E Inconvenient Truth About Race

e Inconvenient Truth About Race nificant ways. We’re not talking about e 10,000 Year Explosion: skin, eye, or hair color. We’re talking How Civilization Accelerated about intelligence, temperament, and Human Evolution a host of other traits that affect an by Gregory Cochran individual’s chances in life. e races, and Henry Harpending the authors claim, are differently Basic Books, 2009, abled in ways that really matter. 304 pages. at, of course, is a dangerous thing to say. In 1994 Richard Herr- Reviewed by Marshall Poe nstein and Charles Murray made a similar argument in e Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in his is the most difficult book I’ve American Life. Critics pummeled T ever had to review. I’ve read it the book and pundits had a field day and read it again. I’ve interviewed one excoriating its authors. Bob Herbert, of the authors. I’ve discussed it with a columnist for the New York Times, people who know the subject. I’ve called it “a scabrous piece of racial thought about it until my head hurt. pornography masquerading as seri- I’ve had a fight with my wife about it. ous scholarship,” and said that its I’ve even read other reviews in search authors were in effect calling African- of guidance. I didn’t find any, so I still Americans “niggers.” Herbert wasn’t don’t know exactly what I should tell alone in his opinions. you about it. Faced with e 10,000 Year Explo- Here’s why: e 10,000 Year Explo- sion, one is tempted to say, “Here we sion: How Civilization Accelerated Hu- go again!” throw up one’s hands, and man Evolution, by Gregory Cochran be done with it. But that would be and Henry Harpending, argues that too easy. Cochran and Harpending the various races that make up hu- are not racists dressed up as scientists; manity are genetically different in sig- they are real scientists studying race • A / • (or, rather, the genetic traits of large made it simply impossible to build a human populations). e thesis they racist political program in the West propose is not obviously ridiculous: successfully. is shift in attitudes e type of phenotypic variation we was a boon to scholars who said that see among human beings is found in racial differences were insignificant other species (such as domesticated and that race was a myth. Studying animals) and clearly has an underly- racial differences was out; studying ing genetic basis. eir argument will the social construction of race was offend those who believe that people in. is was the prevailing intellec- are “all the same under the skin,” but tual and political norm for decades, that’s no reason to dismiss it out of and for the most part, it remains so hand. In short, the authors deserve today. a fair hearing. If they are right, they In recent years, however, there has are right. If not, then not. We’ll try to been a resurgence of research into find out which it is. genetic differences among the races, or what should properly be called efore we lay out what Cochran “descent groups,” or “populations.” B and Harpending have to say e reason for this is technology. about race, let’s step back and put In the nineteenth century, the only their thesis in context. ey are way scientists could tell one descent hardly the first scholars to suggest group from another was on the ba- that the races are differently abled. sis of external appearance—a very Before the mid-twentieth century, crude technique indeed. In the early nearly all scientists believed this, twentieth century, doctors developed including Charles Darwin himself. a more refined way of identify- ere were exceptions, such as Franz ing descent groups, using blood Boas, Margaret Mead, Ruth Ben- chemistry. Although this technique edict, and Ashley Montagu, but they allowed scientists to get “under the were voices in the wilderness. All of skin,” as it were, it was also far from that changed in the second half of exact. About a quarter-century ago, the twentieth century, however, not however, molecular biologists found because of any scientific advance, but a way to distinguish descent groups because of the deeds of Adolf Hitler based on their genetic profiles. and Martin Luther King Jr. Hitler is technique proved to be ex- gave racist politics a very bad name, tremely precise, and has now allowed and King gave antiracist politics a molecular biologists to rewrite, liter- very good name. ese two leaders ally, the history of humanity. • A / • As they tell it, the human race that the races are genetically different began in Africa roughly 180,000 is not necessarily troubling so long as years ago with a relatively small everyone agrees that the differences in population of Homo sapiens. It then question don’t really matter. We all proceeded through a very long pro- think that traits like skin color, hair cess of growth, division, and reunion. type, and eye shape are not a legiti- As humans spread around the world mate basis for discrimination. We see from their East African home, they them as incidental to a person’s merit slowly grew more numerous. ey as a human being, and therefore ir- also divided again and again into relevant to how we treat him. If you sub populations, sub-sub populations, were an employer who chose to hire and so on. For a variety of reasons, someone with superficial trait X over these groups became subtly differ- someone with superficial trait Y, most ent. Sometimes two or more of people would consider you irrational them mixed and became more alike. and possibly a racist. Indeed, we usu- e results of this growth-split-and- ally call someone a “racist” because merge process can be seen in the she discriminates between people on many descent groups—some we call the basis of some cluster of superficial “races” and others not—that make traits. up humanity today. ese groups are e idea that the races are geneti- remarkably similar genetically, but cally different is quite troubling, how- they are also different enough to be ever, when the specified differences are distinguished phenotypically (by the universally considered important. We way their genes express themselves) all agree that, in most contexts, it is and genotypically (by the genes them- legitimate to discriminate on the basis selves). Given that people generally of traits like intelligence, equanimity, mate with their neighbors, it is not and honesty. We see these traits as surprising that these descent groups virtues, the very stuff of “merit,” and overlap fairly well with folk racial we believe they should affect how we categories (black, white, Asian) and treat people. If you hire someone with even more so with language groups virtue X over someone without virtue (Bantu-speaking, German-speaking, X, no one is going to raise an eyebrow. Mandarin-speaking). You are neither irrational nor a ra- Whether or not people find this cist; instead, you are smart and fair. disturbing very much depends on e trouble starts when the possibil- what they perceive to be the implica- ity arises that virtue X might be both tions of these discoveries. e idea genetically determined and unequally • A / • distributed among different racial e second argument is that hu- groups. In a fair competition, these mans are too genetically similar for “troublesome traits,” as we will call troublesome traits to exist. is point them, would inevitably produce de is also easily refuted. We know that a facto racial segregation. People of race small number of genetic differences A, having virtue X, would be preferred can have a massive effect on different over people of race B, who do not have populations of the same species. In virtue X. is would present us with a many human populations, for exam- very unsettling dilemma. On the one ple, a few genes can mean the differ- hand, such discrimination would be ence between the frequent incidence legitimate insofar as it would be the of severe genetic diseases and their result of consistently applying merito- total absence. cratic principles. On the other hand, e third argument is that stand- it would be illegitimate insofar as it ardized test results which have shown produces racial inequality. us, trou- differences in ability between racial blesome traits might present us with groups don’t prove anything about a choice between upholding meritoc- genetic differences, because the tests racy and upholding racial equality. We are flawed. is argument is harder would not be able to uphold both. to dismiss. Some of the test results e question, then, is whether and seem quite sensitive to cultural fac- to what extent troublesome traits ex- tors, which suggests that the tests ist at all. e overwhelming majority are measuring nurture rather than of researchers claim that they do not, nature. And even the tests that show and they muster a number of argu- persistent cross-cultural differences ments in support of this claim. e can be used to draw inferences about first is that our species is too young genetic differences only; they do not for troublesome traits to have evolved. constitute direct proof of anything. is objection is easy to refute: We know that different populations of nter Cochran and Harpending the same species can develop sig- E with e 10,000Year Leap. ey nificantly different traits over a much argue for the existence of troublesome shorter period than the 180,000 years traits, but they do so in a new way.

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