The Difference Between Ancestry and Race

The current issue of the journal Science has a policy article discussing the pitfalls of using race in medical and genetic studies (Taking race out of human genetics). It is very easy to conflate race and ancestry, so I was struck by this paragraph that concisely explains the difference:

It is important to distinguish ancestry from a taxonomic notion such as race. Ancestry is a process-based concept, a statement about an individual's relationship to other individuals in their genealogical history; thus, it is a very personal understanding of one's genomic heritage. Race, on the other hand, is a pattern-based concept that has led scientists and laypersons alike to draw conclusions about hierarchical organization of humans, which connect an individual to a larger preconceived geographically circumscribed or socially constructed group.

Maybe that doesn't seem straightforward on a first reading, but it isn't that difficult to unpack. Ancestry is about who your ancestors were and where they came from. Basically it's the process of how you came to be. Race is a categorization that is made based on how you match up to a pattern. Barack Obama, for example, is equally of European and African ancestry. Yet in the United States his divided ancestry is usually collapsed into the racial category of black, based primarily on outward features that match the pattern associated with that race. If he had grown up in northern Minnesota, associated only with white people, and married a woman exclusively of Scandinavian ancestry, he still would never be considered white in the United States because he just doesn't look white (which is to say that his features don't match the pattern associated with being white).

I suppose this is all fairly mundane, but it is very easy to forget the distinction, and perhaps difficult to articulate. If I ever have reason to explain the difference, I'll remember that it boils down to process vs. pattern.

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