Scientific racism of the nineteenth century, the eugenics movement of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, and their revival in the late 1960s and 1970s by figures such as Arthur Jensen, William Shockley, and Richard Hernstein (Kevles 1985) were largely concerned with genetic superiority and inferiority based on race and thus were obviously, especially in retrospect, part of the ideological machinery of racism. By contrast, the HGP was initiated with the goal of sequencing DNA base pairs in the human genome. The project had a strong focus on improving population health and a notable inattention to hierarchy based on race or other social categories. The very phrase “the human genome” implies a focus on commonalities among humans. At the widely publicized unveiling of the draft of the human genome map in 2000, Bill Clinton said, “one of the great truths to emerge from this triumphant expedition . . . is that in genetic terms, all human beings, regardless of race, are more than 99.9 percent the same. What that means is that modern science has confirmed . . . the most
