Recent research on the human genome challenges the basic assumption that human races have no biological basis. In this article, we provide a theoretical synthesis that accepts the existence of genetic clusters consistent with certain racial classifications as well as the validity of the genomic research that has identified the clusters, without diminishing the social character of their context, meaning, production, or consequences. The first part of this article describes the social constructionist account of race as lacking biological reality, its main shortcomings, and our proposed solution: the concept of clinal classes. The second part discusses the character of the group differences that would be consistent with clinal classes and introduces the concept of genomic individualism, which extends an emerging model for understanding biosocial causation to include the genetic effects of ancestry. The third part develops the argument for a “bounded nature” reformulation of racial constructionism that reconceptualizes racial and ethnic categorization as the social perception of ancestry. The final part summarizes the article’s contributions and outlines implications for future research.
Sociologists who rely on survey research have begun exploring the implications of racial inconsistency for not only multiracial identification but also for other social outcomes. Using the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health, the author explores the consequences of different specifications of race for modeling three outcomes: educational attainment, self-rated health, and interracial relationship history. The author uses the model-fit criteria of Akaike information criterion and Bayesian information criterion to compare five methods of classifying multiple, changed, and other-race respondents and of operationalizing heterogeneity among them. The results show substantial variation across outcomes in the specifications preferred and indications of a qualitative difference in the meaning of race for social contact versus for social stratification. The article concludes with recommendations for how quantitative researchers should measure race even when the categories primarily serve as covariates.
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