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Identifying Race

            The beginning of forensic anthropology places its roots within the murder of Dr. George Parkman, a physician and frequent donator to Harvard University, in 1849. It was believed that Harvard Chemistry professor John Webster had borrowed money from Parkman, and in an attempt to escape his debt, murdered Parkman. The newspaper had reported a mutilation in which Parkman’s body parts were found in the anatomy laboratory, in the septic tank, and in the furnace. Left with only skeletal remains, Harvard anatomy professors Jeffries Wyman and Oliver Wendell Holmes pieced the skeletal structure back together and identified Parkman by his dentures, confirmed by the mold provided by his dentist. However, the first official applied study of forensic anthropology was by Thomas Dwight, now considered the father of forensic anthropology (in the United States). Dwight had written an essay titled “The Identification of the Human Skeleton. A Medico-Legal Study”, as he was one of the first Americans who had discussed the possibility of identifying skeletal remains. He eventually took over Wendell Holmes position as Professor of Anatomy at Harvard and researched the ways in which you could determine age, sex, and stature from one’s skeleton. However, it wasn’t until 1912, with the start of one of the largest atomical collections by Dr. T. Wingate Todd and Dr. Carl Hamann, that race had become an identifiable feature. Ohio had made it mandatory that professors preserve the cadavers dissected by their medical students, therefore Drs. Todd and Hamann used this opportunity to document all the cadavers that entered the university. This included the documentation of age, sex, ancestry, stature, weight, cause of death, and more. By studying the patterns shared by over thousands of the cadavers documented, Todd was able to differentiate limb proportions between African Americans and White Americans, along with discovering many age estimation features. This was the beginning of modern-day race identification for forensic anthropologists. Although throughout history there had been many attempts and false studies associated with race identification through the use of bones such as the cephalic index (1700s), the measurement of skull index associated with race, race identification in the forensic context didn’t start until quite some time later (1900s). Around the same time forensic anthropologists began to identify race, “The Race Concept” was published. The race concept identifies race as a societal construct, given that no “race” shares one set of the same physical/biological characteristics. There is way too broad a spectrum of physical characteristics across “races” for any one race to fit into specific racial categories. However, this raises the question, “If race doesn’t exist, why are forensic anthropologists so good at identifying it?”

            Forensic Anthropologists identify race through skeletal morphology. However, it appears forensic anthropologists may not be as good at identifying race as thought prior, “In examining human genetic variation on a worldwide scale, Lewontin’s (1972) study of human variation using classic genetic markers has been cited as evidence that differences among human groups are too small to allow accurate classification. Lewontin estimated that 85% of human genetic variation is found within populations, 8% is found within populations of the same race or regional grouping, and only 6% is found among races or regions” (Ousley, Jantz, & Freid, 2009). Many of these genetic markers were found to overlap. However, studies of Howells craniometric data on human craniometric variation on a world-wide scale have resulted in consistent results. Though Howells data was consistent with Lewontin’s estimates, they had found strong geographic patterning that has made itself present at an early age. Due to Howell’s craniometric data seeming relatively consistent and accurate, “studies have used discriminant function analysis (DFA) to classify one individual at a time from known samples into Howells’ groups, and their results seem to seem in agreement with those of Lewontin (1972)” (Ousley, Jantz, & Freid, 2009). Howells data includes 30-50+ samples (Male) from multiple different continents/regions including, but not limited to, America, different areas within Asia (Philippines, Japan, Ainu, Andaman Islanders, Buriat, etc.), Africa (Teita, Bushman, Dogon, Egypt, etc), Europe, Polynesia, SW Pacific, and more. It should be made clear that DFA should be used with caution when attempting to classify remains that do not have representation in the reference populations. It has been said that “As has been pointed out, DFA will classify any and all measurements and individuals, whether or not the measurements are correct, even if the measurements come from another species or a soccer ball” (Freid et al., 2005; Ousley et al.,2007). DFA measurements are typically made from 10 variables, therefore, several multivariate statistical methods allow for much more accurate data. Multivariate classifications “of craniometrics within traditional races have found significant variability, such as in American whites (Ousley and Jantz, 2002), African groups (Spradley, 2006; Spradley et al., 2008b), Hispanic groups (Ross et al., 2004; Slice and Ross, 2004; Ross et al., 2005; Spradley et al., 2008a), Native Americans (Ousley and Billeck, 2001; Ousley et al., 2005), and East Asian groups (Ousley et al., 2003)” (Ousley, Jantz, & Freid, 2009).  Multivariate craniometric data is the most modern approach to race identification, given it relies on numerous measurements and large sample sizes from modern Americans and other populations around the world. So, although “race” identification is advancing in it’s accuracy, it still remains quite unreliable in the larger scope. Often when race is identified it appears to be more of an educated estimate in an attempt to help narrow down possible victims, but it is not used as a definite answer.

            The process of identifying race, however, does add to the idea that race is biological and not a social concept. Though it is used with good intentions and to help the identification of those who have passed, it still remains rather controversial. Many Forensic Anthropologists agree that “the successful assignment of race to a skeletal specimen is not a vindication of the race concept, but rather a prediction that an individual, while alive was assigned to a particular socially constructed ‘racial’ category. A specimen may display features that point to African ancestry. In this country that person is likely to have been labeled Black regardless of whether or not such a race actually exists in nature” (Sauer, 1992). This debate had actually begun in the field of zoology, in which the argument was made that attempting to define race on the basis of more than one or two characteristics impossible. In the 1960s, C. Loring Brace and Frank Livingstone had stated in Montagu’s The Concept of Race, “From whatever viewpoint one approaches the question of the applicability of the concept of race to mankind, the modalities of human variability appear so far from those required for a coherent classification that the concept must be considered as of very limited use. . . To dismember mankind into races as a convenient approximation requires such a distortion of the facts that any usefulness disappears” (Sauer, 2009). Brace and Livingstone’s statement was not received well by the anthropology community in the 1960s, it waged a rather bitter controversy. Geneticist Dobzhansky had voiced his view on the concept of race in the 1966 AAAS symposium, stating “If races did not exist they would have to be invented. Since they do exist they need not to be invented, they need to be understood” (Sauer, 2009). A paper delivered at the 1987 American Anthropological Association meeting had revealed that 50% of the 147 physical anthropologists surveyed within the United States agreed with the statement, “There are biological races within the species Homo Sapiens.” However, as of today it seems there are very few physical anthropologists who support the idea of race and the ability to separate the human population into four or five racial categories.

            Today most physical/forensic anthropologists refer to the category of “race” as “ancestry”, given it described a more accurate image of what they are aiming to identify through the remains. Though many forensic anthropologists agree race is a concept, they must identify race from what they concluded about the skeletal remains’ ancestry. This is because race is a key feature in missing person’s reports, along with sex, age, and height (stature). Identification “is a two-stage process. The first stage involves the construction of a biological profile and the second is an attempt at a positive match. The latter ideally involves comparing some individualizing data from a missing person to similar data recovered from the skeletal remains, such as dental records or X-rays” (Sauer, 2009). The first stage is important in generating a narrowed down list of possible missing persons based on matching features identified from the remains such as “race”, from there, forensic anthropologists are able to match those missing persons reports with specific skeletal features (dental features, medical history, etc.).

            Although forensic anthropologists might have had a controversial past in terms of racial identification and the acceptance of the race concept, it appears most all modern physical/forensic anthropologists are avid supporters of the race concept and the identification of “ancestry” rather than “race”. It must be made aware that although forensic anthropologists do identify race, it is in accordance with the missing person’s report requirements in order to narrow down possible victims.