Remarkable advances in genetic science and reproductive medicine have been marked by glaring racial disparities, especially in the fertility industry. One of the most conspicuous features of reproduction-assisting technologies is that they are used primarily by white people, in particular by affluent and highly educated women, rather than by those most likely to be infertile–poor, black and poorly educated women. White women seeking treatment for fertility problems are twice as likely to use high-tech procedures, such as in-vitro fertilization and egg donation, as black women.
In addition, the recent worldwide headlines over the septuplets in Des Moines offer a graphic example of how race influences the value placed on biotechnical babies. Most of the media images proclaiming the benefits of new reproductive technologies feature white couples, such as the McCaugheys, and their children.
When we do read news accounts involving black children created by these procedures, they are usually sensational stories intended to evoke revulsion because of the children’s race. One reported a white women’s lawsuit against a fertility clinic she claimed had mistakenly inseminated her with a black man’s sperm, instead of her husband’s, resulting in the birth of a black child. Another involved a white mother in the Netherlands who gave birth to twin boys as a result of in-vitro fertilization and realized when the babies were 2 months old that one was white and one was black. Although receiving the wrong genes was an injury in itself, the fact that they came from someone of the wrong race created an extra dimension of harm. This additional injury was the fertility clinic’s failure to deliver a crucial part of their service–a white child. In the fertility market where parents purchase the genetic material of their offspring, black children are often considered an inferior product.
Reflect for a moment on a magazine cover story entitled “The biology of beauty,” which was reporting on scientific confirmation of human beings’ inherent obsession with good looks. A striking full-page color spread of a woman with blond hair and blue eyes was featured, accompanied by the caption: “Reproductive fitness: Would you want your children to carry this person’s genes?” This sort of question about genetic superiority is typically accompanied by pictures of white people.
History teaches us that genetic progress will not transcend racism or other social inequities of its own force. The eugenics movement in the first part of this century, although premised on scientific claims about biological traits, reinforced existing social hierarchies. Official eugenic policies brutally penalized poor whites, blacks, southern European immigrants and socially deviant girls, while encouraging upper-class women to bear more children.
In the 1970s, some state governments implemented sickle-cell anemia screening programs to assist black carriers of the trait to make reproductive decisions. But racism soon turned this genetic testing policy into an instrument of widespread discrimination: some black sickle-cell carriers were fired from jobs, denied insurance coverage and counseled not to have children. As genetic scientists uncover human beings’ biological commonalities, claims of black genetic inferiority, used for decades to justify excluding blacks from the economic and political mainstream, are enjoying renewed popularity.
Racial discrimination does not stem from ignorance that can be corrected with more information about the human genome.
Racism is embedded in unjust political, economic and social structures. Without an ongoing and vigilant effort to dismantle these structures, perfecting genetic technology will only tighten racism’s hold.
Dorothy Roberts is a professor at Rutgers University School of Law and was a visiting professor at Northwestern University School of Law last year. She is the author of “Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction and the Meaning of Liberty.”
