According to a disturbing report (by Home Affairs correspondent, Nigel Morris) in today’s The Independent (UK) race has been a driving force in the shady collection of DNA samples.

Overall, 24 per cent of people on the database are non-white, even though the black and Asian population of the UK as a whole is less than 8 per cent. Some estimates have even suggested that that more than a one-third of young black men have had samples taken.

Furthermore, more than 24,000 minors (yes, folks under 18 years of age) have been registered: “despite them never having been cautioned, charged or convicted of an offence.”

The said database was penned under legislation approved two day’s after the invasion of Iraq, and resulted in very little media attention. And, in the process, the UK has become the front-runner in building a national DNA database with 5% of its population DNA samples stored in government agencies. The next closest country is Austria, which has little more than 1% of its residents’ information.

Let this be another example of the many manifestations of racism and its many heads of discrimination. For another example of our species’ fascination with race, see the WaPo story highlighting a study by Ebonya Washington (to be published in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, no less) that indicates that a stastically significant number of white voters will abandon their party loyalty if the proposed candidate is African-American.

Seems that WEB DuBois was wrong. Race wasn’t just the problem of the 20th Century, but the 21st as well.

This entry was posted on Friday, April 14th, 2006 at 3:11 pm by Chad. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.