In this month’s lead review, Mark Pagel, professor of evolutionary biology at Reading University, reads two new books about race, genetics and social structures—Strange Fruit by Kenan Malik, and Trust by Marek Kohn.
Pagel argues that our understanding of the evolution of our species must begin with an acceptance of the genetic reality of race, but must also recognise our unique ability to transcend this through co-operation of a kind no other species has remotely achieved.
The relationship between our “humanity” and our biological natures is always a troubling topic for scientists and sociologists. Yet, Pagel suggests, there is no inherent contradiction in our understandings of the societies we are able to build and those natures with which we are born, so long as we are able to talk of our unique social features with sufficient precision. Let us know your own thoughts below.
An interesting perspective, and refreshing for a social scientist like myself. But it skirts the question of why ‘race’ is a meaningful category for social and political action. If we are rational reciprocators who have superseded our genetic instincts, how can one explain racism? Why does ethnicity persist as an important social and political force? The counter to the genetic answer is that these are social constructs which have acquired force over time, but that argument was not given much attention.
It seems the author at some points makes the case that genetic impulses matter (i.e. genetic and linguistic difference persists because groups have kept apart and tried to annihilate each other, and that we are finely tuned to cultural and genetic differences). In the conclusion, however, he takes the optimistic view that we are unique in the animal kingdom in being able to transcend such genetic programming. So - do genes matter or not? You can’t have your cake and eat it too.
Walter Wallace’s book The Future of Ethnicity, Race and Nationality claimed that mankind genetically and culturally differentiated itself from 100,000 BC to 10,000 BC through migration, natural selection and genetic drift. Since then, he argues, we have been meeting, mingling and converging back into the more uniform population we were in Africa. I don’t buy most of it, but at least it provides a parsimonious theory that can advance the debate.
This well-written piece showed initial promise - I always like to see biologists entering the social field - and nicely reviewed the works at hand, but in the end, seemed to lose its way.
Yes, let’s have a debate on the social and political significance of race…But, with one eye on history and the other on Italy’s current postmodern el Duce’s campaign against the Gypsies, let’s be careful in our choice of venue. I suggest either Sobibor or Bergen-Belsen
“there is no evidence that human groups differ in the genetic factors that cause intelligence or even cognitive abilities in general.”
Would that this were true. The world would be a lot easier place. But realism being the first requirement of moral responsibility in this world, we must be prepared to defend our liberal values (of equality and human justice and individual liberty) in the face of the possibility that these differences do, exist. Be prepared is a prudent motto. My suggestion is that we develop efficient strategies to make life for working-class people as morally attractive as the life of our professional elites. It does not mean absolute equality, but it will involve a lot of economic redistribution (do we know how?) and probably a lot more leisure time for working families, so parents can actually raise their children. We need also to consider ways to share our human capital with societies that are not well-endowed (if this should prove the case)instead of syphoning off their doctors and PH.D’s for life in the West.
People are mostly obviously initially ‘racist’, because they the first thing they react to is the superficial appearance of any person they meet. It is part of a continuum of judging people by their appearance, and this type of behaviour is endemically human, not to say animal, in the sense that within many species, sexual selection, for example, depends on visual appearance.
People often tend to mate or marry others who resemble them in outward appearance. Different kinds of skin colour, all no doubt due in the past to evolutionary processes as described by Mark Pagel, emphasize differences, which, although we know them now to be marginal and highly superficial (with the emphasis on the latter word) in the whole genetic picture, were in the past about all there was to go on.
All the iniquities that have been heaped on various human groups because of racial discrimination, e.g. on dark-skinned Africans during the slave trade, were of course also due to economic exploitation interests and other things, but it could be argued that its starting point was the superficial perception of difference mentioned above. To overcome the nefarious effects of racial discrimination, stereotyping etc., therefore requires enormous resources of education, including the scientific evidence referred to by Pagel, so that people learn from an early age not to judge from appearances overmuch (it is unlikely that it can be eliminated entirely for the reasons already mentioned), and so that they understand better the scientific realities of genetic variation among other things.
Racism makes sense. You do not have the resources to checkout all the players. One of the most profitable and stable businesses in the world routinely follows this principle and no one objects. There are a lot of outstanding teenage drivers, and geriatric fat smokers. But they belong to groups with bad statistics and must pay the price for auto and life insurance. Too much work to checkout all the applicants…
Jung throws some light onto the psychogenesis of of racism with his concept of the “shadow”. A description of this can be found in The collected Works of C.G.Jung volume 9, part 2, paras 13/19.
Set aside the nonsenses such as being asked if you identify with a “White” or “Black” ethnic group – a question that makes as much sense as being asked if your digestive system is deciduous or coniferous. Disregard the blindness that tries to classify us by race as black or white – both colours which are never seen in the range of human skin tones. Let us just be thankful for finding a few books which contain some sense on the subject.
Judging by the way our species has developed over its 1,500 or so generations since some of us left Africa, there must have been competitive advantage in keeping our principal social relations - including especially marriage - within clearly identified but not too endogenous groups. That, plus different environmental challenges in different parts of the world, would be quite sufficient to produce the assortive breeding that has resulted in the genetic differentiation of mankind; and to give sets of us our common concerns with and identifications with what the Greeks called our ethnoi.
But what is repulsive about the concept of “race” is that it is used to imply that there is some value for the future in preserving the genetic differentiation that we have in the current generation. That is to say, it implies preserving the past pattern of assortive mating. In fact as we have become more educated and wealthier our patterns of assortive mating have changed radically. In all the developed societies that I am aware of, the factors which are coming to dominate mating patterns are levels of education and travel time to where the prospective partner lives. Ethnic elders’ cultural or ethnic prejudices are less and less important in settling who has children by whom, as well as in other social relations. And each successive generation in developed societies has become more and more intent on adopting the new patterns.
Since the way we choose our partners in begetting children is changing, we can be sure that the pattern of genetic differentiation of mankind is going to change. Genetic “race”, if the term continues to be meaningful, will not be what it used to be.
The trouble with multi-culturalism as often preached and sometimes practiced is that it tries to restrict greater freedom to choose one’s own pattern of social relations - including pairing for parentage - in the name of preserving a valuable tradition. It comes to favour isolation of groups, not their free interaction. By implication it favours old patterns of mating, old patterns of genetic differentiation and old patterns of separation between people of different ethnicity. It implies discouragement of free choice of mixing with people of other ethnicities. I find that is aesthetically as well as ethically repulsive. The increasing freedom and frequency of interaction with those of other cultures is, for me, one of the beauties of the modern world. London is the place where it happens most richly.
Britain is also the place where other ethnicities are watered down into just another sort of British. It was probably in the 19th century that we began to become so powerfully absorptive. It was then that the division of British society into exclusive cells by religious adherence, social status and locality broke down. Since then, increasing waves of immigration have come to Britain and virtually disappeared. I remember sad conversations with gipsies, Poles, Chinese and jews (both Orthodox and Hassidic) about the impossibility of stopping their children drifting away to become “English”; and on other occasions Chinese, Bosnian, Indian, Bangladeshi, Pakistani, African, Italian and West Indian parents commenting, with various degrees of happiness and/or nostalgia, on how well their children fitted in nowadays.
Multi-culturalism as preached is particularly out of place in Britain because here the only effective way to restrict your children to an old strong, narrow ethnic tradition is to take your family away from this country. Doing things such as sending kids to the mosque won’t work. It may root them in Islam, but when you have seen a large group of kids dutifully going to Islamic instruction at a Bangladeshi mosque in their best Friday go-to-mosque outfits, closed your eyes and heard a completely English group of North-East London kids, then you know that in the next generation the mosque (if it survives) will be no more than another type of British nonconformist place of worship. Give up on multiculturalism. Give up on the idea of race. Just enjoy variety and foster its enrichment in new ways.
First,
Jewish people are the most intelligent. They win almost 40% of the Nobel Prize’s and they have a small population of only 14 million. So by far they exceed the other races in intelligence. The other races having huge numbers and such small contributions.
Second,
IQ tests, test intellectual conformity, not creativity and originality. This would explain the Asian high IQ’s. They as a people are the ultimate conformists.
In IQ tests there is typically only one answer to the problem. That problem being a social conformity to reason. But everyone knows that Genius’s and all the greatest developments in the world are not the product of conformity. Conformity never breeds creativity. We can see this in the lack of influence the Asian population has had on Science. China used to be called the “sick man” of Asia. Their population is massive and their contribution to innovation is almost nil. We can see this lack of originality in their adoptation of European philosophies, I.e. Communism.
Friedrich Nietzsche and other Philosophers have critized Asians. Nietsche used the words “Pallid osification” to describe Orientals.
Pallid: lacking sparkle or liveliness, dull.
Osification: Process of becoming inflexible: the process of becoming set and inflexible in behavior, attitudes, and actions. Inflexible conformity: rigid, unthinking acceptance of social conventions.
The reality is Asian people have yet to understand that laws and rules are arbitrary. Europeans make the rules and Asian’s follow them.
It also doesn’t make sense that Asian’s are considered smart because of the fact that they have destroyed their own countries. This is due to over-population and their basic lack of enviromental understanding.
It is also common scientific fact that women who have many children are ignorant, and those who have less children are more intelligent. This has already been proven in studies. So it seems strange to say that Asians are smart when the obviousness of their backwards countries, and medieval lifestyle makes them contrary to that premise.
Europeans have the most advanced civilizations and every other race has yet to meet these levels other than the Japanese. The Japanese only being good at copying other people’s inventions and making them better. Other than that their original creativity is lacking as well. They took American cars and made them better. They took the German camera and made it better. And they took German steel and made it better. Otherwise the greatest advances still come from Europeans and Jews. Other than that the Orientals have yet to produce an Einstein or a Thomas Edison.
When it comes to Black people. It makes sense that they have low intellectual comformity, I.e. IQ tests. They are far too creative to be trapped in this unoriginal form of conditioning. You can tell their creative capacity in their athletics, music, dance, and the way they talk. They by far exceed the Asiatic races in these areas. Being better singers, musicians ect. Blacks far exceed Asians in emotive expression. In all of North America there is only one or two famous high-paid Asian actors.
Reality, Europeans rule the world and they have allowed others to exist only out of desire for economic bennifet. They, (Europeans) are also the physically strongest, winning the Strongest Man competitions again and again. And they have become the most effective hunters due to their neccesity for animal food stuffs in a northern climate with lack of vegetables.
The greater the conformity, the weaker the race. Thus we see the races as they are today. The wild animal being bred out of man, and the physically impotent, conformist thriving.
Otherwise “Group psychology” is the most destructive thing in the world. All these stereotypes are false when it comes to the individual. Individualism is the most important thing for this time. All countries, Relgions, groups need to dissolve for man to live in peace.
EC, thank you for a wonderful and hilarious start to the day. You should have your own talk show.
(By the way, you missed a few apostrophe’s in your plural’s)
This thread has descended into the predictable nonsense that goes with this topic (and which it warrants), so let’s get to the heart of the matter …
Penis size, anyone?
Pay no heed to the looming shadow. The light which penetrates it shall win the day.
The looming shadow of a translucent penis - one of the lesser known Jungian archetypes…
Ah ah ah ah , ah ah ah ah
And which body are you a member of? A familiar cicuta I see.
The word ‘member’ is, in this context, far too dubious….
‘member’ is, you’re quite right. but that’s the ambiguity inherent in all textuality
yes, it’s all in the jeans…
A silly and misleading article. Even worse comments. (Why (Oh why?) can’t Prospect generate decent discussion?). If anyone wants a sensible treatment and discussion of this topic they should go to the Guardian’s comment section and articles by such as Simon Underdown.
I do not know this subject(s) well. But I see an immediate confusion and question, relating to the very terms of the article. If people connect primarily with those in their small, local, tribal groups then how does this exactly connect with ‘racial divisions?’ The article does not outline what the races are, how many, how we distinguish each from the other. As I understand it , when we speak of ‘race’ we speak of four or five very large groups. I do not see for instance that all Caucasians( If this term is still in use) have some great affinity for each other, or some great welcoming spirit to each other.
In general it seems to me that we are dealing here with too many variables at too great a distance in time, and with too great an ignorance on our part of what exactly was involved to somehow believe we can explain the complex variations between different groups of different kinds, large and small.
“Moreover, even after the ravages brought by the waves of expanding agriculturalists beginning about 10,000 years ago, followed more recently by the great imperial conquests of the last 800 to 900 years, humans still speak about 7,000 distinct languages. You don’t get that by hanging out with each other.”
This is a shockingly meaningless statement. English, as a “distinct language” (whatever that means), has shown profound lexical influences from French, and in the United States, various Algonquian languages, as well as Spanish. And you do get that influence, from, well, “hanging out with each other.” Likewise, a language such as Michif which combines both French and Cree (a mixed language where roughly all the verbs are Cree and in Cree phonology and all the nouns are French and in “Canadian French” phonology) shows the profound influences that “hanging out with each other” can have on languages. Indeed, Michif offers an example of a “new” language that has developed from “hanging out with each other.” Other examples, such as Copper Island Aleut, could be given of a similar process of language mixing.
But the idea, deeply embedded within Pagel’s assertion, that there is one language per group (naive nationalism), that languages are discrete, is a deeply compromised view. Most peoples have been and continue to be multilingual. And languages, like cultures, have never been hermetically sealed billiard balls.
Stuv,
Why(oh)Wh(y)Oh
Silly articles deserve silly comments. If you wish to elevate the level of debate perhaps you can actually make a ’serious’ contribution rather than simply recommending the Guardian blog. Now if you’ll excuse me I’m half way through an interesting book on race called Mein Kampf. The Jews want to give everybody syphilis apparently. Race is such an interesting topic - and I never knew it had such a rich and varied history.
I am often asked by my internet provider, AOL, what my Members name is. I really don’t think anything that personal is any of their buisness.
Though all mankind`s ancistors were came from Africa,mankind scattered all over world.Geographical factor we must consider for shap ,colour,intelligent,laziness,courage that attributed to mankind. Why European people are white, Afirican are black,China Japan people are quite different.
If anybody visit to India he will be amaze to see thousand varities of mankind.
what kind challanged group face in that particular region that way group change. So it is futile to call this race is superior and that race is inferior.All mankind is in same boat.Selfishness made division, increased quarrel between us.
Now thanks to new technology world is gobal village, we can now mix up our gene with international marriage,with help of miragination, with business deal. We are breaking all barriers.I myself too much hopeful of this new era.
Speaking of Members, whatever happened to Harvey Proctor? That question is surely worth an article in Prospect….
Cirencester Science & Technology Society
The May lecture given by Dr. Bill Amos, Reader in Evolutionary Genetics at Cambridge University, had the intriguing title of ‘Genetic Fortune Telling’.
His background studies, ranging from a Ph.D on greenfly to DNA fingerprinting of whales and seals, also suggested we were in for a fascinating experience and he did not disappoint us.
The basis of his current work is to try to establish how much the future and lifespan of individuals, of whatever species, can be determined by their genetic make-up as opposed to the environmental influences to which they are subjected.
This ‘Nature v Nurture’ investigation has led him to a working hypothesis, backed up by many hours of detailed testing and analysis carried out mainly by his students, that not only does the genetic make-up of individuals have considerable influence on their success in breeding and susceptibility to disease but that, more specifically, a heterozygotic genetic make-up gives considerable advantages over the homozygotic state.
An example of this is that those individuals with double dominant and double recessive haemoglobin genes are much more likely to die earlier, the first due to susceptibility to Malaria and the second due to Sickle Cell Anaemia, compared to those with a mixed dominant/recessive gene structure.
Another study of a large number of Kenyan children showed that about 50% of infant deaths could be predicted by their genetic make-up, but that more money is needed to fund a much more extensive study which could produce a radical redirection in the method of treatment.
Such a change in thinking might be needed by the Dutch government who, having invested a large amount of money in setting up a seal treatment centre, could be releasing back into the wild animals which have a greater susceptibility to re-infection by the diseases for which they had been treated and in so doing proliferating the spread of those diseases.
Altogether then an intriguing and fascinating subject, for which Dr. Amos produced considerable data, suggesting that we are just on the threshold of a whole new slant on how our genetic make-up can influence and be used to predict our fortunes and how it could radically affect treatment in the future.
http://www.cirenscitecsoc.org.uk/
There’s genotype, there’s phenotype, and there is the word “we” waffling back and forth according to the author’s whim. The difference in the location of the “we” is the difference between what Pagel knows and what he thinks he knows. The former he publishes in journals, the latter in pop zines such as Prospect.
Race is another one of those ideas that is far more powerful than that which it refers to. The social effects of the idea are far stronger than the evidence of cause and effect it is based on.
This is the crucial point, and is not really well discussed in the article. What are the impulses that push as to discriminate, and how do these impulses get expressed socially? Nature versus nurture is bit of a blind alley that obscures how nature is expressed via nurture, and so from looking carefully at the relationship between what we can change about ourselves and what we can’t, and the social processes that are bound up with that.
That environmental factors interact with genetic expression is an important point in this, and something that has implications right accross the social sciences.
Luke Lea,
I agree with you, that there may be differences in average group intelligence. But when you said, “my suggestion is that we develop efficient strategies to make life for working-class people as morally attractive as the life of our professional elites”, you lost me. Are working-class people a distinct group of people, with inferior intelligence? How about the English working class? How about me? I was born to a single mother, with a grade 2 education, and with a lot of children. I have a Masters Degree from a good university, and plan on continuing in university. I was born “working-class”. Does that mean I am inferior? Why, you elitist pig…..
Never mind, it’s all just social darwinism in drag (even if sometimes unconsciously). The political order is perfect and the losers are losers because they’re genetically inferior. Science as the new god and the natural order substituting for the divine order …
Now back to penis size…