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01/18/2006:

"This racist undercurrent in the tide of genetic research"

Racial science has discovered the art, and the power, of flattery. Last year, three scholars published a paper, Natural History of Ashkenazi Intelligence, in which they argued that Ashkenazi Jews were considerably more intelligent than other Europeans, because their history of moneylending and other financial occupations favoured genes associated with cleverness.
The principle at stake was essentially the same as the one underlying The Bell Curve, a provocative tome in which Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein suggested that black people might be innately less intelligent than white people, that race is biologically real and that some races are intellectually superior to others. But the public reaction was strikingly different. There was none of the outrage that followed The Bell Curve's appearance in 1994. Instead there were thoughtful commentaries on the paper's arguments, and an undertone of complacency.

At a meeting in New York at which the psychologist Steven Pinker spoke about the Ashkenazi paper, though, one writer was troubled. Maggie Wittlin, reporting for Seed magazine, said: "People will hear what they want to hear. And many in attendance were there to hear that Jews are naturally smarter than everyone else." Seduction is more powerful than provocation - and more insidious.

And it is not directed at one ethnic group. As Pinker has noted, race has raised its head in public several times in the past year, and the reaction - or lack of it - has been notable. Murray restated his case, more magisterially than ever, in the magazine Commentary. The British biologist Armand Marie Leroi argued in the New York Times that race was a scientifically meaningful and medically valuable concept. His case has the implicit support of the US Food and Drug Administration, which has approved a heart drug, BiDil, that is intended specifically for black people. Discredited by association with the Third Reich, and discarded by mainstream science thereafter, racial science is pushing for rehabilitation on a range of fronts.

Last month, Pinker told the Edge website that "the dangerous idea of the next decade" will be the notion that "groups of people may differ genetically in their average talents and temperaments". It is all the more dangerous for being bound up with ideas about how populations vary in their susceptibility to disease. The implication is that we must take these ideas as a package. Health must come first, of course - and the dangerous elements must follow in its wake. We are ill-prepared to respond to the complex challenges posed by racial arguments bobbing in the unstoppable tide of genetic research.

In the past it was easy: an ominous reference to the Nazis and a snippet of scientific reassurance - such as the observation that there is more variation within so-called races than between them - would do the trick. But the hardcore advocates of race science have spent years working out answers to the standard rebuttals. And you cannot refute a scientific claim by referring to its historical baggage.

Over the years, the denial of race became almost absolute. Differences were only skin-deep, it was said - despite the common knowledge that certain groups had higher incidences of genetically influenced diseases. It became a taboo, and as the taboo starts to appear outdated or untenable, the danger is that unreflective denial will be replaced by equally uncritical acceptance.

We don't need to take it as a package, though. In particular, we should not be misled into thinking that sexes and races are the same kind of thing. Evolutionary theory affirms that in general, male and female behaviour will differ. On race, however, it has little or nothing to say. Whereas there is a fundamental asymmetry between the genetic interests of men and women, because women are obliged to invest more resources in their offspring than men are, different peoples are much the same. Although hardcore race theorists talk about the bracing effects of cold open spaces upon East Asian mental abilities (which they consider to be greater than those of any other group), they are pushed to explain why such environments should promote intelligence any more than, say, the Australian outback. If life in groups of clever primates was the main driving force behind human intelligence, as many scientists nowadays consider, it's harder still to see why intelligence should vary with the landscape.

For most people these are unfamiliar and perhaps uncomfortable arguments. Critical and frank discussion from publicly engaged scientists on current racial issues would be welcome. But perhaps the most constructive thing to do is to reflect on our own attitudes. Our ideas about race are a mishmash of received opinions, partly remembered facts and subjective impressions. They probably include more old-fashioned racial notions than we would like to think, but clever approaches such as the Ashkenazi paper may lure them to the surface. We have gone beyond the stage where the question of racial science could be seen as a straightforward contest between decent values and sinister pseudoscience. It's no longer black and white.
guardian.co.uk