‘Race is a social construct’: the central lie of anti-racists, when they attempt to gaslight us into embracing ideology, rather than science

It is claimed by left-wing activists that there is really no such thing as race and that, like beauty, it is skin deep. Looking at an article by a man called Adam Rutherford show this to be false

One of the tenets of anti-racism, the central tenet in fact, is that there is no such thing as race. The division of humans into different ethnicities and races is said to be a ‘social construct’, a kind of optical illusion, if you like. Any differences in mortality rates between black people and white is caused by societal inequality alone and has nothing to do with any inherent differences between the two human populations. Here is what Adam Rutherford, who lectures in genetics at University College London says on the subject. Rutherford is also author of a bestselling book called How to Argue With a Racist;

     Race as we currently use it is a socially constructed idea,

     one with biologically meaningful consequences, such as in

     healthcare where many disease outcomes are significantly

     worse for racial minorities. The impact of disease correlates

     significantly with socioeconomic factors, primarily poverty, and

     in our society racial minorities are mostly in lower social

     strata.  Black and brown people endure worse medical outcomes

     not because they are black or brown, but because of this fact.

     The science very clearly evidences this, and no amount of

     cosplay race science – or human biodiversity, as they

     euphemistically brand their propaganda – can debunk it.

     (Guardian, 2024)

This is completely unambiguous. If more black people than white are developing a certain kind of cancer and dying at a greater rate than white people, then that is a sociological, rather than biological, phenomenon. Let us look at a specific example of how this works in real life.

     It has long been known that African-American men have the highest rates of prostate cancer in the world and it has been speculated that this is connected in some way with the greater levels of testosterone circulating in the bloodstream of black men (McIntosh, 1997, Richard et al, 2014). black men in the United States have on average 15 % more circulating testosterone than white men (Ross et al, 1986). Black men in America are more than twice as likely to die of the disease as white men. Since it is known that the growth of tumours in the prostate gland can be stimulated by the hormone testosterone, could this perhaps have anything to do with the mortality rate for this type of cancer in black men?  Academic publications were swift to play down the possible significance of all that extra testosterone and to remind readers that environment was of far greater importance than any supposed inbuilt difference between ethnicities. This stance was maintained until recently. In 2019, for instance, research was published which laid the increased mortality rate for black men dying of prostate cancer firmly at society’s door.

     In May 2019, the magazine JAMA Oncology revealed the findings of what was described as an ‘original investigation’ (Dess et al, 2019). Whether to muddle up the question or for some other reason, the article dealt not only with cancer of the prostate, but also with other causes of death too; ‘Association of Black Race With Prostate Cancer–Specific and Other-Cause Mortality’. Essentially, the study focussed on a very narrow question of whether black men with the same stage of prostate cancer as white men were more likely to die of the disease. The results will probably not surprise anybody, but do not contribute anything to understanding why black men are more prone to this kind of cancer than white.  It was found that if cancer develops then the quality of healthcare and overall health of the patient have a good deal of bearing on how soon he was likely to die. Having established a fact which few people would have doubted, the authors of the piece went on to say, among other things,

      The study’s researchers found that black men did not have an

      increased risk of dying from prostate cancer compared to

      white men with a similar stage of disease. On a population

      level, the disparities in death rates appear to mostly,

      if not entirely, be attributed to external circumstances.

    The largest study of its kind finds societal factors and access to

    quality care, rather than genetics, underlies higher prostate

    cancer mortality rates for black men. Therefore, the greatest

    disparity to black men with prostate cancer is access

    to quality healthcare and guideline concordant care that are

    likely rooted in complex socio-cultural inequities in the US

    (Dess et al, 2019).

     The conclusion appeared, at first glance, unarguable; ‘societal factors and access to quality care, rather than genetics... rooted in complex socio-cultural inequities in the US’. It will perhaps not have escaped readers’ notice that a rather neat version of the three-card trick has been played upon them. The titles of the article suggested an exploration of the prevalence of prostate cancer in black men and the only culprits for all those deaths seem to be the usual suspects of poverty and ‘socio-cultural inequities’. Genetic factors are an irrelevant distraction and the equalitarian dogma is, once again, triumphant. Those with enquiring minds though might still be wondering why it is that so many more black men should develop cancer of the prostate in the first place. This question is not addressed, because of course it cannot so easily be attributed to poverty and racism. In this way, the difficult question of why black men are so likely to get cancer of the prostate is deftly sidestepped, in favour of the more easily answered matter of why poor people with cancer die more rapidly than those with a lot of money.

     The reason for this kind of evasiveness is very simple. When once we start talking about such things as levels of testosterone in the body and genetic factors, whether relating to cancer or intelligence, some people see a thin wedge, which ends with talk of eugenics and apartheid. This was the experience of David Reich, who set up a molecular biology laboratory in 2006 to try and find mutations which differed in frequency between West Africans and Europeans. Reich and his fellow-workers examined diseases ranging from prostate cancer to diabetes (Reich, 2018). It might be mentioned at this point that David Reich is no maverick or worker on the fringe of science. He is, at the time of writing, a professor in the Department of Genetics at Harvard Medical School.

     Studying 1,597 African American men with prostate cancer revealed that in one part of their genome, these men had on average 2.8 % more African ancestry than the average in the rest of their genome (Reich, 2018). According to Reich, the odds of this happening by chance were around 10 million to one. Checking with other African Americans who had entirely European ancestry in the same section showed that they had no increased risk of prostate cancer; they were no more likely to develop it than any European.

     The reaction to Professor Reich’s research was fascinating and somewhat alarming. The champions of orthodoxy were anything but pleased to hear about the possibility of identifying genetic risk factors for a variety of diseases. When he unveiled his results in 2008 at a conference concerned with disparities in health between ethnic groups in the United States, he expected excitement at a new method for investigating better ways to deal with illness among minorities. Instead, an anthropologist who was present spoke angrily to Reich and accused him of ‘flirting with racism’ (Reich, 2018). On another occasion, he was told that rather than talk openly about the different West African groups whom he was using dealing with, he might be better advised to refer to them as ‘Cluster A’ and ‘Cluster B’.

     Nothing could more clearly illustrate the way in which those who follow the orthodox line in academia are taken aback and put out when they find that the real world sometimes fails to conform to their ideology.

     The reason for this reluctance to accept reality is very simple. A disproportionate number of top athletes, footballers, basketball players and boxers are black. Both men and women, whether black or white, who reach the very top in competitive sports have higher levels of testosterone in their bloodstream than average (Bermon, Garnier, 2017) (Ahmetov et al, 2019). It has been hypothesised that this extra hormone gives athletes a little more muscle and perhaps aggression, thus providing them with a competitive edge. Obviously, if this were true, then more black men than white would enjoy a relative advantage in that area.

     This extra testosterone which might, some thought, help to explain the prowess of black men on the running track and sports field, might have a downside. High levels of this hormone are found not only in those who excel in some sports, but also among violent criminals in prison (Dabbs et al, 1995). Those who have faced disciplinary action in prison for clashing aggressively with warders are found to have higher levels of testosterone than usually expected. One remembers too the old myth about black men being better performers sexually than white men and also the persistent suspicion which many white people entertain that black men are more aggressive and potentially violent than other ethnicities.

     It is for due to this kind of thing, which shows clearly how biology might produce social outcomes, that anti-racists are so keen to reverse the actual situation and pretend that it is instead society which produces the biological phenomena. In this way, the existence of race may be denied and anything observed may be laid at the doors of societal inequality and racism.

Ahmetov, Ildus I.; Thomas R. Roos, Thomas R.; Stepanova, Albina A.; Biktagirova, Ekaterina A.: Semenova, Ekaterina, A.; Shchuplova, Irina, S.; Bets, Larisa V. (2019) Is testosterone responsible for athletic success in female athletes?, Liverpool: v, Research Institute for Sport and Exercise Sciences, Liverpool John Moores University.

Bermon, Stephane; Garnier, Pierre-Yves (2017) Serum androgen levels and their relation to performance in track and field: mass spectrometry results from 2127 observations in male and female elite athletes, British Journal of Sports Medicine, Volume 51 Issue 17.

Dabbs, James M. Jr; Carr, Timothy S.; Frady, Robert L.; Riad, Jasmine K. (1995) Testosterone, crime, and misbehaviour among 692 male prison inmates, Personality and Individual Differences, Volume 15 Issue 5 May 1995.

Dess, Robert T.; Hartman, Holly E.; Mahal, Brandon A. (2019) Association of Black Race With Prostate Cancer–Specific and Other-Cause Mortality, JAMA Oncology, 2019;5(7):975-983. doi:10.100, 23/5/2019.

Guardian (2024), Propelled by tech money, the menace of race science is back – and it’s just as nonsensical as ever, The Guardian, 17/10/24

McIntosh, Hugh (1997) Why Do African- American Men Suffer More Prostate Cancer?, Journal of the National Cancer Institute, Volume 89, Issue 3, 5 February 1997, Pages 188–189

Reich, David (2018) Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past: Who We are and How We Got Here, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Richard, A.; Rohrmann, S; Zhang, L.; Eichholzer, M.; Basaria, S.; Selvin, E.; Dobs, A.S.; Kanarek, N.; Menke, A.; Nelson, W.G.; Platz, E.A. (2014) Racial variation in sex steroid hormone concentration in black and white men: a meta-analysis, Andrology May 2014 2 (3): 428-435.

Ross, Ronald; Bernstein, Leslie; Judd, Howard; Hanisch, Rosemarie; Pike, Malcolm; Henderson, Brian (1986) Serum Testosterone Levels in Healthy Young Black and White Men, JNCI: Journal of the National Cancer Institute, Volume 76, Issue 1, January 1986, Pages 45–48.