NOT a reliable factor when it comes to trace evidence.  The paragraph states that race is difficult to determine.  Why would it be difficult if race was biological?  Would it be difficult to determine whether a human, a chimp or a gorilla committed the crime?  I believe it would not because biologically, those three creatures are different.  But because humans are the same species and NOT biologically different, they cannot be separated distinctly into different races.

Let's analyze the paragraph closely.
"...forensic anthropologists generally use a three race model to categorize skeletal traits: Caucasoid (European), Mongoloid (Asian/Amerindian), and Negroid (African)"
The three race model is an old, erroneous and racist model that biologists, social scientists and anthropologists all do NOT use anymore.

"Although there are certainly some common physical characteristics among these groups, not all individuals have skeletal traits that are completely consistent with their geographic origin....Often times, a skeleton exhibits characteristics of more than one racial group and does not fit neatly into the three-race model."
Even if you still use the erroneous three race model, this says that it is NOT distinct.

"Also, the vast majority of the skeletal indicators used to determine race are non-metric traits, which, as stated earlier, can be highly subjective."
Finally, read this sentence carefully!  'Non-metric traits' are a fancy way of saying that race is NOT scientific.  "Non metric" means it is subjective and based upon the society and local circumstances surrounding the people; it is a social construction.  Not only that, it says 'THE VAST MAJORITY', which means overwhelmingly, that race is determined by non scientific, non biological, subjective evidence.

Secondly, and this is probably the most important part, the forensics analysis is really analyzing different gene pools of certain traits for groups of people who are in the U.S.  Using forensic evidence, one can cross reference the likelihoods of different characteristics that a person might have.  Then the forensic anthropologist correlates those characteristics to a region of the world.  Then this region can be compared to how Americans define race.  For example if there is a high probability that the bones are from West Africa, the anthropologists might say that person has a high probability of being black because that is how people from West Africa are categorized in the U.S.  However, this type of data also rules out people from East and Central Africa who would also be considered "black" by U.S. standards.  So the forensic analysis is using probability to state whether someone is likely to be considered "black" in America, but it is not able to predict going the other way.  In other words, forensic analysis is not able to say because you are considered "black" you must have a certain bone structure.

For example, look at the genetic traits that are on the Race Power of Illusion website (click on physical appearance).  They show that certain traits (such as head size or nose width) are more likely in different populations of people.  A forensic anthropologist might try to pinpoint what geographic region of the world has the highest  concentration of the overlapping traits.  In other words, he might put layers of evidence that do not line up with "race" on top of each other in order to determine the most likely location of genetic ancestry of the person.  Then using this approximate location, the forensic anthropologist might take that geographic region and say, "What would someone from this region be called in the U.S.?"  From that he might say black or white or Asian, but that doesn't mean that all people in that group would contain that combinations of traits.

Here are just two traits to correlate:

In the above maps, imagine forensic evidence that finds a large skull.  Where might that person be from? Scotland, West Africa, or Southern India.

Now imagine that the evidence also showed that the skull had a broad flat nose (92-97).  Look at the top map.  Where is the probability highest that  this skull be from?  Southern and Western Africa or Australia.

A forensic anthropologist might say then that the probability is most high that the person is of West African origin because that is where the two data points correlate.  Then, the anthropologists might say that in the United States, a person from West Africa is likely called "black or African American".  Note that this is only a probability and only works because of the population of West Africans who were forced to the U.S. in slavery.  But if the evidence revealed a medium head size and a long narrow nose (66.9-71.9) the person might be from Scandinavia, Eastern Russia or the Horn of Africa.  These places all have these genetic traits correlating in higher probability.  Obviously this would be a much more difficult task.  These traits help to point to a specific region of the world where there is a high probability that an individual's ancestors came from, but it doesn't define biologically what "race" is.

Anatomy Textbook

I stopped into the ILC and looked at the anatomy textbooks.  There was NOTHING in the entire book about race.  I checked the table of contents, the index and I thumbed through chapters.  Nothing.  There is even a section on genetics that makes no mention about race.  Not a thing.  The section about craniums and skeletal system makes no mention of any distinguishing characteristics. 


Other Sources

Harvard School of Biomedical Sciences "there is no evidence that the groups we commonly call 'races' have distinct, unifying genetic identities. In fact, there is ample variation within races"

The U.S. National Library of Medicine and National Institutes of Health published this article
which explains, "Humans have much genetic diversity, but the vast majority of this diversity reflects individual uniqueness and not race."

Race; Power of an Illusion Documentary FAQs answered by these experts.

The American Association of Physical Anthropologists published this statement about race, including, "There is great genetic diversity within all human populations. Pure races, in the sense of genetically homogenous populations, do not exist in the human species today, nor is there any evidence that they have ever existed in the past. "

Contexts sociology blog
The press release reports the results of this panel’s initial analysis of almost 500 cases. Most startlingly, it reports that FBI examiners gave inaccurate testimony in 96% of those cases.... As a 2009 review of forensic science by the National Research Council (NRC) put it, “No scientifically accepted statistics exist about the frequency with which particular characteristics of hair are distributed in the population.”

Science Magazine
"The study adds to established research undercutting old notions of race. You can’t use skin color to classify humans, any more than you can use other complex traits like height, Tishkoff says. 'There is so much diversity in Africans that there is no such thing as an African race'.”

Science Buzz: 
"...there’s more variation within any racial group than there is between them...Our genes are constantly moving around the planet. We’ve had 100,000 years of genes moving and mixing and re-assorting in countless different ways. We’re always mating outside our groups. [As a result, there’s] very little variation among us."

Live Science:

there is only one human race. Our single race is independent of geographic origin, ethnicity, culture, color of skin or shape of eyes — we all share a single phenotype, the same or similar observable anatomical features and behavior - See more at: http://www.livescience.com/47627-race-is-not-a-science-concept.html#sthash.PdEUEzMO.dpuf

"...there is only one human race. Our single race is independent of geographic origin, ethnicity, culture, color of skin or shape of eyes — we all share a single phenotype, the same or similar observable anatomical features and behavior..."

Innocence Project and Unreliable Evidence:
"...many forensic testing methods have been applied with little or no scientific validation and with inadequate assessments of their robustness or reliability. Furthermore, they lacked scientifically acceptable standards for quality assurance and quality control before their implementation in cases..."  And from NPR,

We’re talking about a technology which the FBI and state and local crime laboratories across the country have relied upon to associate an accused to a piece of crime scene evidence for the last 40 years by looking at hairs under a microscope that they found in a crime scene and comparing it to a defendant’s hair. It turns out that for 30 or 40 years, they were exaggerating the probative value of those similarities such that in, I would say a quarter, of all the DNA exoneration cases, the people were originally convicted in part based on crime lab people coming in and saying the hairs matched.

New Scientist:
"With the exception of nuclear DNA analysis, no forensic method has been rigorously shown able to consistently, and with a high degree of certainty, demonstrate a connection between evidence and a specific individual or source."

The Atlantic
How unthinking racial essentialism finds its way into scientific research.

Newsweek
There is no such thing as race; The troubling persistence of an unscientific idea.

Moving to Opportunity: the Importance of place and social class, especially concentrated poverty

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/05/upshot/why-the-new-research-on-mobility-matters-an-economists-view.html

A new study by the Harvard economists Raj Chetty and Nathaniel Hendren, when read in combination with an important study they wrote with Lawrence Katz, makes the most compelling case to date that good neighborhoods nurture success. (The Upshot has just published a package of articles and interactives on the study.)

Let me be upfront about my own reading: These two new studies are the most powerful demonstration yet that neighborhoods — their schools, community, neighbors, local amenities, economic opportunities and social norms — are a critical factor shaping your children’s outcomes. It’s an intuitive idea, although the earlier evidence for it had been surprisingly thin. As Sean Reardon, a professor of education and sociology at Stanford, said of the study, “I think it will change some of the discussion around how where children grows up matters.”

https://scholar.harvard.edu/hendren/publications/effects-Exposure-Better-Neighborhoods-Children-New-Evidence-Moving-Opportunity

The Effects of Exposure to Better Neighborhoods on Children: New Evidence from the Moving to Opportunity Project 

Abstract:

The Moving to Opportunity (MTO) experiment offered randomly selected families living in high-poverty housing projects housing vouchers to move to lower-poverty neighborhoods. We present new evidence on the impacts of MTO on children's long-term outcomes using administrative data from tax returns. We find that moving to a lower-poverty neighborhood significantly improves college attendance rates and earnings for children who were young (below age 13) when their families moved. These children also live in better neighborhoods themselves as adults and are less likely to become single parents. The treatment effects are substantial: children whose families take up an experimental voucher to move to a lower-poverty area when they are less than 13 years old have an annual income that is $3,477 (31%) higher on average relative to a mean of $11,270 in the control group in their mid-twenties. In contrast, the same moves have, if anything, negative long-term impacts on children who are more than 13 years old when their families move, perhaps because of disruption effects. The gains from moving fall with the age when children move, consistent with recent evidence that the duration of exposure to a better environment during childhood is a key determinant of an individual's long-term outcomes. The findings imply that offering families with young children living in high-poverty housing projects vouchers to move to lower-poverty neighborhoods may reduce the intergenerational persistence of poverty and ultimately generate positive returns for taxpayers.

 

Evicted by Matthew Desmond

Evicted Book website

The data from Princeton University:
Eviction Lab
The Eviction Lab at Princeton University has built the first nationwide database of evictions. Find out how many evictions happen in your community. Create custom maps, charts, and reports. Share facts with your neighbors and elected officials.
Here is a guide to using the Eviction Lab in class.

Evicted Teacher's Guide


Matthew Desmond's excerpt in the New Yorker.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/02/08/forced-out
New Yorker Magazine review

NY Times review from Barbara Ehrenreich.

Matthew Desmond on NPR's Here and Now.

https://harvardmagazine.com/2014/01/disrupted-lives
Harvard Magazine review

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2016/03/10/evicted-kicked-out-in-america/
From New York Review of Books

Here is Desmond speaking about his work (about 1 hour).

Excerpt:
Jori and his cousin were cutting up, tossing snowballs at passing cars. From Jori’s street corner on Milwaukee’s near South Side, cars driving on Sixth Street passed squat duplexes with porch steps ending at a sidewalk edged in dandelions. Those heading north approached the Basilica of St. Josaphat, whose crowning dome looked to Jori like a giant overturned plunger. It was January of 2008, and the city was ex­periencing the snowiest winter on record. Every so often, a car turned off Sixth Street to navigate Arthur Avenue, hemmed in by the snow, and that’s when the boys would take aim. Jori packed a tight one and let it fly. The car jerked to a stop, and a man jumped out. The boys ran inside and locked the door to the apartment where Jori lived with his mother, Arleen, and younger brother, Jafaris. The lock was cheap, and the man broke down the door with a few hard-heeled kicks. He left before anything else happened. When the landlord found out about the door, she decided to evict Arleen and her boys. They had been there eight months.
The day Arleen and her boys had to be out was cold. But if she waited any longer, the landlord would summon the sheriff, who would arrive with a gun, a team of boot-footed movers, and a folded judge’s order saying that her house was no longer hers. She would be given two options: truck or curb. “Truck” would mean that her things would be loaded into an eighteen-footer and later checked into bonded storage. She could get everything back after paying $350. Arleen didn’t have $350, so she would have opted for “curb,” which would mean watch­ing the movers pile everything onto the sidewalk. Her mattresses. A floor-model television. Her copy of Don’t Be Afraid to Discipline. Her nice glass dining table and the lace tablecloth that fit just-so. Silk plants. Bibles. The meat cuts in the freezer. The shower curtain. Ja­faris’s asthma machine.
Arleen took her sons—Jori was thirteen, Jafaris was five—to a homeless shelter, which everyone called the Lodge so you could tell your kids, “We’re staying at the Lodge tonight,” like it was a motel. The two-story stucco building could have passed for one, except for all the Salvation Army signs. Arleen stayed in the 120-bed shelter until April, when she found a house on Nineteenth and Hampton, in the predominantly black inner city, on Milwaukee’s North Side, not far from her childhood home. It had thick trim around the windows and doors and was once Kendal green, but the paint had faded and chipped so much over the years that the bare wood siding was now exposed, making the house look camouflaged. At one point some­one had started repainting the house plain white but had given up mid-brushstroke, leaving more than half unfinished. There was often no water in the house, and Jori had to bucket out what was in the toilet. But Arleen loved that it was spacious and set apart from other houses. “It was quiet,” she remembered. “And five-twenty-five for a whole house, two bedrooms upstairs and two bedrooms downstairs. It was my favorite place.”
After a few weeks, the city found Arleen’s favorite place “unfit for human habitation,” removed her, nailed green boards over the win­dows and doors, and issued a fine to her landlord. Arleen moved Jori and Jafaris into a drab apartment complex deeper in the inner city, on Atkinson Avenue, which she soon learned was a haven for drug deal­ers. She feared for her boys, especially Jori—slack-shouldered, with pecan-brown skin and a beautiful smile—who would talk to anyone.
Arleen endured four summer months on Atkinson before moving into a bottom duplex unit on Thirteenth Street and Keefe, a mile away. She and the boys walked their things over. Arleen held her breath and tried the lights, smiling with relief when they came on. She could live off someone else’s electricity bill for a while. There was a fist-sized hole in a living-room window, the front door had to be locked with an ugly wooden plank dropped into metal brackets, and the carpet was filthy and ground in. But the kitchen was spacious and the living room well lit. Arleen stuffed a piece of clothing into the window hole and hung ivory curtains.
The rent was $550 a month, utilities not included, the going rate in 2008 for a two-bedroom unit in one of the worst neighborhoods in America’s fourth-poorest city. Arleen couldn’t find a cheaper place, at least not one fit for human habitation, and most landlords wouldn’t rent her a smaller one on account of her boys. The rent would take 88 percent of Arleen’s $628-a-month welfare check. Maybe she could make it work. Maybe they could at least stay through winter, until crocuses and tulips stabbed through the thawed ground of spring, Ar­leen’s favorite season.
There was a knock at the door. It was the landlord, Sherrena Tarver. Sherrena, a black woman with bobbed hair and fresh nails, was loaded down with groceries. She had spent $40 of her own money and picked up the rest at a food pantry. She knew Arleen needed it.
Arleen thanked Sherrena and closed the door. Things were off to a good start.