Semiotics of Race: Race and Genomics

This project is a semiotic analysis of scientific discourses of “race,” specifically the Human Genome Project (HGP) and the ways in which this scientific project has been taken up and incorporated into the culture. The guiding questions are: How is the popular media’s (including new media) construction of genomics affecting understandings of race, racial categories, and “human origins?” How does the popularization of a simplified understanding of genomics become a money-making enterprise, and how does it assist people in understanding who they are, and from whence they come? Of special interest are businesses that target particular audiences: African Americans and indigenous/American Indians. In these two communities, “blood” has been one of the things that defines “race.” For African Americans, the “one drop” rule constructs anyone with any African ancestry as “black.” Conversely, membership in American Indian nations has historically been defined by “blood quantum.”