Presenters
Annette Dula, PhD, Senior Research Assistant, CSERA, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO

Charmaine Royal, PhD, Assistant Professor, Department of Pediatrics and Prinicipal Investigator
GenEthics National Human Research Institute, Howard University, Wahsington, DC

Marian Gray Secundy, PhD Director
National Center for Bioethics in Research and Health Care, Tuskegee University, Tuskegee, AL

john powell - Moderator:
We have a wonderful town hall meeting to help us start. We have three presenters Annette Dula, Charmaine Royal and Marian Gray Secundy.

Annette Dula:
Good morning. My name is Annette Dula. Let me tell you how I became a bioethicist.

When I was a graduate student at Harvard University some years ago I found a lump in my breast. At the time, I was planning to get a doctorate in adult literacy. When I found the lump, I changed my life goals and decided to become a medical ethicist. I chose this path because I did not understand why I was being treated the way I was being treated. Until I went off for my under graduate degree, I had never been to a hospital or a dentist, so I did not know how doctors treated people.. So, when I was having my discussions with the medical team at Harvard University, I did not know if they were treating me the way they were treating me because I was black or because I was a woman. I started wondering how do these doctors get their ethics?

So, I did my dissertation on the ethics of education of doctors. When I started, I found that nobody was thinking about the concerns of people of color, particularly African Americans. In the clinics where many of the patients were people of color and 99% of the doctors were white. I realized that the healthcare system was not addressing the issues of black folks and of Southeast Asians and Latinos. I do not do traditional bioethics; I look at bioethics as it affects people of color. Marian Gray Secundy and I are among the few women of color who call ourselves bioethicists.

Thirty years ago, I spent a year and a half hitchhiking throughout Africa. In many places, the people I met thought I was African, but not from their country. I was Nubian, I was Yoruba, I was Ibo. No one thought that I was American. Obviously, there was something connecting me to the continent, but not to any particular country. Though I did not set out to trace my roots as many people were doing 30 years ago, I began to focus more and more on my identity. I became aware that I was an African American, not an African. My values were American. I did not like finding out I was as much American as I was.

When I returned to the United States, I wrote an article for the New York Times entitled, "No home in Africa." That is when I first realized that my identity was created by me; it was not an identity that I had inherited. How was it constructed? I grew up in a small town. A quarter of the population was African American so everybody knew each other. As in many African American communities, family is very important. When you met somebody, and this still happens when I go back to North Carolina, the question is, "Who's your people?" That question, of course, puts a person in a genealogy. This is an important social ritual of being introduced to the community and to its elders.

My grandparents mostly raised me because my mother was a live-in domestic worker. She was not married. My father and my father's family did not acknowledge me. My identity came completely from my mother's side: aunts, uncles, grandparents, and the extended family. I share my father's family's DNA but they had no part in the identity I and other members of my family have constructed for me.

The premise of African genealogies is to reconstruct the stolen identity. This is fundamentally a political issue. It's a process where knowledge and memory are passed from generation to generation. Reconstructing identities is a problem when it comes to African Americans because of the slave trade. This morally outrageous practice killed, enslaved, and destroyed families and cultures. It deliberately erased the identities of millions of people and many groups of Africans. The practice of slavery tried to strip personhood from a large group of people. It tried to turn people with personalities and identities, into mere bodies. It tried but of course, it did not succeed. We were not completely victims.

So the premise of African genealogies is to try to undo this erasure, to try to recover and restore some of that stolen identity. Tracing genealogies is important philosophically, ethically, and politically. Tracing our genealogies is not just a hobby. It is not just a narcissistic act. It is an attempt to reclaim history, to regain culture, and to gain knowledge that has been denied us. It is also an attempt to gain a sense of place.

If the goal of African genealogies is to reclaim stolen and savaged identities, then genetics does not seem to be the place that we should be going. Genetics can do many things. It can tell us that our DNA has more in common with this group of people than with that group of people. DNA can link our descendants to our common ancestors. It can tell us the region that our ancestors came from. This is biologically interesting, medically important and personally gratifying. Genetics alone cannot restore our identities because identities do not reside on the genes. Identity is who you are as a person. It has to do with what your values are. What values did you get from your parents, from your extended family, from your community? It is what makes you you.

It is tempting to mistakenly believe that we can restore our identities by looking at genetics. Genetics tells us about our bodies; it does not tell us about what kind of person we are. This does not mean that body, personality and identity do not inform each other. Everybody remembers that Martin Luther King said that men should be judged by the content of his character, not by the color of his skin. Identity is not in the genes. What makes us a person is not bound to our bodies. We do not remember Beethoven because he went deaf; we remember him because he created great music. Muhammad Ali was a brilliant fighter but we remember him for his courage and the content of his character. He rejected a war that he thought was immoral, and that's how many of us will remember him.

We have good reasons to be apprehensive and skeptical of any kind of project that tries to link identity with genes. This has been done in the past and we all know that it has had disastrous consequences for African Americans and for other people of color. Let me give you some examples. We know that the health of African Americans is worse than that of white folks. So it is logical to ask, 'What is there about being black that makes us have poor health?' More and more studies are linking genes and disease to race and ethnicity. The American Heart Association reported that African Americans are more likely to have a defective gene that causes high levels of cholesterol that can lead to heart disease. Researchers have also found a predictor for more severe strokes in black folks and we lead in deaths from strokes. Work is being done on genes and nicotine addiction in black folks. The Environmental Protection Agency of the US government is supporting studies to show that African Americans and Latinos are especially susceptible to lead poisoning. Behavioral genetics locates learning problems, reading problems, short attention span, behavior problems, and hyperactivity on the genes. These studies seem to say that our poor health comes from defective genes. There may be something to this but there is a problem in trying to link genes to poor health. It suggests that poor health reflects genetic inferiority. This genetic explanation hides the effects of racism, poverty, inferior inner city schools, children playing in houses and playgrounds that are saturated with brain-damaging lead, working in dangerous jobs, having a poor education, and not having access to healthcare. These are all contributors to our poor health. This genetic explanation hides the fact that the white advantage in health is largely rests on their social advantage.

Once skull and brain size were used to assess racial intelligence; now we are using genetic markers. In 1996, Herrnstein and Murray argued that blacks have an IQ that is much less than Asians and white folks and even argued that a quarter of us are borderline retarded. They said that our low IQ explains social problems such as crime, such as welfare dependency, and single parenting. They argued that since IQ is inherited, the social problems in black communities were inherited and that money would better be spent on encouraging people with higher IQ's (white folks), to having kids and get rid of some of the social programs that were supporting single parenting and poor black people.

One of the early purposes for studying intelligence was to give a biological explanation to white economic, cultural and moral dominance in the world. There had to be a reason to explain this domination and justify this horrible mistreatment. The idea of biological race superiority meant that whites were privileged and were born that way. In contrast, the poor, the violent, the folks that did not have good health, the weak, the dumb, they were born this way too. Finally, researchers have tried to connect violence to genes. Who are they focusing on? They are focusing on African Americans and Latino kids. For example, in the 1970s, more than 7000 mostly African American kids were enrolled in what their parents thought was a free clinic for healthcare, but they were being screened for the extra Y-chromosome. Having an extra Y-chromosome was supposed to mean that you were going to be a criminal in your adult life. In 1992, the NIH launched the violence initiative that, again, targeted minority populations. The agency they were going to focus on biological or genetic approaches. They figured that "social programs are not working, so let's work on the genes." In the late '90s, researchers at New York State Psychiatric Institute studied African American boys and Latino boys who were the brothers of other teenagers who were in jail. They gave them a drug to change behavior. Again, parents were not told of this research.

I'm not trying to say that there is no genetic component to violence. Researchers may find a connection between social ills and genes, but genetic explanations have never helped people of color. They neglect or they gloss over the interaction of the genes with the environment, and they give the impression that nothing can be changed. There may be no reason to worry about African genealogies using genetics, but we have had enough bad experiences with genes as predictors of poor health, violence, and low intelligence that we should be skeptical. We should worry. We must make sure that these abuses do not keep happening. We must remember that genetic explanations provide a very good excuse when our country does not want to take responsibility for a social problem.

The prospect of repairing some of the damage that was done by slavery remains. We want to do something about it. Whenever a people or a nation suffers massive injustice, like the Holocaust, like the genocide in Rwanda, like apartheid in South Africa, we cannot repair all the damage that's been done.

Healing can occur. The key to healing is acknowledgement, memory, history, truth and reconciliation. This country has never done this. It has not been involved in truth and reconciliation. We must do this. We must remember. We must retell the story. We must acknowledge the brutality, destruction, disruption and damage that has been done to us and to our culture. I do not believe that we can ever reconstitute our individual identities back to our African origins. We cannot construct our individual identities through genetic means. We can learn from exploring that connection but much of it is just wiped out. We can do something. It is exciting to learn that we can combine genetics, genealogy, and the types of records that Dr. Hall spoke of to enlighten and enrich the history of African Americans and what has happened to us. That is a project that is worth doing.

Those Africans who arrived on these shores brought a culture, art, music, thought, medicine, and philosophy. From these, they forged a new, strong, wonderful identity as African Americans. That identity has gone beyond us into the larger American culture and all over the world.

Some people are going to ask whether it is appropriate to spend money reconstructing and doing these historical investigations when there are so many pressing social needs facing our community. How do we decide how to allocate resources? We are spending a billion dollars a month to bomb peasants in Afghanistan. Certainly there is enough money to spend on historical analysis and to take care of social needs like access to healthcare for everybody, ensuring that people live and work in decent and healthy places, and that people have enough food and make a decent salary.

African genealogy may help me find out whether an ancestor was Ibo or Yoruba. That is interesting but not so important to me. It will not change whether we get access to healthcare. On the other hand, African genealogists can give us to a better grasp of our own history, a better understanding for the rest of society and the rest of the world to understand what has been done. If it can alleviate racism and its legacy, then African genealogies is well worth every bit of money that can be put into it.

DISCUSSION.
Annette Dula:
I have been struck this tension between humanities and the sciences. We need science and we need the humanities. They must inform each other. This is will help make us all more human, all more respectful of each other. To try to throw out the science would be a mistake. As Marian Gray Secundy said, we are too comfortable to remove science from our lives. However, we must ensure that science is not used in ways that diminish our personhood or the kind of country we want to be. We need the humanities to temper the misuse of science.

We need more meetings like this where people can get together and talk. I agree with what Marian Gray Secundy said about bringing community folks in because one of the things we often do as "academics" is just talk to each other, and that's who we listen to is each other, so we completely miss some of the very essential things that need to be said. It's like the young woman yesterday who said "What's this got to do with me, what y'all are talking about?" That's why we need more of this sort of thing.

When Dr. Kittles' research on genealogy hit the news about two years ago, there was much discussion among us at the Genome Center. The diverse faculty of the Genome Center pretty much represents the diaspora. There are African Americans, people from the Caribbean and people from Africa. As we talked about this work, my initial response was, 'Why do we need to do this?' What is this going to do for us? The two faculty who are African had a response that was similar to mine. What will this do for African Americans? How many African Americans are going to want to go back to Africa, and if they go there, how long are they going to be able to stay there? The African Americans on our faculty had a different response, that this had to do with reconstructing the lost identity.

Having lived in Jamaica, in a country where blacks were the majority and where we govern ourselves, I realized that my perspective, experience and culture differed from others of the diaspora. We all came from Africa, but we have had different experiences. My identity was as a Caribbean woman, as a Jamaican woman. Living in the United States has changed that identity. Our identity is not static, it is dynamic and it changes. It has only changed somewhat because there are times when I remember when I first came and I would think, 'My goodness, African Americans see everything in black and white.' Somebody would say something and my African American colleagues would say, "You heard that - racism." I'd say, "Where? I did not see that. I did not take it that way." With time, my perspectives have changed on things, but I still have that response to many things. The issue of racism, I know it is very real, and I have experienced my own share of that having been here, but it is not so much a part of my consciousness, in terms of how I respond to people. I tend to give the benefit of the doubt a lot more than I think I would if I were born here. I realize the experience that African Americans have had.

As I listen to African Americans talk about identity and about reconstructing the identity that has been lost, I get the feeling that some African Americans do not think that they have a culture. They have to go to Africa for a Culture. As someone coming from a different culture, I can say, you have a culture that is an African American culture. It is shaped by the experiences that you have had here. As Annette Dula said, she sees herself not as an African, but as an African American woman shaped by what that means having been in this country.

I remember when Dr. Kittles told me about the response of the man who came to his office and received the results of his genetic testing. Immediately I thought, we cannot gives this information in a flippant manner. As a genetic counselor, we give people bad news. We tell somebody that they are at risk for having a particular genetic condition or that they may have a child with a particular genetic condition. The field of genetic counseling focuses on the psychological impact of information and how we give the information to people. As Dr. Kittles told that story, I saw that we should give this information in a genetic counseling setting. One must understand their motivations for being tested and their expectations for this information. That man believed, based on his family stories, that he belonged to a particular tribe but he got information to the contrary. There may be people who want to be tested because they want to deny their African ancestry, because they want to prove that there are no Africans in my background. There may be people who want to elevate the white part of their ancestry. Motivations must be explored.

I once said to Dr. Kittles that this seems to be frivolous research. I think we should spend more time looking at the genetic conditions that affect our families and our community. I no longer think that it is frivolous because the implications are phenomenal and tremendous.

Annette Dula gave a lot of information about the history of the belief that genes determine the outcome and that our genes show what we are. If our genes are tied to something bad, that means we are inferior. Annette talked about the misuse of making judgments about people based on their genes. Dr. Duster talked about the forensic implications of being able to identify people's ancestry.

Insurance and employment discrimination are some of the things that we are most concerned about we think about ethical issues in genetics. Insurance companies may look at genetic information as being deterministic. If somebody has a particular gene that may predispose them to breast cancer, for example something, then an insurance company might raise their premiums. I thought back to Dr. Hall's database as she talked about the field that she labeled "defects." I was thinking that if an insurance company wanted to connect those fields to various tribes or various countries because of the ancestral origin that people could use that information. There are many ways that information could be used. Dr. Kittle's work might make it possible to connect the information about African regions or tribes to information about the particular diseases or the particular behaviors that Dr. Dula talked about.

Dr. Kittles spoke about how people from different parts of Africa were taken to different parts of the United States because of their skill in particular kinds of farming. Rice farmers were taken to areas where rice grew and so on. The potential use of genetic or ancestry information to assign occupations or to deny the opportunity for a particular kind of job is very troubling. African Americans have had the experience of being discriminated against in terms of insurance and employment with sickle-cell disease. People remember that. When Howard University was trying to recruit people for genetic studies, looking at the genetics of prostate cancer in African Americans for example, people have said, "I am not going to participate in the study because insurance companies just want to charge black people higher premiums."

Finally, genetics has the potential to divide our community further. If certain groups are more favored than others based on their ancestry, people could stigmatize different groups. This can happen from outside of the community. It can happen within the community. I did a set of focus groups some months ago with some students at Howard University. I asked about genetics, genetic variation, and people's interest in genetics. I also asked about identity and about their interest in genetic testing for African ancestry. I looked at African American students, students born in the United States, African Caribbean students and African students. I wanted to see what the similarities and differences are, because I know that the cultures and the identities of these groups, and individuals within the groups, are different. I asked 'how has living in the United States shaped your identity, with African Americans?' There were some African Americans who responded, "Being in the United States has everything to do with my identity. It's what makes me who I am." One person said, "It's a shame that we have to be so conscious about the fact that we are black, versus people in other countries." In Jamaica for example, I know that I am black, but it's not something I get reminded about on a daily basis.

Many of the Caribbean and African students had been at Howard for less than five years. Many were still very much in touch with their cultures. The African students and the Caribbean students overwhelmingly talked about how glad they were that they were not born in the United States. They talked about how much they value their culture and the values that had been instilled in them from wherever they came. Many talk about their identity having changed a bit since they have come to the United States but their values are still there. Many seemed sorry for African Americans and the experiences African Americans have had in this country.

I expected that African American students would have an overwhelming interest in using genetics to learn about their African ancestors. That's primarily because of conversations that Dr. Kittles and I have had. He believes that African Americans more interested in ancestry research than research looking at the genetics of diseases. I believe that people most want to find cures and treatments for disease. African American students were generally more interested than the Caribbean students and the African students, but not overwhelmingly so. Some African American students said, "Yeah, it would be interesting. I would like to know. It would be nice to know what part of Africa I'm from." There were quite a number of African American students who said, "What's that going to do for me? What difference is that going to make? I do not need that information." There were a few who said, "I want to consider myself American. I do not need to see myself as African or African American. I want to be considered American. That's what I am." For them, it was not necessary for them to trace African ancestry.

All three groups, especially the Caribbean students, gave comments like, "Why focus on the African part?" "We are mixed with so many different groups, so many different 'races,' why focus on the African? If you cannot tell me all the other ethnic groups I have in my background, then I do not need to know the African part. It's not that important."

The African students did not seem to be interested in this kind of work. Their response to this question was, "I know who I am. I do not need genetics. I do not need to do a genetic test to tell me about my African ancestry." This kind of response was much more common than in the African American students. Perhaps this is because there are so many ethnic wars already in Africa. We do not need genetics to start dividing us or separating us out any more.

As I talk about the ethical issues, the issues that could come from this research, certainly I am not saying that we should not pursue this. As a geneticist, I value the science. I also respect the academic freedom and interest of Dr. Kittles' and the many people who share his views. Dr. Kittles says he wanted me to give him my blood, so he can tell me where I am from. I am not interested and do not want to know. African Americans must however be at the top of the science with everyone else. We must minimize the harms and maximize the benefits to our people--African people, African derived people. My hope is that whatever we do, whether it's African ancestry research, whether it's looking for genes for diseases, that the benefits will be realized in the community, by people in the community who suffer from the things that we study, and that the harms will be kept at a minimum. Thank you

RESPONSE 1
Charmaine Royal:
I do not separate the science from the sociopolitical or the social aspects. I believe that just about all aspects of our lives - diseases, behaviors, everything we do - all aspects of our lives are a combination of genes and environment. I do not think genes alone impact anything, and I do not think the environment alone does. It's the proportion of the contribution of these to everything that we see. Science cannot stand on its own outside of the context.

The tendency, as you noted, is to elevate the science. This is a discussion that we frequently have at the genome center at Howard University. Why should we focus on the genetics of diseases in African Americans. Our perspective is that all diseases, all conditions, are genes and environment. Our center looks at the contributors to disease, the genetics as well as the other factors. Social factors are just part of the picture too. We need to look at them both together, to combine them.

When we think about gene-environment interactions, there is a tendency to think about the environment as our physical environment, what we breathe, what we eat, those kinds of things. We see the social environment as playing a major part in what we do. There are no models for looking at the genes and environment interaction, particularly the social environment, which is what we are so concerned about. One of our goals at the genome center at Howard is to create models to look at gene-environment interactions and looking at the social environment much more broadly than it's typically conceived. For me, the science is a big part of the picture but it's not the most important part. As black people, as African Americans, we realize the significance of combining the two.

RESPONSE 2
Charmaine Royal:
I'm first going to respond to the young lady's comments about the ethical issues that weren't addressed. The issues that you were talking about regarding what the samples are going to be used for after, those are issues that we find with just about all genetic studies, especially when they relate to particular groups. Those are major concerns that we have at the genome center, focusing primarily on African Americans, and that other studies have looking at groups.

I want to go back to something that john powell said that is so poignant in terms of how I look at the impact of the enslavement of Africans on black people in general. When we talk about health disparities and we talk about the higher incidence of cancers and diabetes in African Americans and in other people of color, we tend to forget that we are not sicker than anybody else. The people who perpetrated these things on us are just as sick or sicker than we are. It just manifests itself in different ways. We must work for the reconciliation that Marian Gray Secundy was talking about in terms of the work that we do. This reconciliation must not just affect black people; it much touch society as a whole, humanity. It will be difficult but that is where we have to get to, however we are going to get there.

This has been one of the most remarkable conferences, and I am absolutely thrilled at what has been done to put it together. I did not quite know what I was going to say when I arrived here and as I have thought about this conference, I am amazed at what I have come up with. Dr. Dula and Dr. Royal and I had a conference call about what we were going to do. Since then, we have come together in a way that is quite different from what we thought we were going to say. We have been stimulated and motivated by the energy and the extremely high intellect and quality of the persons who have participated in this activity over these two days. It is just been a joy.

We have talked about the problems of turning this scientific project into a solution for sociopolitical issues facing blacks in America. I believe that we should attend to what that means, whether or not we really want to go that way. We have talked about the importance of separating science from our personal agendas, and the value of using every opportunity as a teaching moment for our children and for ourselves. Perhaps this scientific investigation is an opportunity for a teaching moment to help our children regain or gain some better sense of self, a better sense of identity. Perhaps this can be done without allowing this project to become a sociopolitical activity that it is should not become.

I have been struck during these presentations about the idealization of Africa. I would urge us to think about Africa realistically and to educate ourselves fully about Africa's history, its present, about the many Africas. We should remember that much of what we are currently calling the Middle East is Africa.
I am deeply concerned about the demonization of white America and all Europeans. Dr. Royal nicely summarized the importance of paying attention to and trying to assess, the risk and benefits of what this project proposes to do. Also, what are the risks of those who we historically know to be oppressors will do with this information?

There are benefits to this project. I came here with a great deal of ambivalence about this project, about its emphasis and because this seemed to be a diversion from the many other important things that are wrong in this country. I am now less and more ambivalent. I am less ambivalent in the sense that I hear and understand the cry for self-worth and identity that I have heard here. At the same time, I am concerned that we may be unintentionally being trapped by a diversion. I have a great deal of concern about the overall intentions and motivations of the scientific enterprise and the commercial products that will come with this enterprise. I also believe that we should look at the geopolitical realities that are inherent in this activity.

Putting on my conspiracy theory hat, we should wonder why scientists are spending time trying to help us divide ourselves by tribe and region. Why are American scientists trying to divide us by whether we are Ibo, Yoruba, Senegalese or whatever. What is the benefit from this, particularly at a time when we are attacking the Middle East with a vengeance? The Middle East is Africa. We should try to understand ourselves in the context of the geopolitical realities of the world in which we live. I urge you to pay attention to the work of Helen Caldicot of Physicians for Social Responsibility in terms of the geopolitical agendas.

Dr. Dula referred to the genetics of addiction to nicotine. This research is trying to suggest that African Americans are more subject to nicotine addiction. But, what would be do if it turns out that we are more subject to cocaine addiction and other substance addictions?

Steve Miles and Atum Azzihir suggested that this project can give us the tools to mend the disruption of cultures. I think it can and it should, if used appropriately and in a balanced way.

Troy Duster spoke of cautionary tales and mystic unreality; we should remember that.

Dr. Duster also said that this is a social project but that we should be wary of a genetic stamp of approval. He also said that there is a danger of embedding a racist formulation in the technology and in the analysis. Dr. Royal also spoke of the social project that is implicit in this scientific endeavor.

Dr. Dula raised the issue of the allocation of resources in America. Is this what we want to encourage America and our science to be doing? Some of us would find it interesting; I would. I have my theories about where I am from. But, is this what we ought to be pushing?

Dr. Kittles said that we must articulate both the promise and the limitation of this work. He also said that part of the psychology of health and disease is related to one's sense of identity. We heard that theme in many ways from many people - about emptiness, about spiritual emptiness. The author Alice Walker wrote about young people looking in the mirror and seeing no one there because of the soul-injury of living as a black child in America. Many people, including Dr. Dula spoke of health disparities. This research may help address these but it may not be a cure-all because of this spiritual emptiness that was spoken of yesterday.

john powell reminded us that culture is mainly about meaning, that we must assess differences between data and information, and differences between information and knowledge. He noted that emptiness in life is a spiritual need. Science cannot fill this, nor should we try to do so with science. That is the greatest message to take away from here. Dr. Graves told us that genes can inform culture but do not define culture.

During this conference, I have come full circle in ways that I may be pleased and not so pleased about. As I have thought about this, I realized that I am an African American but I am an American. I have recognized that in other ways but it hit home yesterday. You may recall the Langston Hughes poem, "I too am America." I have been reminded of the times when I really was aware that I had become, or was becoming, an American and not just an African American.

I became an American when I went to Europe for the first time. I did not like not having all the creature comforts of the United States. I became an American when the plane landed at Kennedy and I was so glad to be home. I became an American when I went to Africa. When I went to Africa, I only went to South Africa and a little bit to Zimbabwe, and I was told that Africa in South Africa was Africa for beginners. I am an American in the way I like my creature comforts. I am disturbed deeply by the poverty and by the ways in which people have to live in South Africa, in Zimbabwe, and in other parts of Africa. I do not comfortably identify myself with the poverty and the starvation in Rwanda and Uganda. I do not comfortably identify myself with the cultures and the wars. I absolutely, fundamentally became an American on September 11, and I cannot talk about September 11 still without crying. I became an American. I am an American. I am not an African. Although I believe that I want to know where I came from in Africa, I fundamentally am an American.

Is there danger of us becoming divided and weakened as we identify with specific countries of origin for ourselves or specific tribes? I would urge you to identify the universals and the commonalities with others in the world, not the differences. I heard wonderful things about our African traditions yesterday but these are not as unique as we think they are. They may have been described as ways of knowing and ways of expressing and I have taken great pride in those. I have spent much of my career describing and promoting the values and the things that were talked about yesterday. But, Hispanics also are a village and raise their children in a village. Irish Americans have extended family. There are universals and commonalities. We need to understand and educate ourselves about those and then consider whether or not we are talking about significant differences or just different ways of expressing ourselves in cultures.

Yesterday, someone asked, "Do we know what we had? Do we know what we were?" To these questions, I would add, "Do we know what we have? Do we know who we are?" I would urge us not to divert ourselves or allow ourselves to be diverted from the real issues of poverty, jobs, alienation, and the geopolitical realities of the world.

I am going to end this with Maya Angelou's poem, "The Pulse of the Morning" from Clinton's inauguration. It says everything I want to say about my sense of my own identity. I urge you to take this with you as you think about the importance of this project.

Rose Brewer:
I want to ask the geneticists to respond to Dr. Duster's remarks about science itself being a social product. It seems we are letting science off the hook and taking it as something that should not be interrogated.

Charmaine Royal: I do not separate the science from the sociopolitical or the social aspects. I believe that just about all aspects of our lives - diseases, behaviors, everything we do - all aspects of our lives are a combination of genes and environment. I do not think genes alone impact anything, and I do not think the environment alone does. It is the proportion of the contribution of these to everything that we see. Science cannot stand on its own outside of the context.

The tendency, as you noted, is to elevate the science. This is a discussion that we frequently have at the genome center at Howard University. Why should we focus on the genetics of diseases in African Americans. Our perspective is that all diseases, all conditions, are genes and environment. Our center looks at the contributors to disease, the genetics as well as the other factors. Social factors are just part of the picture too. We need to look at them both together, to combine them.

When we think about gene-environment interactions, there is a tendency to think about the environment as our physical environment, what we breathe, what we eat, those kinds of things. We see the social environment as playing a major part in what we do. There are no models for looking at the genes and environment interaction, particularly the social environment, which is what we are so concerned about. One of our goals at the genome center at Howard is to create models to look at gene-environment interactions and looking at the social environment much more broadly than It is typically conceived. For me, the science is a big part of the picture but It is not the most important part. As black people, as African Americans, we realize the significance of combining the two.

Joseph Graves:
I concur with Dr. Royal but I believe there is a confusion about what science is supposed to be privileged for. There are things that science deserves the highest privilege for; that is explaining the way the natural world works. That is what it is designed to do and does so well; it deserves that privilege. In other words, science will tell you how objects fall off this table and hit the Earth.

There are other realms in which science should not be the most privileged thing. These include questions of ethics and spirituality. Science is not designed to be there. People confuse what science does do well, which is to tell us about how natural systems work, and the other issues for which science has no role.

Marian Secundy:
I often think about Dr. Brewer's question. Dr. Grave's is correct about why and for what science should be privileged. But does that mean that there is truth in the genealogical research, or population genetics, or in the interpretation or the applications of the Genome Project?

Joe Graves:

Scientists do not deal with truth. That is not a scientific concept. Science deals with conjectural hypotheses. We develop models of the way things work. As new information becomes available, we revise the model. Truth is in the realm of metaphysics and other philosophical discourses. For example, to tell you how electricity works, science offers a conjectural model but we are not presenting it as truth. That is not our realm.

Marian Secundy:
The public does not understand that science is conjecture. The media does not represent science as conjecture. It represents it as fact.

CLOSING STATEMENT

Marian Secundy:
My last statements are a call to action in two significant areas. The first is political. Recognize your political power and the power of the vote. Recognizing that you can say something about the NIH budget, that you can say something about the direction in which moneys are going, that you can organize around those issues, that you can participate and that you should do so.

The second is the need for a balanced, educated, and reasoned awareness of the history, the present, and the context in which we exist, so that we can properly educate our children and help them identify in the world where they live, even in the context of a family in which the children are blended or different looking. That's been a problem for African American kids through families historically. You can read a lot of stuff about what we do to reinforce and give positive images.

Annette said something that I thought was really important about truth and reconciliation, which has to do with our need to begin to move toward forgiveness and redemption. South Africa, believe it or not, has been very successfully moving in that direction. There are lots of problems there. There will probably be for generations, but it's amazing what the truth and reconciliation process was able to begin, though not successfully finish, and there are many critics of it. But the approach and the attitude is something that I think we ought to think about. Political action, vigilance, strategizing, truth and reconciliation, and family education.