# Can the race of the fetus be determined prenatally? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [August 5, 2007, 2:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-the-race-of-the-fetus-be-determined-prenatally/414504 "2007-08-05T14:16:21Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![brazil84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/8491ac/32.png) [@brazil84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brazil84)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2007, 7:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-the-race-of-the-fetus-be-determined-prenatally/414504/21 "2007-08-05T19:53:58Z")
[QUOTE=brazil84] Mixed race. [/QUOTE] More specifically, 25% sub-Sahara African, 50% Native American and 25% European. ---
**Author:** ![monstro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba9def/32.png) [@monstro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monstro)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2007, 8:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-the-race-of-the-fetus-be-determined-prenatally/414504/22 "2007-08-05T20:10:35Z")
[QUOTE=brazil84] Basically the same thing could be said if somebody asked “Can you tell somebody’s race just by looking at them?” But most people would agree that the answer to this question is “Usually, yes.” Just walking down the street in a multicultural American city, you can uncontroversially tell the race of most people you see. [/QUOTE] I don’t really think so. It’s easy to tell races when the number is few because the apparent differences become starker. But add in groups like Asian, Hispanic, Middle Eastern, and East Indian, and suddenly it’s a lot harder. There’s really little difference separating a Greek guy from a Middle Eastern guy from a Hispanic guy (which makes arguments for racial profession in the TWAT all the more ridiculous). Wiithout thinking about it, we rely on other cues like hairstyles, facial hair, dress, accents, and non-verbal language. Today I saw a dark-skinned woman with wavy, blondish hair. She honestly could have been anything from black girl with a dye job to Australian Aborigine, and I consider myself pretty good at pegging people racially. ---
**Author:** ![Contrapuntal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e274bd/32.png) [@Contrapuntal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Contrapuntal)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2007, 8:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-the-race-of-the-fetus-be-determined-prenatally/414504/23 "2007-08-05T20:13:51Z")
[QUOTE=brazil84] Then I guess the original question in this thread is pretty easily answered. [/QUOTE] And it was, in post #2, by **Colibri**. ---
**Author:** ![brazil84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/8491ac/32.png) [@brazil84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brazil84)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2007, 8:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-the-race-of-the-fetus-be-determined-prenatally/414504/24 "2007-08-05T20:16:07Z")
[QUOTE=Contrapuntal] And it was, in post #2, by **Colibri**. [/QUOTE] But he gave a different answer from you. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2007, 8:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-the-race-of-the-fetus-be-determined-prenatally/414504/25 "2007-08-05T20:16:25Z")
[QUOTE=brazil84] Mixed race. [/QUOTE] Which is not a “race”, and which is why the genetic test can’t be relied upon. If we’re just looking at the US, I think **Dr. Deth** probably gave the best answer, and I was thinking of something similar as well. If you can assume the gestational mother is the biological mother, and you can determine, genetically, who the father is (that’s extremely reliable), then you’re better off assigning “race” based on that information and using whatever definition of “race” you use (and there are any number of definitions out there). While most Americans still come largely from European ancestry, that percentage is shrinking all the time. But even now, a very large minority is of mixed ancestry, if we take the simplistic approach and assign race to geographic origin. Virtually everyone who is Black or Hispanic in this country is of mixed racial background, and that accounts for about 25% of the population right there. ---
**Author:** ![monstro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba9def/32.png) [@monstro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monstro)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2007, 8:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-the-race-of-the-fetus-be-determined-prenatally/414504/26 "2007-08-05T20:19:17Z")
[QUOTE=brazil84] More specifically, 25% sub-Sahara African, 50% Native American and 25% European. [/QUOTE] “Mixed race” would assume that there’s “pure race”, right? We would need to define how much mixture makes someone “mixed” or not mixed. If most Americans turn out to have a composition similar to the one above and yet the same people continue to call themselves “black” and “white”, then it wouldn’t be meaningful to label fetuses with the same make-up “mixed”. Unless we’re also going to relabel ourselves as mixed. Which is probably what we should do anyway. ---
**Author:** ![brazil84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/8491ac/32.png) [@brazil84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brazil84)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2007, 8:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-the-race-of-the-fetus-be-determined-prenatally/414504/27 "2007-08-05T20:31:21Z")
[QUOTE=John Mace] Which is not a “race”, and which is why the genetic test can’t be relied upon. [/quote] If that’s how you feel, then the initial question should have been answered as follows: “No, you can’t tell the race of a foetus any more than you can tell the race of a person you see walking down the street.” ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2007, 8:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-the-race-of-the-fetus-be-determined-prenatally/414504/28 "2007-08-05T20:41:05Z")
[QUOTE=brazil84] So the test described in the article I linked is bogus? [/QUOTE] Misleading. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2007, 8:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-the-race-of-the-fetus-be-determined-prenatally/414504/29 "2007-08-05T20:47:08Z")
[QUOTE=brazil84] If that’s how you feel, then the initial question should have been answered as follows: “No, you can’t tell the race of a foetus any more than you can tell the race of a person you see walking down the street.” [/QUOTE] I know you read my post #16, since you commented on it. Your statement is incorrect. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2007, 8:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-the-race-of-the-fetus-be-determined-prenatally/414504/30 "2007-08-05T20:52:04Z")
[QUOTE=brazil84] So the test described in the article I linked is bogus? [/QUOTE] To quote from your own link (did you read the whole thing?): > [@](#): > > Some, such as Terry Melton, president of Mitotyping Technologies of State College, Pa., say the reliability of ancestry testing remains unproved. > > William Shields, a biology professor and genetics specialist at State University of New York’s College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse, says that even if the tests are correct, a person’s ancestry often is a poor predictor of what he will look like. Human beings, Shields adds, are too scientifically similar to one another to be distinguished by a “layman’s term” such as race. > [@](#): > > George Rhoden, a detective with London’s Metropolitan Police and president of the force’s Black Police Association, also is a skeptic. He says that in a society in which marriages between people of different ethnic backgrounds are increasingly common, racial designations often are “very broad” and “don’t do us coppers much good.” > > Rhoden points out that suspects with similar genetic ancestry can look significantly different from one another. A person whose profile is 75% Sub-Saharan African, for example, may have skin color that is nearly identical to someone whose profile is 35% Sub-Saharan African. > > “As a detective, I don’t care where (a suspect’s) grandfather came from,” Rhoden says. “I want to know what he looks like.” ---
**Author:** ![brazil84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/8491ac/32.png) [@brazil84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brazil84)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2007, 8:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-the-race-of-the-fetus-be-determined-prenatally/414504/31 "2007-08-05T20:53:07Z")
> [@](#): > > Misleading. I don’t see why. You said that in the United States, race is defined by phenotype. If we assume that the test is not bogus, then we can know what the foetus’ race is, and therefore its adult phenotype. So we can know its race just as well as we know the race of any person walking down the street. ---
**Author:** ![hawksgirl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ed655f/32.png) [@hawksgirl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hawksgirl)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2007, 8:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-the-race-of-the-fetus-be-determined-prenatally/414504/32 "2007-08-05T20:58:28Z")
[QUOTE=brazil84] I don’t see why. You said that in the United States, race is defined by phenotype. If we assume that the test is not bogus, then we can know what the foetus’ race is, and therefore its adult phenotype. So we can know its race just as well as we know the race of any person walking down the street. [/QUOTE] phenotype/= genotype ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2007, 8:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-the-race-of-the-fetus-be-determined-prenatally/414504/33 "2007-08-05T20:59:28Z")
[QUOTE=brazil84] I don’t see why. You said that in the United States, race is defined by phenotype. If we assume that the test is not bogus, then we can know what the foetus’ race is, and therefore its adult phenotype. So we can know its race just as well as we know the race of any person walking down the street. [/QUOTE] Please define “race” precisely. What sense exactly are you using the term in? ---
**Author:** ![monstro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba9def/32.png) [@monstro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monstro)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2007, 8:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-the-race-of-the-fetus-be-determined-prenatally/414504/34 "2007-08-05T20:59:49Z")
[QUOTE=brazil84] I don’t see why. You said that in the United States, race is defined by phenotype. If we assume that the test is not bogus, then we can know what the foetus’ race is, and therefore its adult phenotype. So we can know its race just as well as we know the race of any person walking down the street. [/QUOTE] Do Vanessa Williams, Halle Berry, Angela Bassett, and Whoopie Goldberg all share the same phenotype to you? ---
**Author:** ![groman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/73ab20/32.png) [@groman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/groman)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2007, 9:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-the-race-of-the-fetus-be-determined-prenatally/414504/35 "2007-08-05T21:00:21Z")
[QUOTE=brazil84] More specifically, 25% sub-Sahara African, 50% Native American and 25% European. [/QUOTE] The problem with this is that this is continental ancestry, not race. Variations of continental ancestry within a single race could very well be greater than variations between different races. In that some sense we’re all mixed race yet 100% of African origin. I think part of the reason for this confusion is the term “ancestry tree” or “family tree”. I think a better analogy would be “bowl of family spaghetti” or the “tangled fishing line of ancestry”. :dubious: ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2007, 9:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-the-race-of-the-fetus-be-determined-prenatally/414504/36 "2007-08-05T21:01:23Z")
[QUOTE=brazil84] If that’s how you feel, then the initial question should have been answered as follows: “No, you can’t tell the race of a foetus any more than you can tell the race of a person you see walking down the street.” [/QUOTE] No. The question was very broad, and a simplistic answer such as you are proposing ignores a lot assumptions that many people make about the term “race”. While that term doesn’t make much sense biologically, it certainly is in play in the social arena. And even if the OP used the technique I proposed, that accuracy and/or usefulness of it would depend to a large degree on the definition of “race” that he or she was using. ---
**Author:** ![monstro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba9def/32.png) [@monstro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monstro)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2007, 9:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-the-race-of-the-fetus-be-determined-prenatally/414504/37 "2007-08-05T21:02:59Z")
[QUOTE=monstro] Do Vanessa Williams, Halle Berry, Angela Bassett, and Whoopie Goldberg all share the same phenotype to you? [/QUOTE] Or, to put it in another way, if we had a fetus that is determined to have 60% sub-Subharahan, 20% Native American, and 20% European ancestry, can we guess which of the above four women the baby is going to look the most alike? ---
**Author:** ![brazil84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/8491ac/32.png) [@brazil84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brazil84)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2007, 9:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-the-race-of-the-fetus-be-determined-prenatally/414504/38 "2007-08-05T21:03:55Z")
[QUOTE=Colibri] Please define “race” precisely. What sense exactly are you using the term in? [/QUOTE] Sure, but can you first explain what you mean in Post #2 when you referred to " common “racial” categories (e.g. black, white, Asian, etc.) " ---
**Author:** ![brazil84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/8491ac/32.png) [@brazil84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brazil84)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2007, 9:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-the-race-of-the-fetus-be-determined-prenatally/414504/39 "2007-08-05T21:10:27Z")
[QUOTE=monstro] Or, to put it in another way, if we had a fetus that is determined to have 60% sub-Subharahan, 20% Native American, and 20% European ancestry, can we guess which of the above four women the baby is going to look the most alike? [/QUOTE] If a person has 60% sub-Saharan, 20% Native American, and 20% European ancestry, what race would you say they are? ---
**Author:** ![Measure\_for\_Measure](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/measure_for_measure/32/557_2.png) [@Measure\_for\_Measure](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Measure_for_Measure)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2007, 9:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-the-race-of-the-fetus-be-determined-prenatally/414504/40 "2007-08-05T21:19:13Z")
[QUOTE=Contrapuntal] And it was, in post #2, by **Colibri**. [/QUOTE] I would give post #13 the prize, the one where Colobri responds to Brazil84’s common sense objection. It’s been an interesting thread. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-the-race-of-the-fetus-be-determined-prenatally/414504.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-the-race-of-the-fetus-be-determined-prenatally/414504.md?page=3)