The Racist Gene
Bruno Maddox's Blinded by Science column (as of this posting, not yet online) in Discover Magazine this month, raises the whole question of a genetic basis for intelligence that exploded last October, when James Watson remarked that blacks are just not as smart as whites. Watson let his tongue get ahead of his brain, and it was too late to take the words back. He got sacked, and his entire career would never be viewed the same again. That being said, in Maddox's column, a myth continues to be perpetuated. The myth of race and a genetic basis for it.
The human species may be varied on the outside, but inside, at the genetic level, we're all the same. Race is a social affliction that the best of us seems to find a difficult hurdle to get over. There is more evidence that race is a byproduct of our environment, not our genes. Our environment determines how our genes express themselves -- and while this may have been obvious from early genetic studies, evidence is now being accumulated to support that view. Race should never be part of a genetic dialogue, other than to state that the two don't belong together -- and that's a mistake I find surprising in a science magazine.
The other point raised by Maddox is on intelligence, and I fear it may have been missed because of the column got muddied with race. Intelligence -- what is it? Isaac Asimov remarked that scoring high on IQ tests simply mean that people are "very good at answering the type of academic questions that are considered worthy of answers by people who make up the intelligence tests." Nothing more. There are a good deal of people, who may score high on standard IQ tests, but may appear brilliant in their execution of assessments of their own devising. A car mechanic; a carpenter; a chef; they would no doubt be very successful when testing their acumen in repairing a vehicle; building something from wood; or cooking their favourite meal. Adversely, being academically smart, could just mean being dumb as a stump -- as evidenced by James Watson's remark on race and intelligence.
Related reading:
The human species may be varied on the outside, but inside, at the genetic level, we're all the same. Race is a social affliction that the best of us seems to find a difficult hurdle to get over. There is more evidence that race is a byproduct of our environment, not our genes. Our environment determines how our genes express themselves -- and while this may have been obvious from early genetic studies, evidence is now being accumulated to support that view. Race should never be part of a genetic dialogue, other than to state that the two don't belong together -- and that's a mistake I find surprising in a science magazine.
The other point raised by Maddox is on intelligence, and I fear it may have been missed because of the column got muddied with race. Intelligence -- what is it? Isaac Asimov remarked that scoring high on IQ tests simply mean that people are "very good at answering the type of academic questions that are considered worthy of answers by people who make up the intelligence tests." Nothing more. There are a good deal of people, who may score high on standard IQ tests, but may appear brilliant in their execution of assessments of their own devising. A car mechanic; a carpenter; a chef; they would no doubt be very successful when testing their acumen in repairing a vehicle; building something from wood; or cooking their favourite meal. Adversely, being academically smart, could just mean being dumb as a stump -- as evidenced by James Watson's remark on race and intelligence.
Related reading:
- Does Race Exist? -- Scientific American
- Race, Evolution and Behaviour -- J. Philippe Rushton
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