Race And Equality: The Nature of the Debate [1st Edition] 0956881130, 9780956881137

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Race and Equality The Nature of the Debate

John Harvey

Published in Great Britain by the Ulster Institute for Social Research London NW10 5TH ISBN 978-0-9568811-3-7

Copyright © John Harvey 2011 Email: [email protected]

The author is grateful to the following for permission to reprint extracts. The quotation from Erich Fromm prior to the contents page is reprinted With the permission of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd © Erich Fromm 1956. For the quotation from Edward O Wilson in the Introduction, The Tanner Lecture on Human Values, a Corporation, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah, USA. Andrew Berry and The London Review of Books for the extract at the beginning of Chap. 4. La Griffe du Lion for the extracts and methodology referred to in ‘Racism in Employment?’ in Chap. 8.

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Typeset in Times New Roman Further copies available online from www.ulsterinstitute.org

Mokita: A truth which everyone knows, but no one talks about. From the Kilivila language of Papua New Guinea

“Just as modern mass production requires the standardization of commodities, so the social process requires standardization of man, and this standardization is called equality.” From The Art of Loving by Erich Fromm Harper & Row, 1956.

“Now let us apply these generally-admitted principles to the races of man, viewing him in the same spirit as a naturalist would any other animal.” From The Descent of Man by Charles Darwin John Murray, 1871.

Contents Introduction: Not in our Nature?

1

1: Investigating Equality

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2: Species, Individuals and Groups

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3: Evolution and Race

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The Difference between Facts and Values From Facts to Values? Evidence for Equality? The Attraction of Egalitarian Beliefs ‘Equal’ as meaning ‘Identical’ An Equally Blank Slate? Equality and Free Will Equality and Biology Equality through the Alteration of Concepts Equality via Moral Outrage Equality and the Embarrassment Factor Superiority, Inferiority, and Equality Summary

The Species: Programmed by Evolution The Individual: Distinctive and Unique Individual Differences in Intelligence Heritability Finding the Genes Involved Variations in Individual Temperament: The Twin Studies Variations in Specific Mental Characteristics The Group: Differences Between The ‘Equality through Ignorance’ fallacy Sexual Dimorphism Summary Mutation and Natural Selection Population Genetics Evolution in Action: The Peppered Moth Variation and Race in Species other than Man Great Tits: Racial Evolution without Separation Sockeye Salmon: The Rapid Evolution of New Races Deermice: The Tenacity of Racial difference Asian elephants: Variations in Racial Temperament Some Lessons from the Canine World Group Variation but not between Races Summary

4: Evolving Man

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5: Racial Realities: Out of the Dark Ages

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6: Racial Realities: Difference and Diversity

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The Geographical Dispersal of Modern Man The Meaning of the Word ‘Race’ Race and the Natural Environment Individual Differences affect Inter-group Variation Climate, Diet and Forward Planning Population Size and its effects on Evolution Genetic Diversity in the Human Population Summary Body Chemistry, Medicine and Race Race and the Common Man Race, Ancestry and DNA Are Human Races still Evolving? The Rate of Human Evolution The Overall Picture Summary ‘Route’ Memory The Vision Thing Language and the Brain WEIRD People Racial Temperament A Mongolian Legacy Creativity Trust Aborigine Brains are Different Burying the Evidence Of German Character Language and Personality Language and Music Honesty and Corruption Race and IQ: The Longest Battle Summary

7: Race in Society

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8: The Explanatory Power of Race

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Conclusion: Race in the Twenty-First Century

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Index

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About the Author

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Three Racial Processes 1. The Causality Process 2. The Process of Change 3. The Community Process Race and Racism The Politics of Left and Right The Welfare State - or lack of it The End of Empire The USA: A Future without Races? Racism in Employment? The Elite Effect The Administrative Jet-Set Rejecting the Liberator Race as Religion? The UN Declaration on Race Denying Darwinian Selection General and Special Creationism Science versus Creationism A Final Challenge

Introduction

Not in Our Nature?

I

n the spring of 1979, Harvard biologist Edward O. Wilson was due to give an important lecture at the University of Michigan. Wilson, a specialist on the social behaviours of ants and termites, had become convinced that natural instincts also had an important part to play in human social behaviour. He thought it probable that people’s ideas and actions owed rather more to their biology than many, especially in the social sciences and humanities, cared to admit. He wanted to get this idea over to his audience in an original and witty manner. He began . . . “On one thing we can surely agree! We are the pinnacle of three billion years of evolution, unique by virtue of our high intelligence, employment of symbolic language, and diversity of cultures evolved over hundreds of generations. Our species alone has sufficient self-awareness to perceive history and the meaning of personal mortality. Having largely escaped the sovereignty of our genes, we now base social organization mostly or entirely upon culture. Our universities disseminate knowledge from the three great branches of learning: the natural sciences, the social sciences, and the termitities. Since our ancestors, the macrotermitine termites, achieved ten-kilogram weight and larger brains during their rapid evolution through the late Tertiary Period, and learned to write with pheromone script, termitistic 1

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scholarship has refined ethical philosophy. It is now possible to express the deontological imperatives of moral behaviour with precision. These imperatives are mostly self-evident and universal. They are very essence of termitity. They include the love of darkness…; the centrality of the colony life amidst a richness of war and trade among colonies; the sanctity of the physiological caste system; the evil of personal reproduction by worker castes; the mystery of deep love for reproductive siblings, which turns to hatred the instant they mate; rejection of the evil of personal rights; the infinite aesthetic pleasures of pheromonal song; the aesthetic pleasure of eating from nestmates’ anuses after the shedding of the skin; the joy of cannibalism and surrender of the body for consumption when sick or injured (it is more blessed to be eaten than to eat); and much more . . . 1 Wilson’s introduction certainly grabbed the audience’s attention. But he was also making a serious point, for just like his intelligent termites, we humans too assume our thoughts and behaviours are the creations of our reasoning minds. Biology is for other species, we can do better. As self-aware thinking beings we feel the need to rebel against the cold authority of evolutionary processes. Our likes and dislikes, our moral choices, our behaviours in the social sphere, we prefer to think of them all as subject to our conscious control. A defining characteristic of modern political and social debate in particular has been an almost complete reliance on nurture rather than nature as the explanatory factor in human affairs. This is because, in theory at least, nurture is open to our intervention, whereas nature is a bit trickier. Because of this we prefer to view our social problems as the creations of societal forces, rather than the more intractable products of our biology: 

‘Jake has really done well in his job, unlike his friend Jimmy. Jimmy’s disrupted childhood obviously took its toll.’



‘Why is Sophie so shy but Sue so sociable and outgoing? Was Sophie bullied at school?’

2



‘Women fail to get the top jobs because society erects a glass ceiling above them.’



‘Flo gained an ‘A’ in maths but Liam only managed an ‘F’; Liam’s mates must have lead him astray.’



‘Why are Americans so rich but Africans so poor? It must be exploitation.’

In today’s world, problems such as these are almost always seen as sociological in nature; the results of dysfunctional social environments, of difficult personal histories or of conflicting cultural practices. If speculation on innate factors does arise, then conversation quickly becomes awkward and uneasy. ‘Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying we can’t do anything about people with criminal tendencies.’ Deviation from the sociological default is slapped down with cries of 'biological determinism', or worse. Intelligent discussion presumes and media debate demands that nurture rather than nature has moulded our patterns of thought and of behaviour. And following directly on from this comes the great managerial assumption that social action can change the world to order. Modern man can remodel himself as if he were made of play-dough. Any individual, any corporate or bureaucratic body can achieve their targets in life given the right training, enough resources (money), and a sufficiently weighty policy document. ‘Education education education’ is the cry of the politician who seeks to build his utopia. The modern managerial state allows us to imagine ourselves masters of our destiny and it’s all so convenient and comforting. We have risen above mere nature. Governments, civil servants, commercial companies, NGOs, the UN and the European Union, all now worship at the shrine to social engineering. In recent times this creed of social determinism has often seemed to aspire to the status of a religion, and one moreover that can brook no opposition. ‘You think Liam’s low maths score comes from his genes? That’s a real counsel of despair’. An underlying theme of this book is that the last half-century’s love affair with social determinism as the sole explanatory factor in human affairs has been horribly misguided. It has no basis in 3

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science but is simply an article of faith. It is at best detrimental to and at worst disastrous for the future of our species. In this book we shall be looking at similarities and differences of race in particular - a taboo subject if ever there was one. But our aim is to produce neither a list of human universals, nor some systematic catalogue of racial variations. That is for others to do. Rather, it is an attempt to loosen up the dialogue; to allow a little fresh air into a debating chamber which in recent times has produced such a fog of worthy obfuscation. In the typical sociological explanation of individual or group differences there is no room for any biological element. For it is not only Christian fundamentalists who seek to deny that Homo sapiens is a product of natural evolution, many social scientists do so as well. The only difference is that the former proclaim their denial openly whilst the latter do so by implication and omission. But although things have been this way since about the 1960s, it was not always so. For most of recorded history, innate human differences between individuals were recognised and accepted as a reality. Some people were said to be constitutionally lazy, others rather more conscientious. There were the good and the bad, the miserly and the generous, the morally strong and the incurably feckless. People in previous generations were not afraid to use these terms. Men and women too were seen as having differing natures just like their counterparts in the animal kingdom where bulls behaved differently to cows, mares to stallions and cockerels to hens. Each pair were partners, leading differing but complementary lives, and each species benefited from its own unique pattern of sexual duality. Until the 1960s it was also generally acknowledged that the various races of mankind behaved in different ways according to their inherited natures. True our forebears often got it wrong, and yes the modern science of evolution and genetics was not there to provide an explanation, but common sense did a pretty good job – ‘it’s all in the blood’. After the 1960s, intellectual fashion became increasingly hooked on the idea that none of it was in the blood – it was all in the mission statement instead. 4

Now in the first decades of the twenty-first century we are beginning to understand some of the complex genetics behind our varied patterns of behaviour. Common sense alone therefore suggests it is time to prepare ourselves for what our DNA is beginning to reveal. Unfortunately many in politics, in the media and in academic and cultural life are reluctant to tread this path. And ironically it is often their very gifts of intellect which are holding them back. For whilst intellect demands the unfettered right to roam, simpler minds are often more content following the paths carved out by nature. But science moves on, and today an increasing number of academics who have some inkling of the genetic discoveries to come, live in a sort of intellectual dread of just what these revelations might be. And it is a real irony that during the last half century while the biological sciences had been moving so rapidly ahead, social and political thinkers and policy makers had been galloping so fast in the opposite direction. Increasingly they have taken refuge in a worthy never-never land where all are possessed of the same potential and all are born ‘equal’, the empty brain of the newborn child eagerly awaiting impregnation with the good-citizen software of the modern managerial state. As a species we need to show a little more humility in the face of the natural world. We need to acknowledge that under a thin veneer of civilisation, we too are simply the products of evolution. We should recognise and acknowledge that evolutionary processes are just as capable of creating group variation in man as they have been in so many other species. To help us understand some of the social and political differences which exist between nations today, we should try to learn something of the biologically inherited differences between them. Rational understanding rather than pious ignorance would be a far better bequest to our children. ______________ In Chapter 1 our starting point is the concept of human equality, since this underlies so much social and political discussion. What does the word ‘equality’ actually mean in the social context, and more importantly perhaps what does it not 5

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mean? Chapter 2 looks at genetic influences on the species as a whole, and on the behaviour of individuals. It also considers what is meant by differences between groups. Chapter 3 includes an introduction to the processes of evolution and examines the evidence for racial variation in species other than man. Chapter 4 is concerned specifically with human evolution over its tens of thousands of years, including influences on the evolution of racial variation. Chapter 5 considers medicine and race, and the rapidly expanding use of DNA analysis in genealogy. It concludes by asking whether human races are still evolving. Chapter 6 looks at a selection of modern studies reporting on human racial variation. Chapter 7 suggests three underlying processes which may help to explain racial behaviour, and Chapter 8 shows how the concept of race can provide students of human affairs with a powerful explanatory tool. The Conclusion looks at parallels between ideas of creationism and the concept of equality. It goes on to argue that scientific method provides the only rational approach to an understanding racial difference, and concludes with a final challenge to those who still believe ‘we are all the same under the skin’. ______________ Notes and references are given at the end of each chapter.

Notes 1. Edward O. Wilson, Harvard Professor of Science delivered his talk on Comparative Social Theory as a Tanner Lecture on Human Values, at the University of Michigan, on March 30th 1979. See:

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Chapter 1

Investigating Equality

A

good staring point for any investigation of the similarities and differences between people is with the concept of ‘equality’. What do we mean when we talk of human equality? What do others mean by the term and do we properly understand their thinking? It is also important to acknowledge at the outset that equality must mean an equality of all, for if the concept does not apply universally then it follows there must be some sort of inequality around somewhere. The concept of universal human equality is what this chapter is all about. ‘All men are born equal’; ‘we are all the same under the skin’; ‘all are equal in the sight of God’; ‘everyone should be treated equally under the law’. What do these commonplace sayings actually mean? Do all four of them reflect some common underlying message? Are they the product of reasoned thought, or do they simply play to the emotions? Certainly they tend to make us feel good. Proclaiming any one of them in company gives us a brief shot of happy juice and we feel that little bit more virtuous as a result. What’s more they seem to carry the added bonus of persuading others to our way of thinking. Perhaps we shouldn’t analyse any further, perhaps we should just leave it at that. But that really would not be good enough. If we wish a balanced and open enquiry into the concept of equality then we 7

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must explore the variety of forms and meanings the word adopts. The first of the above statements, ‘All men are born equal’ appears to be a factual one which tells us something about the relative status of all men. But use of the word equal without any further explanation leaves a lot to be explained. Equal what? Likewise ‘We are all the same under the skin’ is similarly vague. Is the speaker really suggesting that everybody’s innards (and brains) are identical? I think not. More probably he is trying to generate support for his egalitarian views through the use of a succinct but morally comforting slogan. ‘All are equal in the sight of God’ has a specifically religious dimension of course, and this gives it both extra strength and a couple of serious weaknesses. Its strength comes from its appeal to an all-knowing deity who simply cannot be wrong. Its weaknesses lie firstly in the fact that many of those hearing it are unlikely to be subscribers to the speaker’s religion, and secondly, in the absence of any proof of the existence of this omniscient being in the first place. Finally the claim that ‘Everyone should be treated equally under the law’ can simply be classified as a value judgement which displays the speaker’s ethical beliefs on matters legal. So each of the statements means something different, and some of these differences are quite important. In particular, the statements contain a mix of factual and value-laden elements, and if there is one area where clarity is especially important, it is in the distinction between these two. A short foray into moral philosophy would be in order.

The Difference between Facts and Values Consider these two statements: 1. ‘Jack and Jessica receive equal pay.’ 2. ‘Jack and Jessica should receive equal pay.’ The first is a factual statement, sometimes referred to as a statement of the ‘is’ sort – it is the case that Jack and Jessica receive equal pay. The second is a statement of values, one of the ‘ought’ variety – Jack and Jessica ought to receive equal pay. For our purposes we need to be clear about the differences between is and ought. 8

Statement 1, ‘Jack and Jessica receive equal pay’ is, at least in theory, empirically verifiable (or otherwise). That is to say it is can be shown to be true or false. We may for instance choose to look at the accounts of the company where they both work, and to add up their respective payslips for the year. Does each give us the same total? If so, case proven, if not then the statement is shown to be false. Statement 1) is a statement of fact and, if the evidence is available, its truth or otherwise may be ascertained. Statement 2, ‘Jack and Jessica should receive equal pay’ will, on the other hand, succumb neither to evidence nor to the lack of it. There is no information available anywhere in the universe which could prove it to be true, nor any which could prove it false. This is because it does not express anything about the world outside the mind of the speaker who utters the words. It is not open to empirical verification even in theory. It is a reflection of the speaker’s inner feelings on the subject under discussion. It is a statement of his values which in their turn simply reflect his own psychology. But in making the statement he is also telling us how he thinks we too should feel about the matter in hand. All of us at one time or another make unprovable value statements of this sort in order to persuade others of the rightness of our arguments. Because value statements are not objectively verifiable in the outside world, individuals using them often feel the need to prove their validity in some other way. After all, a campaigner would sound a bit weak if he were to argue ‘Jack and Jessica should receive equal pay because my psychology tells me so.’ Sometimes an attempt may be made to satisfy this need to justify, by recourse to further value statements ‘Jack and Jessica should receive equal pay because men and women should always receive equal pay.’ But the trouble is our campaigner then has no ‘proof’ of his further value statement that ‘... men and women should always receive equal pay’. So he now has to resort to ‘Men and women should always receive equal pay because they should be treated equally in all matters.’ Yet another value statement – ‘… they should be treated equally in all matters’ - and yet again it cannot be ‘proven’. This could go on for ever. 9

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From Facts to Values? Sometimes an attempt is made to justify a value statement by the prior introduction of an apparently sound factual foundation, as the following sequence illustrates:1) ‘Jack and Jessica produce equal numbers of widgets in a day.’ (Statement of verifiable fact) 2) ‘Therefore they produce goods of equal value to the company.’ (Statement of verifiable fact) 3) ‘Therefore they are of equal economic worth.’ (Statement of a verifiable fact) 4) ‘Therefore they should receive equal pay.’ (Statement of value) At first sight this looks as if a smooth move from facts to values has indeed been made in four logically connected statements. But unfortunately this is simply not so. Yes the first three do constitute a proper logical sequence, but unfortunately a sneaky extra statement has quietly slipped its way in between 3 and 4. It reads something like this: 3A) ‘We ought to reward equal economic worth with equal pay.’ … and of course this is yet one more subjective value judgement, so we are off again on another futile attempt to justify one value judgement by reference to an unending stream of others. Like it or not, it is just not possible to use statements of fact to justify statements of value. All of which may sound rather depressing. If ultimately we cannot justify any of our own deeply held values, then just what is the point of moral debate in the first place? Good question. Some philosophers have argued precisely this and have become very depressed in the process. But this is not a route we need go down. Suffice it to say that our own firmly held ethical convictions owe far more to our internal psychology as mediated through our emotions, than to any exercise in logical deduction. There is though one important principal arising from this exercise of which we need to be constantly aware and it is this: there is a profound difference between facts and values, and any attempt to use the two interchangeably is simply fraudulent. If for 10

instance we were to report on the discovery of some verifiable differences in behaviour between men and women, or between habitual criminals and the law-abiding, or between blue skinned people and the green skins, then absolutely no associated judgements should be made as to their relative moral worth. Certainly our critics may, in seeking to gain the high ground, accuse us of making detrimental value judgements about the one group or the other, but they would be wrong to do so. If Ruritanians are found to be constitutionally more neurotic than Brobdignagians, neither race should be praised nor condemned as a result. Evolution does not do morality.

Evidence for Equality? Supporters of the social and political case for equality are normally referred to as egalitarians. Wittingly or unwittingly, egalitarians often blur the distinction between equality as fact and equality as value. Take the value-driven call for equality of opportunity for instance. This is often underpinned by some illdefined statement of apparent fact, such as the woolly ‘We are all the same under the skin’. But if, in a charitable spirit, we accept that many egalitarians genuinely do believe in the existence of some universal human equality of fact, then there arises one very important question which we must put to them. It is this: ‘What is the evidence in support of your claim?’ For the harsh truth is that no matter how emotionally comforting or practically convenient such a belief may be, it can have no real substance unless there is some sort of evidence to support it. Without evidence, a belief in some fundamental and universal human factual equality lacks all credibility. In fact it possesses no greater substance than does faith in the earth as centre of the universe, in Biblical creationism, or in the existence of flying saucers. To the best of this author’s knowledge, no-one has ever presented any such evidence. But if no universal factual human equality can be shown to exist then why not restrict those selected to be ‘equal’ to Asians alone for instance. Come to that why not restrict them to just the Japanese, or only to those Japanese with appendectomy scars? Alternatively we could go the other way. If Neanderthals had still been around would we perhaps have to consider them as our 11

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equals too? Then what about Homo erectus or the even earlier Homo habilis? Perhaps we should broaden equality to include all the other primates? The trouble with universals is that the edges of the universe are often difficult to find. Many egalitarians however are rather more modest in their convictions and employ only the argument based on values – that we ought to treat everyone as equals. Towards these moral egalitarians we can remain strictly neutral. It is entirely up to them to set their own subjective values. These values will be neither truer nor falser than ours. But Wilson’s termites may help egalitarians to understand just how species-specific moral values often turn out to be.

The Attraction of Egalitarian Beliefs Despite the difficulties involved in coming to a proper description of equality, egalitarianism has proven a very attractive ideal. Collectively egalitarians include subscribers to a wide range of beliefs. There are of course many good reasons why the various forms of belief in some essential sameness of all mankind, have proven so seductive. To the profit driven directors of large multinationals it promises a globalised community of consumers buying standardised goods from a standardised international workforce. For socialists and others on the political left it levels the playing field in the great game of progressive social engineering. To the rule-makers and law-givers it reassuringly clears away all those human variables which would otherwise prove so difficult to administer. Egalitarian beliefs are not just a recent phenomenon; they have a long and honourable history. As Finn Bowring, writing in the September 2003 issue of The New Humanist magazine says, "A common thread running through all our ethical traditions, from early religious doctrines and world views to modern forms of humanism, is a vision of 'man' who, though capable of enormous cultural diversity, is everywhere fundamentally the same".1 But note how his opening phrase which refers to ‘ethical traditions’ – a reference to values – is later propped up by an apparently factual input ‘is everywhere fundamentally the same’. 12

Egalitarian theory appeals both to the rational mind and to the emotions. It promises us a better world, and it makes us feel good in the process. But ironically perhaps it does not appeal to everyone equally. Below are four examples of groups of people who are rather more inclined than other members of society to promote egalitarian beliefs: Moral altruists. Individuals expressing strong benevolent feelings towards those less well off than themselves, whether at home or abroad, and who act upon these feelings. Sizeable and regular contributions to Oxfam or similar charities would represent a typical expression of the feelings of such individuals. So too would regular unpaid work for charities or other voluntary groups. Proponents of religious or political creeds which propagate universalist beliefs. These include many Christians, Muslims and Marxists for instance. Modern egalitarians tend to downplay the importance of individual nation states. This works both to the benefit of trans-national belief systems, but also to the advantage of global organisations and companies. Ethnic or other minorities living alongside a much larger indigenous population. Immigrant populations will often seek to play down their ‘otherness’ if they feel under threat from the larger host community or if they wish to make headway within that community. Emphasizing the sameness of all mankind serves this purpose well. In the UK for instance egalitarian politics have been a prominent feature of ethnic minority campaigns from the time of the nineteenth century Russian Jewish immigrants onwards. Young adult males. Just as amongst other social primates it is the young adult males who generate most of the challenges to ruling cliques in society. Young men who wish to take on the ruling class are frequently drawn to ideologies which, by emphasising egalitarian ideals, help to legitimise their challenge to those at the top of the pile. Examples would include Lenin from 1890 onwards, Mussolini up to World War I and Che Guevara in the 1960s. 13

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‘Equal’ as meaning ‘Identical’ Individuals or groups of individuals are often said to be equal when what the speaker really means is that they should be viewed as identical. Take as an example the call for equal employment opportunities for society’s ethnic minorities. As an expression of the campaigner’s values this represents a perfectly legitimate cause to campaign on. But often the demand will be taken one stage further and our campaigner will claim bias on the part of those in authority if the statistics fail to show minorities achieving high status employment in rough proportion to their numbers in the community. If certain races are under-represented in the upper echelons of the British civil service for instance, the claim may be that this is because of ‘institutional racism’ in Whitehall. In other words the campaigner’s underlying sentiment is not merely one of values wherein he wishes to see all treated equally, but he has added to this an extra belief that all the racial groups in society are possessed of identical work-related abilities in the first place. He has reinforced his moral sentiment with an unspoken assumption as to the facts. But any campaigner, who dogmatically proclaimed that all groups of humans possessed identical capabilities across the board, would risk raising all sorts of awkward questions. Consciously or unconsciously our campaigner recognises this and feels the need to fudge the issue, not least for his own peace of mind. He wants to make his case rather more acceptable, and in substituting the emotionally comforting word equal for the unnervingly precise identical he largely satisfies this need. With this in mind we will, from now on, take the word egalitarian to refer only to the belief that we ought to strive for greater equality between people. It follows from this that a new word is required for the idea that some sort of factual equality, or equality of potential, already exists between people – that we are all the same somehow. For this latter idea we will generate the ugly but useful term ‘identequal’, meaning equal because identical in some way.2 Identequalism hints at certain factual human universals which are essential, but usually remain undefined. Where for instance the 14

egalitarian holds that society should treat all as equals, the identequalist expects some sort of equal outcomes as a result. This is because, in his view, all are possessed of some equal potential in this or that field, so it can only be the conditions of society which have prevented particular groups from achieving equality. Where the egalitarian argues that men and women should be allowed to do the same work, the identequalist adds a belief that since the two sexes are blessed with the same work capabilities anyway, the results of their labours will, on average, also be the same. Egalitarians may also call for equal consideration of job applications by race, but if the result is not a racial balance of employees reflecting their relative proportions in the community, identequalists will insist there must be discrimination present. Internationally, where the egalitarian may look at two very different countries and argue that the richer should help the poorer, the identequalist goes one step further and claims that their differences only came about in the first place because the one had been in the habit of exploiting the other. For if all races are fundamentally the same, then how else could this discrepancy in wealth have arisen anyway? Militant identequalists are prominent in many Western university humanity and social science departments, in the media and in political circles. They also attract a larger but much less strident following amongst well meaning sections of the population at large.

An Equally Blank Slate? Earlier we referred to the slogan ‘All men are born equal’. We might legitimately ask why this reference to the time of birth? Why not ‘All men are equal at the age of one’, or ‘eleven’, or ‘twenty-three’? The answer seems to lie in the fact that when we are newborn we are perceived as having everything to learn. It is claimed that at age nought our brains are virtually empty and so at their most impressionable. This is the blank slate theory of human potential. Its advocates argue that we are all born equal by virtue of these our empty brains so all are equally capable of being educated into this or that way of life. 15

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Unfortunately for this theory there is increasing evidence that our brains at birth offer no such tabula rasa. In fact they probably incorporate a great deal of pre-programming which has been soft or hard-wired in by our genes. More on this later, but if the newborn babe is predisposed to behave in certain ways, there is no reason whatsoever to believe that nearly seven billion humans have all been programmed by Mother Nature to behave in exactly the same way. Equality via the blank slate is simply a non-starter.

Equality and Free Will As reasoning adults we all like to think we have free will. As independent spirits we do not take kindly to other people telling us how and what to think. Nor are we particularly attracted to the idea that our thoughts and feelings might reflect the workings of our genes for they too are, in a sense, ‘other people’. To acknowledge genetic effects on our thought processes would be to accept the existence of internal constraints on our free will and this makes us feel very uncomfortable. What’s more, these genetic ‘whisperings within’ might predispose other people with different genes from ours to choose some very different courses of action. What price free will now? But if we are going to examine these matters rationally then, uncomfortable as it may be, we do have to accept that none of us is possessed of a totally free will. The human mind may be more malleable than those of other species, but the crucial point is that it is not infinitely so. Science has already shown for instance that when we choose, apparently quite freely, to pursue a particular course of action, the brain impulses associated with that choice actually begin a fraction of a second before we become consciously aware of having made it.3 In fact our decision making processes owe far more to the unconscious than we are normally prepared to admit. But identequalists need, for their own peace of mind, to operate on the assumption that free will is the absolute and unfettered condition of the human psyche. Equality and Biology Identequalism, as we have seen, goes beyond egalitarian value judgements to factual statements about human equality. 16

This in turn necessitates an artificial separation of humanity from the rest of the natural world, for there is no equality in nature. Militant feminism offers an interesting example of this ideological need to separate humans from other species. Feminists have often argued that what they perceive to be the inferior and unequal position of women in society is a result of various social forces working to the advantage of men. For Marxists it is a result of the evils of the capitalist class system. But it only requires a brief look at the communal arrangements of some other social mammals to see that in their societies too, one sex usually lords it over the other. Normally, but not always, this is the male, and we can see this pattern repeated in deer, elephant seals, lions, wolves, gorillas, and numerous other species. Is it then simply a coincidence that this same behaviour pattern, which in all these other species is a result of programming by behavioural genes, just happens to be the result of social forces amongst humans? Then again perhaps those simian silver-backs in the Congolese rainforest really are the product of a capitalist class system amongst African mountain gorillas. The superficial attraction of sociological and other nonbiological explanations is that they elevate us above mere nature. This in turn leads to the emotionally satisfying belief that, through social engineering, we can produce equality, in this example between the sexes, but also between other groups. Unfortunately our genes are not open to any such programme of progressive social enlightenment.

Equality through the Alteration of Concepts It is commonly believed that in 1859 Charles Darwin published a book entitled The Origin of Species in which he set out his revolutionary ideas on the workings of evolution. He did not. In fact Darwin’s seminal work was actually called On the origin of species by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life.4 Now it is certainly true that the full title is rather too long for modern sensibilities, but today’s conveniently abbreviated version carries 17

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the added bonus of hiding from public view Darwin’s rather unPC reference to the ‘preservation of favoured races’. For a number of decades now, politically motivated identequalists have tried to undermine the discussion of group differences by altering the conceptual framework. In particular they have sought to eliminate those linguistic categories, of people or of things, which carry the potential to show innate difference. They believe that if the very existence of sexes or races is successfully denied, then it will become that much easier to propagate the existence of some universal equality as the only viable explanatory concept. We can see for instance how the term multicultural has increasingly come to be used where multiracial had been used before, the more malleable social concept replacing the rather more concrete biological one. Particularly serious is the situation in the academic world where freedom of thought and enquiry should be paramount. Here during the latter part of the twentieth century, discussion of cultural rather than racial difference increasingly came to be the only acceptable option. At the same time much research in the field of physical anthropology was squeezed, denigrated and sometimes even debarred. A similar process was at work in respect of the sexual divide, as evidenced by the rather remarkable claim that ‘gender is merely a social construct’. Nor is it just categories of people who have come in for this treatment. Things too are vulnerable. IQ tests carry the potential for showing difference. What’s more, IQ measurements made in childhood have a clearly proven ability to predict with some accuracy an individual’s level of achievement in later life. As a result some identequalists have sought to downplay them by arguing that measured IQ differences between individuals or groups are fallacious, this on the grounds that IQ tests ‘do not measure anything real’. None of this obfuscation is of any help to a proper understanding of the human condition. Nor is it how science progresses. The simple rule we will follow is this: if categories or concepts such as these serve some useful function in our investigation then we shall use them. No area of discussion should be out of bounds. 18

Equality via Moral Outrage The use of moral outrage in support of identequalist arguments is a very common practice. It plays upon widespread and deeply ingrained Western bourgeois and intellectual ideas of what is acceptable and what is not. Even in the normal course of events middle class ideas of justice and fair play will be employed by a wide variety of campaigning groups to promote many different causes. But in the hands of identequalists this is taken much further and their beliefs are often promoted as the only respectable way of thinking. What’s more those who argue otherwise are damned as ‘elitist’ or ‘racist’ or whatever. Political Correctness of this sort is essentially an emotional rather than a rational argument. Ironically though, it is often employed by thinkers who would otherwise pride themselves on being rather more rational than their ‘prejudiced’ or ‘bigoted’ opponents. Exhibitions of identequalist moral outrage of this sort will often culminate with reference to Nazi death camps as being the only possible outcome of any exploration of racial difference. The absurdity of this position may quickly be realized if we consider a parallel example. Imagine the outcry if it were to be claimed that something akin to the Gulag Archipelago and Soviet Marxism’s slaughter of millions of people, was the inevitable outcome of any pursuit of the egalitarian. Equality and the Embarrassment Factor Suppose a team of psychologists were conducting research into the personality profiles of two different races, with particular reference to any variation in rates of introversion or extroversion between them. Imagine they were to find that the blue skinned race were, on average, more introverted, and the green skinned more extroverted. Few problems of embarrassment would arise if a subsequent discussion of these findings took place in mixed company with members of both races present. This is because neither extroversion nor introversion carries with it any particularly negative connotations. Now imagine that the researchers had been measuring variations in average IQ scores instead, and had found some significant differences. Suddenly 19

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the situation could become very embarrassing. Why? Simply because possession of a lower IQ often carries with it a particular stigma, and the psychologists would not wish to risk offending the guys lower down the scale.5 Indeed they would probably have been criticised as insensitive to have raised the matter at all. Better perhaps to have quietly hidden the results, or even to have avoided any such research in the first place. It has even been argued that if we humans are all to get along together, then a complete moratorium on discussion of these matters may be necessary. And this, writ large, is exactly the route which many Western governmental and academic authorities have chosen to go down since the 1970s - imagined equality in order to avoid the embarrassing and the disruptive. But deliberately induced blindness is both irrational and unscientific, and far from being the best way to deal with the issues raised, it is in reality the worst. We will return to this theme later.

Superiority, Inferiority, and Equality In making the case against identequalism we will look at reports of differences. Principally these will be differences of race. But none of this concentration on difference involves the sin of suggesting the general superiority of one race over another. Words like superior and inferior mean absolutely nothing without reference to the particular quality or variable to which they refer. Recent research in Western Australia for instance suggests that Australian aborigines may have better picture memories than Australians of European stock, whilst the latter are better at remembering words.6 It would however be wrong to claim that aborigines were blessed with some general superiority over Europeans because we are speaking here of one variable alone, so it is only with reference to that particular variable that words such as superior or inferior may properly be used. ‘Australian aborigines have superior visual memories to Australian whites’, would be a perfectly legitimate statement to make. But by a similar token it is also wrong to speak glibly of the general equality of all the races. Like ‘superiority’, the word ‘equality’ cannot legitimately be used without specifying what 20

quality or variable is being measured for equality between races. It is precisely this sin of which modern-day identequalists are so often guilty.

Summary What then can we conclude about the idea of equality? Primarily that it is a concept which is very tricky to handle. Perhaps, like beauty, equality lies entirely in the eye of the beholder. When we come across the word equality in discussion or in print we need to understand the way in which it is being used. Are we witnessing talk of facts or of values? In what context is it employed? We need to be aware of the intellectual, emotional and institutional constraints and pressures under which those using it may be operating. We need to have some idea of the different meanings which may be laid upon it, and above all we need to be alert to instances where, either through accident or design, the various meanings of the word are being conflated. As an aid to clear thinking we have developed a new word -identequal- meaning equal because identical. We have also seen how the need for clarity of thought requires us to separate out the identequal from the egalitarian. Henceforth in this book we will take no issue with the personal moral stand of the egalitarian campaigner. But on the other hand we do intend to show that the identequalist position is muddle-headed and wrong. In reality human beings are simply born different from each other. These differences are in large part responsible for the widely varied routes pursued both by individuals and by groups on their journeys through life.

Notes 1. Bowring, Finn., The Future of Human Nature. Article in The New Humanist Vol 118 Issue 3, Sept/Oct 2003. The Rationalist Association. 2. The word ‘Identequal’ is stressed on the second syllable and has a similar rhythm to ‘identical’. 3. In 1983 psychologist Benjamin Libet of the University of California, San Francisco reported on his famous experiment with subjects attached to an

21

RACE AND EQUALITY electroencephalogram. Asked to ‘lift their finger whenever they felt an urge to do so’, he found that associated brain activity changed 300 milliseconds before they reported the urge to lift their finger. The implication of this is that the conscious mind only becomes engaged after the event. In this respect Libet’s findings represent a serious challenge to the idea of free will. 4. Darwin, Charles., (1859). On the origin of species by natural selection or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life. John Murray, London. 5. The stigma often associated with a low IQ is real enough but it is simply not justified. IQ is a measure of one human variable, just like height, or degree of extroversion, or blood pressure, or shade of skin colour. There can be no praise or blame attached to any of these traits taken in isolation, not least because they are largely beyond the control of the individuals concerned. 6. Klepkamp, J., Riedel, A., Harper, C. and Kretshman, H-J. (1994). Morphometric study on the postnatal growth of the visual cortex of Australian Aborigines and Caucasians, Journal of Brain Research No. 35, Pages 541-548. Australian aborigines generally do much better than Australian whites at “Kim’s Game” type memory tasks in which they are asked to look at a spatial array of objects and then, after it has been disassembled, to put everything back in the right place. Whites on the other hand prove better at remembering the names of such objects.

22

Chapter 2

Species, Individuals and Groups

A

t three different levels – the species, the individual and the group – natural processes have had a decisive role to play in determining who we are and how we live our lives. Just like any other species we humans are ultimately the products of our biology. Biochemical processes underlie all the physical and electrochemical workings of our bodies our brains, and hence our minds. Only the gods are exempt. In Chapter 2 we look briefly at the implications for Homo sapiens as a species, for individual members of that species and for the various sub-groups within it.

The Species: Programmed by Evolution Tabitha tucks in to her delicious bowl of cat biscuits, but after taking her fill she is off through the catflap to hunt for mice. The gang of meerkats in their Zoo enclosure still post lookouts to watch for marauding eagles, ten generations after their last free living ancestors faced that danger back in the Kalahari Desert. Jake the bright young sociology professor, secure in his job and comfortably well off, is debating post-structuralism with Alex from The Institute. It’s not a paying gig but Alex’s theoretical perspective is all wrong, and Jake wants to make sure both Alex and his audience realise it. All three have something in common. Cats are programmed to hunt, meerkats lookouts to guard the troop, and 23

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young adult male primates are programmed to compete for status. These behaviours are encoded deep within their respective genomes, programmed in over countless generations. The only difference between the first two and the last is that cats and meerkats ‘accept’ the way they are because they do not have the wit to do otherwise. Man on the other hand – man the thinker – baulks at the very idea that his behaviour is genetically programmed. It is an affront to his dignity, an assault on his free will. It is an idea to be countenanced only under extreme duress. Some academics though have risen to this challenge. They have not denied the role of free will, nor that of cultural learning, but they have added to both an input from nature. Two late twentieth-century schools of thought in particular, the Sociobiologists and the Evolutionary Psychologists have emphasised the importance of our Stone Age evolutionary ancestry to a proper understanding of the way we are today. Sociobiology came to prominence in 1975 when Edward O Wilson - he of termite fame - published his groundbreaking work Sociobiology: The New Synthesis.1 Wilson and those who came to accept his ideas, argued that to properly understand what drives us it is necessary to study our inherited behaviours. In particular scientists needed to look at those behaviours which had led to the survival and procreation of our species, just as they had with other species. In humans those successful instincts probably included assertive or aggressive behaviours, and would certainly have included mating behaviours and a mother’s protection of her young. Wilson also recognised reciprocal altruism or mutual aid between members of human social groups, and he even suggested possible evolutionary bases for those highest of all human traits, our ethical and aesthetic beliefs and feelings. The term Evolutionary Psychology also put in its first appearance in the 1970s2, although it only really hit the big time in 1992 with the publication of The Adapted Mind by Leda Cosmides and others.3 As the term implies it concentrates rather more than Sociobiology on the psychology behind the behaviour. Its followers propose that there may be many specific mechanisms in the brain which have evolved through natural selection to perform particular functions. One such mechanism 24

might be responsible for mating strategy for instance, another for detecting cheating behaviour in the social group. Evolutionary psychology has been used to explain human behaviour in fields as varied as politics, the law, business, literature and many other areas of social activity. Both Sociobiology and Evolutionary Psychology have investigated differences in behaviour between the sexes, but neither has yet got around to examining racial variation to any significant extent. Indeed, in the light of current intellectual fashions it is hardly surprising that proponents of both disciplines have been rather more inclined to emphasise the functional unity of the species. Later on though, we will venture into this territory. For if Stone Age natural selection was responsible for moulding those behaviours that distinguish man from the other primates, it would also have been perfectly capable of engineering behaviours distinguishing man from man.

The Individual: Distinctive and Unique Each of us is an incredibly complex product of our genes and our upbringing with countless interactions and innumerable feedback loops. Nature and nurture, heredity and the environment, the debate over the relative importance of these two factors raged long and hard over the course of the twentieth century and still continues to this day. Following on from Darwin’s theory of evolution, and during the early decades of the twentieth century, nature as a causal explanation of human behaviour had made great headway. But, beginning with the teachings of the Frankfurt School of social theorists in the 1930s, nurture increasingly took centre stage and this trend continued right up until very recently. Although modern genetic research has started the pendulum swinging back the other way, it is fair to say that most intellectual and media opinion is still very much wedded to nurture as the major explanatory factor. In the present intellectual climate charges of ‘biological determinism’ may safely be hurled at any natural scientist who discloses genetic links to aspects of criminal behaviour, but we have yet to hear the social researcher who 25

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blames poverty for crime, being denounced for his social determinism. And the stakes are very high, for this is not just some arcane academic dispute. More often than not the nature/nurture debate has been couched in terms as much ideological as scientific. Identequalists display a strong aversion to anything they perceive as threatening their vision of social equality, and nothing has the potential to do this quite as much as our unreformable genes. We need to look at the evidence, and we shall start by looking at variations in intelligence. Individual Differences in Intelligence

Intelligence is not to be confused with knowledge. A bright Belgian will know far less about the game of cricket than many a dim Englishman, and a simple mountain shepherd will understand the ways of his flock far better than the professor of physics down in the university. Knowledge, specialised or otherwise, is harvested by individuals from the world around them. Intelligence, or the lack of it, is an inner quality of the mind. Intelligence seems to be related both to the individual’s ability to manipulate information, and to the speed with which he does so. Intelligence is distributed unevenly across the population. At one extreme are a small number of people whom we choose to call geniuses and at the other an equally small number of the simple-minded. Most people are closer to the average than to either of these extremes. Common sense and a brief conversation with any new acquaintance will quickly provide a rough indication of their level of intelligence, but when a much more detailed measure is required the IQ test comes into its own. IQ tests have proven to be very good predictors of the individual’s progress through life. High scoring children and teenagers, when they become adults, tend to do well in business and management, in the professions and in many other walks of life. Most low scorers on the other hand tend to languish further down the social spectrum. Clearly then the IQ test is measuring something real; it is tapping into some aspect of the individual’s 26

mental functioning which equips him for success or otherwise in the modern world. IQ testing has become steadily more sophisticated and reliable over the course of the last hundred years or so. The best IQ tests today are those which eschew elements of knowledge in their questions, relying instead on abstract shapes and symbols. Psychologists have found tests of this kind to be the fairest when it comes to comparing results from individuals with different levels of knowledge, or from people of different races and cultures. One important question to consider is whether differences between individuals in IQ scores are a result of genetic or environmental influences. The first thing to note here is that any one individual’s IQ score does not seem to vary much over time. Research indicates that for the great majority of people there is usually a high correlation (agreement) between their childhood and adult IQ scores. This suggests that we are indeed measuring some fixed characteristic of the individual, rather than a variable which is strongly subject to the changing influences of lifestyle or environment. But it would be remarkable indeed if there were absolutely no environmental influences on levels of intelligence. We are after all social animals and as such subject to enormous developmental influences from our parents, from our peers, and from the rest of society at large. The broader answer to this aspect of nature versus nurture seems to be that a person’s level of intelligence as measured by IQ tests is a result of a complex combination of nature and nurture. Even so, we should be able to prise the two apart somewhat in order to ascertain their relative levels of importance. Numerous studies have been carried out in this field, and in his 1999 book Genome, Matt Ridley summarises a number of these.4 Ridley looked at studies of percentage correlations between the IQ scores of different categories of people. He did so in order to see how these varied according to their biological relationships. Much of this work had originally been carried out by Thomas Bouchard at the University of Minnesota. Bouchard’s particular interest was the study of twins who, for various reasons, 27

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had been separated shortly after birth. Listed below are the results from some tens of thousands of subjects. Percentage correlations between the scores of: The same person tested twice Identical twins reared together Identical twins reared separately Non-identical twins reared together Non-twin brothers and sisters Parents and their children living together Parents and their children living separately Adopted children living together Unrelated people living separately

87% 86% 76% 55% 47% 40% 31% 0% 0%

100% represents a full correlation, or absolute agreement. 0% means no correlation at all.

As we might expect, the same person tested twice produces a very high correlation at 87%, but close behind this come identical twins reared together at 86%. The particular significance of this closeness is that any pair of identical twins share all the same genes. Note however that the next figure of 76% is for identical twins reared separately. This shows that different home, school and peer environments have only reduced the correlation by about 10%. Next, but much lower down the scale come non-identical twins closely followed by ordinary brothers and sisters. In both of these cases only half of their genes will be held in common between the two individuals concerned. Then at 40% come parents and their children living together, but we can see here too that when the pairs concerned live separately and hence in different environments, the correlation is again only reduced by a relatively small 9%, to 31%. Finally, genetically unrelated individuals appear to display no positive correlation whatsoever. In the case of unrelated people living apart this should come as no surprise, but for adopted children living together to produce a zero result is to say the least surprising, since it implies that a common home environment has had no measurable effect whatsoever. 28

Heritability

The technical term for the degree to which a trait is a reflection of its underlying genetic inheritance is ‘heritability’. Overall the best current estimate for the heritability of individual differences in IQ scores is somewhere in the range of 50-75%, with environmental influences, including those in the womb, accounting for the remaining 25-50%. One interesting aspect of this is that the heritability figure tends to be lower for children than for adults. This counter-intuitive finding arises because children are more likely to be influenced by their home environment, something which is largely outside their control. Adults on the other hand are usually freer agents so their genetic heritage comes more easily into its own. Particular environmental pressures may come and go, but our genes go on affecting us all our lives. Finding the Genes Involved

All told, the human genome involves somewhere between twenty and thirty thousand genes. If a trait or characteristic is inherited, then somewhere in the genome there must be a gene, or more probably genes, which carry the information underlying that trait. Since the first publication of the human genome sequence in 2001, research into the functions of individual genes has greatly accelerated. As a result the next few years should see many links being established between the biochemical functions of particular genes and their effects upon mind and body. It is now becoming clear that an individual’s intellectual capacity is a composite product of the effects of many genes rather than the result of just one or two. To date several candidate genes have been identified, variants of which have been shown to have some effect on levels of IQ.5 In all cases so far though, the effects of individual genes are very small. We can expect much more on this subject in the near future as these results are replicated, and as further genes come to be implicated. Modern research has also indicated a correlation between brain size and IQ score. Since the size of the brain must itself be a result of the actions of brain building genes, then here too there is a link, albeit at one step removed, between genes and IQ. 29

RACE AND EQUALITY

So things seem fairly clear cut. There is no equal distribution of intelligence across the population at large. Individual variations in levels of intelligence are largely, but not exclusively, a product of the genes. Let us now move on to look at other aspects of brain functioning, including those related to character and personality traits. Variations in Individual Temperament – The Twin Studies

Thomas Bouchard’s studies of identical twins reared apart became famous outside the narrow world of experimental psychology because of the remarkable stories which many of them brought to light. In numerous cases identical twins who had been separated shortly after birth and only brought back together in adulthood had, in the interim, lived lives which were astonishingly similar: There were the two American twins called Jim. Each had been given the same name shortly after being adopted a few weeks from birth. Reunited forty years later, they discovered that both had married a Linda, divorced her then married a Betty. Both as children had owned a dog called Toy. Both were parttime Deputy Sheriffs, had worked for McDonald’s, and had been petrol station attendants. Both bit their fingernails, chain-smoked Salem cigarettes, had put on 10 pounds in their teens, had had vasectomies, two heart attacks and haemorrhoids. British twins Daphne and Barbara were born in 1939 then separated and adopted. They did not meet again until 1980 at which point they discovered they both read Alistair McLean and Catherine Cookson. Both had hated games and maths at school. Both had been Girl Guides, and loved ballroom dancing. Both had fallen downstairs when they were 15 years old, and both met their husbands in town hall dances when aged 16. Both worked in local government, laughed compulsively, suffered an early miscarriage then produced two boys and a girl. Both arrived for their first reunion having dyed their hair the same shade of auburn and wearing a beige dress and brown velvet jacket. 30

There are many more identical twin stories like these.6 Some of the coincidences described are just that - coincidences. Others reflect gene variants or alleles which the pair share in common and which predispose them towards similar behavioural and other characteristics.7 Of particular interest to us are those genes which predispose to similarities in mental processes. In cases where separated twins appear to have made identical life choices this may well have resulted from shared alleles which guided them along similar behavioural pathways. When we decide to act in some way we do so under the influence of the genes which construct, and the genes which conduct, the workings of our brains. Because a pair of identical twins carry the same alleles, so the decisions they make will often be the same or very similar to each other. Research has indicated that identical twins tend to have strikingly similar attitudes on political and social issues for instance. They have similar personalities, and share a whole catalogue of behavioural idiosyncrasies. They have similar artistic tastes, watch the same TV programmes, and if criminally inclined, they tend to commit the same crimes. And, most importantly from our point of view, just as these twin studies reveal the extent to which gene variants held in common produce behaviour in common, so they also bring into sharp focus the extent to which differing gene variants in unrelated people can steer them along some very different pathways through life. A form of identequality may exist between identical twins, but it exists nowhere else in the species. Variations in specific Mental Characteristics

Much work has been done in recent times relating various mental illnesses to the influence on brain functioning of behavioural genes. In this book however we are more interested in the range of ‘normal’ human behaviours. Harvard psychologist Stephen Pinker in his 2002 book The Blank Slate was also interested in these matters, and he provides an example that illustrates the links between genes and behaviour: “if you have a longer than average version of the D4DR dopamine receptor gene, you are more likely to be a thrill seeker, the kind of person 31

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who jumps out of airplanes, clambers up frozen waterfalls, or has sex with strangers”.8 Quite! Various important single genebehaviour links are now coming to light but, as with IQ, most behavioural traits are probably the result of a number of genes, sometimes a very large number, acting in concert with each other. As such they are much harder to pin down. But despite these difficulties an increasing amount of research is now under way to find them. Something which psychologists have understood for some time is that individual differences in personality can be categorised into five main traits or variables.9 These are, extroversion through to introversion, neuroticism to stability, curiosity to incuriosity, agreeableness to antagonism, and conscientiousness to undirectedness. And these traits can now be measured using personality inventories. For any individual who has completed the associated questionnaire it is now possible to produce a set of five scale readings, one for each trait. All five of them involve a degree of heritability, with best estimates being that individual variation within a population is about 50% due to genetic differences between its members. Employers frequently use personality inventories such as these to find the right person for the job, since particular personality traits are thought to equate with success in specific careers and professions. The extroverted salesman; the neurotically creative actor; the scientific researcher and the polar explorer both blessed with a surfeit of curiosity; the antagonistic warrior and the conscientious detective. Each may grow into his or her job, but the best come equipped with the right package of character traits selected by nature long ago at the moment of their conception. What all of this amounts to is simply that at birth we are not and never have been blank slates. Like any good computer we come with many of our operating programmes already installed. And why should anyone ever have thought otherwise? Only because in our quest for autonomy and for equality the blank slate concept had seemed so overwhelmingly attractive. The wish was father to the thought. But wishful thinking can lead us very far from reality. 32

The Group: Differences Between From individual differences we move on to look at group differences, the focus of later chapters. In order to do this we need first to consider exactly what is meant by group differences. Suppose we were interested in the extent to which a particular characteristic - height for instance - varied between Japanese men, and American men of European extraction. We would clearly be in error to measure the height of the first American man and the first Japanese who came along, and from these singular results to draw conclusions about the two populations in general. No, a properly conducted survey would measure the heights of a randomly selected sample of many hundreds of American men and many hundreds of Japanese men, and then calculate the average figure for each population. We may also have an interest in the range of heights of the two populations, from the tallest individuals to the shortest. If we measure a random sample of a thousand American men of European extraction, we find a range of heights from just under 150cm, to a little over 200cm, but averaging out at about 175cm. Needless to say, there are very few men close to either of the extremes, with most clustering around the middle of the range. If we wanted to show these results graphically we would find ourselves drawing a curve something like this: Heights of American Men

16 14 12 10 8 6 4

Heights in Centimetres

33

> 200

196-200

191-195

186-190

181-185

176-180

171-175

166-170

161-165

156-160

0

151-156

2 < 150

Percentage of Population

18

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This special shape is known as a normal distribution or bell curve. Similar shapes are also produced when we measure human populations on a large number of other characteristics ranging from weight to IQ scores, and from age of puberty to degrees of the personality trait of conscientiousness. Staying with height for the moment, if we now consider the heights of a thousand Japanese men taken at random, we would get a similar shaped curve to that of American men, but because the Japanese are on average a little shorter than (European) Americans, at around 170cm, their graph would be shifted somewhat to the left like this.

Percentage of Population

18

Heights of Japanese Men and American Men

16 14 12 10 8 6 4

> 200

196-200

191-195

186-190

181-185

176-180

171-175

166-170

161-165

156-160

151-155

0

< 150

2

Heights in Centimetres

Although there is considerable overlap between these two bell curves, the difference in terms of the numbers of people involved becomes more marked towards the upper and lower extremes. The proportion of American and Japanese men at around 172/173 centimetres is about the same. But suppose we were to choose a basketball team from a mixed group of a thousand of each population. In these circumstances the chances are they would all be Americans because in basketball height is at a premium. In other words small average differences between populations can produce major differences at the extremes. We shall return to this theme again later. 34

Sometimes the graphs do not overlap. The men of the Masai, a tribe of East African cattle herders, are blessed with an average height of around 214cm. Their graph, placed alongside that of Congolese equatorial pygmies, whose average height is 137cm, would produce little or no overlap. It would approximate to this.

Percentage of Population

18

Heights of Pygmy Men (left) and Masai Men (right)

16 14 12 10 8 6 4

235-239

225-229

215-219

205-209

195-199

< 189

> 162

153-157

143-147

133-137

123-127

0

113-117

2

Heights in Centimetres

In this case the difference between the averages of the two populations is so great that it is not only the extremes, but the whole population of Masai men which is taller than all of the pygmy men. This raises an important point. It has sometimes been argued that differences within races are greater than the (average) differences between them. But this morally comforting generalisation is inaccurate because it actually depends upon just who the races are, and what variable is being measured. The difference between the average heights of Japanese and American men may be smaller than the range of differences within each population, but for Pygmies and Masai the average difference between the races is greater than the variation within each. It all depends, as they say, on the circumstances. More generally therefore, when any two races or other groups are being compared on some variable whether physical or mental it is important to recognise their degree of overlap. Would 35

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the graphs for the characteristic being considered look like the American/Japanese overlapping curves, or more like the clearly separated Masai/Pygmy ones? Clearly, the answer to this question will have important consequences for a proper understanding of racial difference. The ‘Equality through Ignorance’ fallacy

Imagine that two new tribes have recently been discovered, one deep in the Amazonian rainforest, the other in Papua New Guinea. Imagine too that precise details about them, including their heights, were not yet available. Under such circumstances would it be appropriate to assume that the two tribes were on average the same height? Clearly it would not. Ignorance of the facts is no basis for making precise assumptions about those facts. The most that could actually be said is that we do not yet know their average heights. In a similar vein, where information on any of their other characteristics, including those of temperament or intellect, are lacking, it would be equally wrong to assume that the two tribes must be identical for these. “We don’t yet know who is brighter, the Papuans or the Amazonians, therefore they must be equally bright”. This is the ‘Equality through Ignorance’ fallacy. It is employed widely by politicians and social commentators in relation to many different variables and across all races. It does nothing to further our understanding of the human condition. In general, where there is a lack of knowledge regarding differences or similarities between populations or races, this is no reason to conclude that differences between them do not exist. Only proper research in each case will settle the question one way or the other. Sexual Dimorphism

Differences between the sexes represent a special case of variation between groups. Women for instance are shorter than men on average but there is still a considerable degree of overlap between the two sexes. There is however one general theme related to differences between men and women which is worth looking at. On very many variables, both physical and mental, 36

men and women differ in the overall range of their scores. And they usually differ in the same way, this being that men’s scores cover a wider range, and women’s scores tend to be clustered closer to the average. This is true whether their average scores are the same or not. In the following generalised diagram where their average scores are the same, the dashed line for women illustrates this phenomenon.

Upper

Extreme

Average

Lower

Extreme

Percentage of Population

How men and women vary on many characteristics

Variable being measured

One theory currently on offer to explain this general finding of greater male variance, relates to the fact that whereas men inherit both an X and a Y chromosome, women inherit two Xs. This, so the theory goes, means that any extreme characteristic inherited by a female may be tempered by the equivalent contribution taken from its partner chromosome. Men on the other hand carry no such moderating influence, and consequently are more likely to display extreme characteristics. This theory is still tentative at this stage however and there may be a number of other explanations of the greater overall male variance. 37

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By way of an example of this sexual dimorphism we can look again at IQ. Some very recent research has suggested that the average IQ of adult women might be lower than that of men from the same population, but this finding needs further work. For the present therefore we will stick with earlier findings that their average IQs are the same. This being so, a suitably labelled version of the diagram above could be used to show the IQ scores of the men and women from a given population. When IQs are measured, more women come out near to the middle, and more men end up towards the extremes. So nature produces more men than women who are geniuses, but it also produces more men than women who are simple-minded. We can take this finding one step further however. As we have seen, IQ scores are known to correlate highly with levels of achievement in society. The greater male range of IQs therefore goes a long way towards explaining why it is that men tend to predominate in the upper echelons of most businesses and professions. But it also helps to explain why they are in the majority amongst the prison population and those sleeping rough on the streets. The alternative sociological explanation speaks only of institutionalised discrimination and a glass ceiling erected over the heads of women, but it makes no mention of the glass floor through which women fail to fall. The biological explanation of a greater male variance in IQ scores is perfectly capable of accounting for both of these phenomena. Summary Mankind, just like any other species, is a product of evolution. Like other species he has been subject to an evolutionary history of selective programming for specific forms of behaviour. There are clear differences between individuals in their levels of intellect and in many aspects of character and personality. These differences are partly a result of environmental influences and partly a result of the genes they inherit from their parents. In trying to tease out the relative importance of nature and nurture, twin studies have a particularly useful role to play. 38

Biological differences between distinctive sub-groups of Homo sapiens can be shown using bell curves. Sometimes differences are small and there is considerable overlap, but sometimes they are large with little or no overlap. A feature of the difference between men and women on a number of variables is that women cluster closer to the average, whereas men are more likely to be found at the extremes.

Notes 1. Wilson, E. O. (1975). Sociobiology: The New Synthesis. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. 2. Ardrey, Robert. (1970). The Social Contract. Collins 3. Barkow, Jerome H., Cosmides, Leda. and Tooby, John. (1992). The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture. Oxford University Press. 4. Page 83 of Ridley, Matt. (1999). Genome: The autobiography of a species in 23 Chapters. Fourth Estate, London. 5. See studies by, for instance, Plomin, Robert. et al of King’s College, London; Comings, David. et al of the City of Hope Medical Center in California; Rujescu D. et al of Munich; and Payton, A. et al of Manchester University, England. 6. Watson, Peter. (1981). Twins. Hutchinson 7. Allele: One of two or more versions of the same gene. Without going into Mendelian genetics, it is sufficient to say that different people often carry different alleles of the same genes. A gene for human skin colour for instance (and there are several) may have more than one allele variant. If two people are randomly chosen from the population, the first may carry an allele producing the chemicals for darker pigmentation than the second. All other things being equal this will result in visible differences in the colour of their skin. Identical twins are a special case because they always carry exactly the same alleles. Indeed, they carry a complete set of identical alleles throughout their genetic codes and so are virtually identical in terms of their biology. 8. Page 48 of Pinker, Steven. (2002). The Blank Slate. Penguin. 9. ibid. Page 50

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Chapter 3

Evolution and Race

T

o understand how races evolve in the first place, we need to look at some of the basic processes involved in biological evolution. The first part of this chapter briefly outlines these and introduces some of the terminology involved.

Mutation and Natural Selection Biological evolution works over long periods of time, normally by making slow changes in a species’ genome – the totality of its genes – down through the generations. These changes are mainly a result of two linked processes called Random Mutation and Natural Selection. A random mutation occurs when a small part of an individual’s genetic code - the information stored in their genome - is altered by some outside influence such as radiation or chemicals or the effects of viruses. The genes in an individual’s genetic code are best considered as part of a naturally generated blueprint for his construction and operation in the local environment. It follows from this that any mutation of a gene is likely to be counter-productive and lead to a less than optimum functioning of the individual, or even to his incapacity or death. But some mutations will simply be neutral with no observable effect, and a very few will even confer some advantage on the individual. Imagine for instance a mutation which gives greater protection against disease, or one for better 41

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vision, or one for the improved digestion of meat. If some such positive mutation occurs within cells that affect an individual’s germ line then he or she will pass it on to their offspring. Over long periods of time, advantageous mutations will tend to spread in the population because they are beneficial to their owners in the continued struggle to survive and procreate. Individuals without them will be disadvantaged, and therefore rather less likely to breed and pass on their genes. In other words, nature ‘selects for’ those who carry favourable gene-variants or alleles, hence the term natural selection. Although the process is complicated somewhat when clusters of genes rather than single genes act as nature’s preferred agents of selection, the long term result is the same. Each species tends to become better adapted to its environment. Any population of a sexually reproducing species will contain much genetic variation within its overall gene pool. This does not mean that individuals within the population will have lots of different genes from each other, rather that they will carry different alleles of the same genes. The term allele frequency refers to how common an allele is in the overall population, and this is usually given as a percentage. If say one in five people were to carry an allele for grey eyes, then its allele frequency in that population would be 20%. Ultimately the destiny of any newly mutated allele is towards inclusion, after many generations, in either 100% or 0% of the population. The rate at which this happens will depend both on a random genetic drift and on whether or not it is favoured by natural selection as a useful allele in the local environment. A major advantage of sexual reproduction with its mixing of genetic material from two different partners is the great degree of genetic variation which this creates within the population as a whole. Any allele which until now has conferred little or no selective advantage on its bearers may, in some unexpectedly new environment, come into its own and bequeath to subsequent generations an evolutionary advantage of some sort. As global warming takes hold in the Arctic for instance those polar bears blessed with a genetic ability to survive in a less cold climate will 42

start to prosper, so passing on more of their particular genes to the next generation. Because all sexually reproducing species possess genetic diversity of one sort or another, they are much more versatile than asexual species in adapting to disruption and change. Sexual selection is one variant of natural selection. It occurs in sexually reproducing species when individuals of one sex favour and hence mate only with those members of the opposite sex who possess certain favoured characteristics. Examples would include the peacock chosen by the peahen because he displays the gaudiest tail, the muscular football player favoured by the cheer-leader, the frog with the deepest croak attracting the most females or the sperm donor selected by the would-be mother because he is the holder of a Nobel Prize. Such sexual selection will tend to cause the alleles for gaudy tales, big muscles, loud croaks and good brains to spread within the respective species. In other words their allele frequencies will be increased.

Population Genetics Sometimes different populations of the same species get separated from each other through migration or by physical obstacles such as rivers or mountains or whatever. Over time and through many generations in their separate environments their gene pools will begin to diverge. This may happen because different selection pressures, acting on pre-existing genetic variations, take hold in these different environments. New mutations could also have arisen and spread in one population but not the other. A slow but continuing random genetic drift will also have its effect. All these changes taken together will eventually result in the two populations becoming distinguishable from each other as an increasing divergence in their physical or behavioural characteristics takes effect. But they remain members of the same species because, if brought together, they will still be able to interbreed. Due to these differences however they should now be considered as separate sub-species or races. If different races spend too long apart and hence become so different that they can no longer successfully interbreed, then 43

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they are said to have undergone speciation, and two species will now exist where only one had existed before. This process is what, over hundreds of millions of years, has created the great diversity of living things which we see around us today. So races comprise a sort of half-way house between one homogenous species and two or more separate ones. Population bottlenecks can have big affects on the formation and development of races. These happen when, due to increasingly adverse environmental conditions for instance, population numbers in some part of the species’ territory collapse down to just a few individuals. In this part of their range a previously rare allele may, when times become hard, be kept alive by just a few isolated individuals who manage to survive the bottleneck. In other words the population bottleneck produces an accompanying genetic bottleneck. Later, when the good times return, the fortunes of this particular allele will blossom, borne along by the accompanying explosion in population numbers. This is the so called founder effect. Now there will be two populations or races, one in which the allele is common and another, elsewhere, unaffected by the crash, in which it is remains a rarity. The genetic bottleneck will also have altered the frequencies of many other alleles in the newly enlarged secondary population, though frequencies will have remained largely unchanged in the unaffected primary population. Should the two races later begin interbreeding again then the resulting admixture will diminish this effect, but if they remain separate, and even undergo a number of subsequent population crash and recovery cycles they will be well on the way to creating two separate species.

Evolution in Action; the Peppered Moth It would be useful to see how these processes work in practice. One of the earliest studies of evolution in action, possibly the classic study, was that of the Peppered Moth Biston betularia. This attractive little creature which flies at night was common in England prior to, during, and after the industrial revolution. During that period however it underwent some interesting evolutionary changes. A very visible feature of the species is its general colouring which consists of grey-brown 44

speckling on a whitish background.1 But this overall patterning varies widely, and individuals can present an overall appearance which ranges from the very light to the very dark. In preindustrial England the lighter typica race was predominant, and this served the species well because it was easily able to camouflage itself during its daytime rest period. This it did by blending into the light coloured bark of woodland trees, so protecting itself from the predations of many insect-eating birds. Light coloured moths survived, bred, and passed on their ‘light coloured’ alleles to later generations. Then came industry, and in the newly industrialised cities of London, The Midlands and The North the trees, and indeed everything else, became covered in a dark layer of soot and grime. Now the poor light coloured moths stood out like glowing beacons, easy prey to hungry birds. As a result they were subject to a severe depletion in numbers. But by the middle of the nineteenth century naturalists had begun to notice a few individuals who, following some earlier random mutation for darker colouring, had been able to survive the avian onslaught. Here was a new race much more able to camouflage itself on the grimy tree trunks. Through natural selection these newcomers in their turn now survived and prospered. These were the ones able to pass on their genes to their progeny. By the late 1800s a major switch in the dark/light allele frequencies of the peppered moth’s gene pool had taken place in the industrial areas, and by 1895 in Manchester this carbonaria race had reached a frequency of 98% of reported sightings. Out in the generally lighter environment of the countryside however the typica race still predominated. As time passed and technology improved industry began to clean up its act. This trend culminated in Parliament’s passing of the Clean Air Act. During the latter half of the twentieth century and partly as a result of this legislation, the environment of these old industrial conurbations became very much less polluted. Now it was carbonaria’s turn to look out of place on the newly lightened tree trunks, and predators took an increasing toll of their numbers. Typica on the other hand began to blend in much better once again and to date has made a steady comeback in these areas. No speciation here then. Indeed, so great has been 45

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the replacement of the carbonaria race by typica that some researchers now believe carbonaria may even die out completely within a few more decades. There are a few loose ends to this story. Birds can see in the ultraviolet range so what may seem like a well camouflaged moth to us may not be so to many of its predators. Nor do we fully understand the effects on moth numbers of the migration of the two races between town and country. That said the general picture seems clear. During the nineteenth century the Peppered Moth’s evolutionary line diverged into two different races in response to the patchwork development of industrialised environments. The two races each survived and thrived best in their own areas, but when the distinctive industrial environment faded away, so too did the race which had evolved to exploit it.

Variation and Race in Species other than Man In the natural world racial differences such as those of the peppered moth are commonplace. But what can other species teach us about the potential for racial variation in Homo sapiens? Probably quite a lot. We will though need to be careful because every species is unique and what nature makes to work in one species may not work in another. Ultimately however it is the sheer ubiquity of racial phenomena throughout the natural world, that should alert us to the improbability of its absence from our own species. We should take a look at a few examples. Great Tits: Racial Evolution without Separation.

In the first part of this chapter we emphasised the role geographic isolation has to play in the formation of new races, but an actual physical separation may not always be necessary. Just outside Oxford lies Wytham Wood. Professor Ben Sheldon of Oxford University has been studying the population of Great Tits (Parus major) that live there.2 In particular he has been interested in two sub-populations which nest and breed little more than a mile apart. Sheldon discovered that individuals in one of the two groups were getting larger over the generations whilst the others were getting smaller. Further investigations suggested that although the two populations intermingled during the rest of the 46

year, in the breeding season they separated out. Why? Well one area of the woods had far fewer nest boxes than the other and consequently there was much greater competition for nest sites. This caused the bigger birds to chase the smaller ones away. The smaller weaker birds in their turn were becoming concentrated into an alternative area which had far more nest boxes but less food to go around. Net result, the two populations were growing steadily apart, their divergent gene pools being passed on to their respective offspring. The lesson here is that even without geographical separation different races may begin to evolve if divergent pressures take hold. Sockeye Salmon: The rapid Evolution of New Races.

Between 1937 and 1945 Sockeye Salmon (Oncorhynchus nerka) were introduced into Lake Washington near Seattle. Fifty years later researchers led by Dr Andrew P. Hendry of the University of Massachusetts began studying them and found that the fish appeared to have evolved into two different groups. One group laid its eggs on a lakeside beach, whilst the others used territories in feeder rivers. What’s more the two groups looked different, had identifiable genetic differences, and were markedly disinclined to interbreed. After only fifty years or as little as thirteen generations they had evolved into two distinct races and were moving steadily towards speciation. But for sheer speed of genetic response to a changing environment the Sockeye Salmon is no match for two Eastern Australian fruit fly species (Drosophila serrata and Drosophila birchii). When looking for mates, different fruit fly species use distinct chemical signals to indicate that they belong to the right species. When the two species were brought together in the laboratory from areas in the wild where they had never come into contact, it was found that they produced very similar scents. This carried the potential for great confusion. But researchers Megan Higgie and others of the University of Queensland were surprised to find that after only six months or nine generations serrata had evolved a much more distinctive scent to separate itself out from birchii. A good example here of evolution’s ability to respond with rapidity when circumstances demand. 47

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Deermice: The tenacity of racial difference.

Deermice (Peromyscus maniculatus) are native to North America. Over time the species has become adapted to a number of different habitats and probably now comprises some fifty or more different races. From the late 1940s onwards, research had shown that captured specimens of both the prairie living bairdii race, and the woodland living gracilis race would, in the laboratory, always gravitate towards the artificial habitat most like the one from which they came.3 What’s more, their laboratory born offspring showed the same preferences for their ancestral habitat, down the generations. In the 1960s Stanley Wecker set up a series of outdoor pens in which the animals could choose between living in grassland or living in woods, and he introduced the twenty generation-long colonies of laboratory bred prairie race to their new outdoor environment. At first they showed no preference for either grassland or woods, but when they in turn produced young, only the ones born in woodland continued to show no discrimination between the two. In contrast the young born on grassland voted unanimously to remain on their miniature prairies. Wecker concluded that a genetically encoded racial trait can resurface again after many generations if it is reinforced by early experience. This can happen even when such traits have not had the chance to express themselves in the interim. Asian Elephants: Variations in Racial Temperament.

The Asian Elephant (Elephas maximus) is a separate species to the African elephant. It in turn is divided into four subspecies or races separated mainly by geographical barriers. These races are the Indian, the Sri Lankan, the Sumatran and the recently discovered Borneo race.4 The Borneo race is less than three quarters the size of the others. It is also much tamer and more passive than they are. There are indications that this marked difference in temperament may be an evolutionary adaptation to the habitat of Borneo in which the elephant has no natural predators. Elsewhere in Asia its relatives have all been subject to attacks from Tigers, and down the generations this has probably selected for races of larger fiercer animals. 48

Some Lessons from the canine world The domestic dog Canis familiaris is descended from the Grey Wolf. Man probably started to domesticate wolves some 15,000 years ago in Central and Eastern Europe and in East Asia. Perhaps this happened when wolves became interested in scavenging the prey caught by man, or maybe when man began to realise the wolf’s potential as a hunting companion. Either way the bargain was struck and our ancestors began to select for the tamer and more malleable individuals. Good domestic dogs soon became highly prized companions and they have continued to live in the presence of man ever since. Because of its close relationship with man, Canis familiaris was one of the first creatures other than man to become the subject of a full scale genomic investigation. By the end of 2003 the sequencing of its genome was nearly complete and this allowed researchers to begin studying the genetic underpinnings of canine character, and of various inherited doggy diseases. Matthew Binns, head of the Animal Health Trust in Newmarket was reported in The Times as hoping this would lead to the identification of the genes involved both in disease and in behaviour. He argued it would be really useful if the genetic roots of a Border Collie’s sheep herding behaviour or a Labrador’s collecting habits could be determined.5 Other researchers are pursuing different lines of enquiry. Samuel Gosling of the University of Texas has been looking at dogs’ personalities, in particular their similarity or dissimilarity to their human counterparts.6 Gosling thinks that many scientists baulk at the idea of dogs sharing “the traits of emotion and personality” with humans because this would represent yet one more blow to the idea of human uniqueness. But what has he found so far? Well of the five basic human personality variables described in Chapter 2, Gosling has confirmed the existence of four of them in dogs. These are extroversion, agreeableness, neuroticism, and curiosity or openness to new experiences. Only conscientiousness, a measure of trustworthiness, selfishness and dependability, was missing. Gosling’s research involved asking owner’s about their dogs temperaments, and then using experimental situations to see whether the animals would live up 49

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to their owner’s expectations. To check for neuroticism for instance he asked owners to leave their own dogs and to walk away with another dog on the lead. This was something which some animals absolutely hated just as he had predicted they would. Looking at the results overall Gosling concluded that there was now just as much evidence for differing dog personalities as there was for variation between humans. So there are many links and many parallels between dogs and humans and this implies that there may be things about ourselves which we can learn by studying them. What about the parallel between dog breeds and human races? It has sometimes been argued that there are no such things as human races because people of different races mix, marry and have children. An added implication of this is that therefore there can be no such thing as different racial characteristics either. But Canis familiaris provides an instructive parallel. Take pure-breds and mongrels. Pure bred dogs such as Poodles and Boxers represent the individual breeds or races of the one species, but there are also innumerable degrees of mongrel crosses between them. To argue that because mongrels exist, therefore pure Poodles and pure Boxers do not, would clearly be absurd. So too with Homo sapiens. Just because there are many people who are of mixed race, that does not preclude the existence of many other people who display much more distinct racial characteristics. It has also been argued that because some characteristics are common across all human populations - we all use language, we all feel pain, we all form social groups etc - therefore the very concept of race itself is illusory. In the dog world this would be equivalent to claiming that because all breeds bark and wag their tails (well sort of), therefore there can be no different breeds. The Kennel Club recognises something like 200 different breeds or races of dog. Different breeds exhibit many different characteristics. All may be members of the same species, but the genome of that species sports a range of different alleles which account for variations as large as those between the Great Dane and the Chihuahua. These variations are not just of physical appearance, but include the mental traits of intelligence behaviour and temperament. The Labrador is typically a patient, intelligent 50

and good natured animal, the Doberman intense, energetic, fearless, and assertive, and the Fox Terrier bold and enthusiastic but prone to jealousy and impulsiveness. These characteristics are not just the result of the different breeds' social environments, training, history and culture. Rather, they are deeply encoded in the respective animals' genes. Presumably though a politically correct canine would argue that Fox Terriers were not really more impulsive than Labradors: ‘it's just that Labradors are prejudiced against the colour of the Fox Terrier’s fur’. Despite centuries of selective breeding, most modern breeds of dog, together with their innate differences, have been selected for over the last 150 years or so. How many doggy generations does this represent? Roughly speaking, most domestic dogs can breed within a year of birth. Suppose we make the extreme assumption that 150 years represents 150 doggy generations. The human equivalent, assuming a rather longer generational span of some 20 years, would require around 3,000 years to create in humans the same degree of variation as is enjoyed by modern canines. But it’s not quite that simple of course. Domestic dog breeding has been artificially speeded up by the hand of man repeatedly selecting for the same characteristics generation after generation. By contrast, human racial diversification through natural selection would have been much slower and more subject to countervailing pressures such as through racial re-mixing. 3,000 years would have been be an absurdly short time to produce the modern races of man. But some sixty to seventy thousand years have elapsed since modern man first began migrating out of East Africa into the rest of the habitable world.7 At the hand of nature, the evolution of the different races of man will have taken much longer than their canine equivalents, but that is no reason to suppose human racial divergence never happened at all.

Group Variation but not between Races There is one final example of between-group variation which is worth looking at. It does not involve races, but as an example of the complex variety of behaviour nature is capable of producing within one species it is hard to beat. 51

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Male Californian side-blotched lizards, Uta stansburiana, have been studied by Barry Sinervo of the University of California and his team.8 These animals have throat patches which come in one of three colour-coded forms, an orange version, a yellow and a blue. The mating strategy of each animal, along with a number of other characteristics, varies according to the colour of its patch. All members of the same colour employ the same mating strategy. Orange males are highly aggressive. They tend to steer clear of genetically similar rivals but try to gain females by stealing territory held by the more docile blue males. Yellow males are more sneaky and do not worry about holding territories themselves. Instead they try to steal female-mating opportunities from orange males by mimicking females themselves and by operating behind the orange guys’ backs. Blue males set up home in territories adjacent to those of other genetically similar but unrelated blues, and then join forces with each other in order to block the yellows from sneaking up on their females. These three strategies are controlled by a number of different genes which vary in parallel with each other and in association with the colour of their owner’s throat. Taken together they produce a circle of behaviours with each colour variant producing gains over one of the others but losses to a third. The system appears to remain stable with each behaviour pattern continuing to be propagated within the species.

Summary Evolution works largely through the twin processes of random mutation and natural selection. We know of racial variations in both the physical and behavioural characteristics of many species other than man. Natural selection has produced this variation in species as diverse as fruit flies, deermice, great tits, salmon and Asian elephants, and there is no reason to believe that Homo sapiens should be immune to these processes. Dog breeds can give us pointers to the human situation, but only if we remember that their evolution has been greatly speeded up at the hand of man. 52

Notes 1. Still, John. (1996). Butterflies and Moths of Britain and Europe. Collins Wild Guide series. Harper Collins. 2. Birds of a Feather Flock Apart. Report in The Times 6th Jan 2005, about Wytham Wood research published in the journal Nature. 3. Pages 59-61 of Ardrey. Robert, (1970). The Social Contract. Collins. 4. New Species (sic) of Elephant confirmed by DNA Test. Report in The Times, 4th Sept 2003. 5. Matthew Binns quoted in The Times in an article entitled Scientists crack code that makes dogs a breed apart. 26th Sept 2003. 6. Research by Dr Samuel Gosling of the University of Texas. Reported in The Guardian of 22nd January 2004 under the title Personality test for Dogs; and in The Times of 22nd Feb 2005 under Science Bows to Dog Mind. 7. Pages 60-63 of Cavalli-Sforza, L. L. (2000). Genes, Peoples and Languages. The Penguin Press. 8. Sinervo, Barry and Clobert, Jean. Morphs, Dispersal Behavior, Genetic Similarity, and the Evolution of Cooperation. Report in the journal Science, June 20th 2003 Vol 300, Page 1949.

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Chapter 4

Evolving Man

“Early in the first volume of his collected papers, the evolutionary biologist W.D. Hamilton retells a Victorian joke. Two ladies are conversing, and one says: 'Have you heard that Mr Darwin says we are all descended from an ape?' The other replies: 'Oh, my dear - that surely cannot be true! . . . But, if it should be true, let us pray that at least it will not become generally known!' “Hamilton sees this response as being as relevant today as it was then: people have 'an instant, automatic wish for both the evidence and the idea to go away' because evolutionary notions 'have the unfortunate property of being solvents of a vital societal glue'. Whereas the Victorian ladies were concerned about evolution's challenge to conventional religion, their equivalents today are worried about its impact on the egalitarian premise on which democracy is based.” Andrew Berry writing in the London Review of Books.1

W

hat were the evolutionary pressures under which modern man evolved, and how are the modern races of man beholden to their evolutionary past? It is time to look at the story of human evolution. Evolution has been going on for some four billion years, and it did not stop suddenly once it had created the first Homo 55

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sapiens. As a species, we ape-descended humans exhibit different behaviour patterns to those of our closest relatives the chimps. We are also brighter than orang-utans, and have different personalities to gorillas. These differences are encoded in our genes, and even the most dedicated social determinist would not wish to argue otherwise. They came about through the normal evolutionary processes of random mutation and natural selection, processes which continued long after we split from our primate cousins and which, as we shall see, continue right up to the present day. The evolutionary line that was to lead to man separated out from the one that led to the chimps some five to seven million years ago. Fossil records indicate that over the ensuing millennia our ancestors underwent many changes before modern man finally emerged. Even so, we still manage to share perhaps 98% of our genome with the chimps. The first generally recognised member of the Homo genus was the bipedal Homo habilis who lived in Africa between 2.4 and 1.5 million years ago. Archaeological evidence indicates that he had a larger brain than his predecessors and was able to fashion simple stone tools. At about 1.8 million years ago Homo erectus appeared on the scene. His brain was some 50% bigger again, and he made much more elaborate tools. He was probably also the first Homo to control and use fire. Erectus was versatile enough to migrate from tropical Africa into the very different climates of Asia and Europe and he survived as a distinct line until much more recently than did habilis. Neanderthal man, Homo neanderthalensis came along perhaps a quarter of a million years ago and died out about thirty thousand years ago, probably because modern man out-competed him for resources. In his time he was the most advanced of the hominids. A hunter who used weapons to kill his prey, he also showed evidence of cultural practices such as the placing of tools and food at kin burial sites. Modern man, Homo sapiens (or Homo sapiens sapiens if, as some anthropologists argue, Neanderthal man should be relabelled Homo sapiens neanderthalensis) evolved out of other descendants of the Homo erectus line somewhere over two 56

hundred thousand years ago. Like many other hominids, he probably originated in Africa. Homo sapiens is today characterised by his extensive and versatile linguistic ability, and by his ability to use all manner of tools. These qualities have allowed him to make major environmental adaptations to suit his needs. As a result the disparate races of modern man have been able to adapt to almost all of earth’s major climatic zones.

The Geographical Dispersal of Modern Man

Modern man in his current geographical distribution represents the culmination of several eruptions out of Africa, together with a rather smaller number of returns. His first emigration from the continent probably took place about 70,000 years ago (YA) as shown on the diagram, and an erratic dispersal around the globe has continued right up to the present day. Moving up the Nile or across the Arabian Peninsula, early modern humans first colonised lands to the east of the Mediterranean and further into Southern Asia. From there they spread out into the rest of Central and Eastern Asia and down into Australia in an initial dispersal some 60,000 - 50,000 years ago. 57

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At this time Neanderthals still ruled the roost in Europe and it was not until about 40,000 years ago that a branch of modern man moving westwards from Asia finally began to replace them. Rather later in the day, somewhere between 30,000 and 15,000 years ago, the first wave of hardy Asiatics migrated across the Bering Straits and down into the Americas. Until 2010 it was generally thought that that modern man’s genome owed little or nothing to interbreeding with other pre-modern hominids. In May 2010 however New Scientist reported the discovery that Homo sapiens had interbred not only with Neanderthals but also with other ancient lines.2 From the analysis of ancient DNA we now know that all Eurasians, but not sub-Saharan Africans, owe a small but important part of their genetic makeup to these ancient crossings. These latest findings therefore put back the true date of modern man’s last truly common ancestor to something like half a million years ago. We have seen how individuals differ from one another in terms of their genetic codes, but we now know that the different populations which resulted from these great migrations also displayed genetic variation. What is more they have continued to do so right up to the present day.3 Modern researchers are able to measure that degree of variation. The results indicate that these migrations are still the major factor governing differences between what have traditionally been thought of as the principal races of mankind. These can be listed as Sub-Saharan Africans, South Asians and North Africans, Europeans, East Asians (Chinese, Japanese, Koreans), South East Asians, Native Americans, Native Australasians, Southern African Bushmen and Pygmies, Pacific Islanders and Arctic peoples. As we shall see, other slightly different classifications are also possible.

The meaning of the word ‘Race’ A short diversion into the meaning of the word ‘race’ in the specifically human context would be useful here. We have used the term a number of times already, but what of other terms such as tribe, clan and family. Family in this context means a small group of people who in historic and prehistoric times would have lived together. They would have been closely related by 58

blood or 'marriage' and their fortunes and destiny would have depended heavily upon the actions of individual members. Clans are extended families; they are networks of relatives bound by blood and by marriage, some close and some more distant, numbering from a few dozen up to many thousands. Clan members do not necessarily all know each other but, because of their family ties, recognise that they have strong interests in common which may be different to those of outsiders. Tribes are like clans, but the term implies an extra degree of physical separation from other surrounding peoples. Tribes may also be larger and more genetically distinct from each other than are clans. The term race has, in modern times, been a little more problematic. There are various definitions available, but conventionally it has been understood to refer to a population which has existed in isolation long enough to for its members to have evolved characteristics or traits which identify it as different from other populations. Colin McEvedy in the Penguin Atlas of Ancient Society uses once common but now slightly dated terminology to refer to the white race of Europe, the Near East and North Africa; the black race originating in Africa south of the Sahara and the yellow race centred on China.4 Within each of these major groupings there will be many sub-races. He for instance identifies the four most important sub-races within the historical territories of the white race as being the Indo-Europeans of the temperate belt, the Finns of the northern forests, the Semites of the Eastern Mediterranean, and the Hamites of North Africa. Distinctions between such sub-races may be less clear cut, but even within these smaller groups yet further divisions may also be possible. Traditionally Europeans were separated out into Germanics, Latins and Slavs. Sometimes individual nation states are racially mixed, sometimes not. Japan for instance is 99% Japanese.5 Differences between groups at these sub-racial levels are not always obvious. An individual of Scandinavian origin may always have been distinguishable from an individual Chinese, but when two peoples have evolved in close proximity this is not always the case. A randomly selected group of several dozen 59

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Norwegians may be distinguishable from a similar group of Italians, but any one Norwegian taken at random could not be distinguished from any one Italian with absolute certainty. Considerations such as these take us back to those overlapping bell curves of Chapter 2 where, as we saw, some bell curves overlap rather more than others. Ultimately there are no fixed rules about the use of the term race and, as some would be quick to point out, finding an acceptably neutral scientific definition of the word is a near impossibility anyway. Therefore, and for the sake of simplicity I have chosen to lump together several different levels of division as races. I will use the term to mean any division larger than the clan where there is a reasonable possibility that average group characteristics may have developed. Consequently sub-races and tribes may also be called races. This simplification of the classification process will cause no particular problems. This is because the aim here is simply to show that human groups vary, and that therefore the cosy picture of a 100% homogeneous human species is wrong. So at whatever level group differences can be shown to occur, the case is made. As a rough guide though it is worth remembering that the degree of difference between any two races on specific characteristics is likely to vary proportionately to the degree of genetic distance between them. This genetic distance is in turn largely a function of the length of evolutionary time they have spent apart.

Race and the Natural Environment At some point rather more than seventy thousand years ago, we do not know when, the African branch of our ancestry passed through the last narrow population gateway when all its members could have been in contact with each other. Since then our species' history has been one of migration and dispersal and, for many different groups or races, long periods of geographic isolation in widely separated parts of the globe. During those aeons of separation the pioneers of humanity would have been subject to evolutionary pressures from the great diversity of climates and natural environments in which they found themselves. We recognise and acknowledge this in their diverse 60

racial patterns of skin and eye colour, body shape, dental layout, blood groups, susceptibility to disease, and numerous other variables. We know for instance that races which evolved in higher latitudes have tended, on average, to end up with larger bodies but shorter limbs than those that evolved in the tropics. This is simply because a stockier body shape is better at conserving heat in colder climates. What identequalists in particular have so desperately not wanted to find is any racial variation inside the skull. The human brain is, in their view, the only piece of living matter in all of creation, which is immune to the processes of natural selection. In reality of course this just won't do. The evolution of the human brain, and hence the mind, did not suddenly come to a halt seventy thousand years ago. For countless generations since, human clans, tribes and races have interacted with their environments and have been selected by nature to fit their chosen habitats. Many lived in the abundant tropics, some on the edges of harsh deserts, a number in more varied temperate climes, and a few in the cold inhospitable north of the last ice age. Are we really being urged to believe that over all this time natural selection, which had adapted their bodies to this great geographic diversity, had done absolutely nothing to mould their behaviours, intellects and temperaments in a similar fashion? Must we be forced to accept that Inuit psychology has adapted not one jot to cope with the winter-long nights of the Arctic Circle, or that the Yanomamo tribes of Brazil have evolved absolutely no behavioural adaptations to cope with their tropical rainforest home? This idea, that the Tuareg and the Korean the Norwegian and the Jamaican, the Italian and the Apache all manifest precisely the same average mental characteristics is, quite frankly, ridiculous. Individual Differences affect Inter-group Variation At the genetic level too, this argument is just not credible. When a single population splits into two separate groups, any allele frequencies set initially at neither 100% nor 0% will tend towards two separate values. 61

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By way of example, imagine the following hypothetical and greatly simplified scenario. A tribe of hunter-gatherers lives in an easy land where there are plenty of deer for them to catch, but also a small numbers of tigers. The tigers too catch deer, but in addition they also take out the occasional unwary human deer hunter whose bravery has overcome his caution. The human population carries a gene which codes either for bravery or for caution, with exactly 50% of the population carrying the bravery allele whilst the other 50% carry the allele for caution. The whole balance of deer, humans, and occasional tigers is relatively stable and unchanging. Something happens, perhaps a drought or some other natural disaster occurs, and some of the tribe are forced to leave their homeland to seek their fortune elsewhere. But the new territory in which they eventually settle, whilst it is still home to enough deer to satisfy human needs, is also the domain of a much larger number of tigers. As a result far more carriers of the human bravery allele in this new population now get eaten before they can pass on their genes on to the next generation. Conversely the allele for caution now comes into its own. With the passage of time a new ratio is established in this second population, with a mere 20% now sporting the bravery allele, whilst a much larger 80% carry the one for caution. Natural selection has done its job, and the overall degree of ‘macho’ behaviour displayed by each of these two human populations is now rather different. The original variation between individuals within the single population has led eventually to variation between populations. This would not have happened if all of the tribe had all possessed the same allele in the first place. As a footnote we might also add that even without natural selection by tigers, random mutation and genetic drift would eventually have altered that initial allele frequency from 50:50 anyway. In the real world the situation is nothing like as simple as our example suggests. Most behaviours are affected by more than one gene, and many other variables will also have come into play. But no matter how complex the situation, the same basic processes will occur. The underlying theme is this: If different populations of one species evolve over time in any degree of 62

isolation from one another, then the effects of adaptations to new environments, of mutations, and of simple genetic drift will be to create divergent population averages for those genetically influenced traits in which there had previously been variation between individuals only. As well as physical and behavioural traits these will inevitably include what we would refer to in humans as traits of temperament and intellect. These basic evolutionary realities are well known to researchers in the biological sciences and are often factored into their calculations on race in a wide range of other species. Until recently only man had been left out.

Climate, Diet and Forward Planning One example of the way evolutionary diversity in human group behaviours could have come about, relates to our varying dietary practices. During all of man’s hunter-gatherer history right up to 20,000 BC and beyond, the diet which our ancestors had evolved to subsist on was a very varied one. The typical African hunter-gatherer’s menu comprised a rich variety of wild game, nuts, fruit, berries, uncultivated vegetables and insects. Indeed so varied was his table that whatever the time of year wild food of one sort or another would have been available to him. Consequently there would have been no need to store anything for use later in the year, and the archaeological evidence points to little or no use of food preservation amongst early peoples. As we have seen though some tribes migrated over time out of the tropics and up into the more northerly latitudes comprising today’s Eurasian landmass. One characteristic of these mediterranean, temperate and northern areas was to become increasingly problematic for them. This was the much greater seasonal variation in climate. Hunter-gathering continued in these regions, but now there was also pressure to find ways of storing food for the lean winter months. The evidence is that with the beginning of farming about twelve thousand years ago, there also began a move to preserve foods during the season of plenty, in order to tide people over the hungry months of the year. Curing and salting began. Cattle herding peoples started to utilise fermented milks, and various cultured milk products were 63

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developed. There is archaeological evidence that wine-making may date back as much as twelve thousand years, and the fermentation of honey to an even earlier date. One behavioural characteristic in particular would have been relevant to this need to preserve foods. Between the individual members of any one population there would have been a range of planning behaviours ranging from those who lived only for the moment through to those who were much more inclined to think of and prepare for the future. As the centuries passed and people moved steadily further north into Eurasia there would have been strong selective pressure favouring those who made preparations for survival during increasingly hard and barren winters, by storing up the fruits of summer. Put simply those who did not would have died. What is more, most of them would have died young before they had been able to mate and pass on their genes. Amongst the emerging Eurasian races therefore, allele frequencies for behavioural traits favouring planning for the future would have increased markedly. All other things being equal the present day descendents of these northern populations will be carriers of similar allele frequencies. As such they will still be inclined towards greater forward planning in the world they inhabit today. But human behavioural traits carry great flexibility in their chosen theatres of operation. Present day forward planning will not therefore be confined simply to the modern equivalents of those ancestral food preservation techniques - bottling, canning, freezing and food irradiation. Many other aspects of these people’s lives today will also have benefited from this general propensity to think and plan ahead. These will include behaviours as diverse as saving money for a rainy day, formal education for the young, medical insurance payments and crime prevention strategies. There is one further strand to this tale of evolutionary adaptation to climate and it is this. Most of central and northern Eurasia displays a continental climate of largely predictable weather, cold winters and warm or hot summers. The seasons come and go according to an ancient timetable laid down at the end of the last ice age or earlier. But there is one exception to this pattern and it involves Western Europe. Here the prevailing 64

Westerly winds off the Atlantic Ocean introduce a much larger element of uncertainty into the weather. Summers tend to be cooler and winters milder than deeper into the continent. But in addition, the clash of oceanic and continental airstreams makes for an unusually high degree of volatility, and hence of unpredictability in day-to-day forecasting. In what may be something of an exaggeration, it has sometimes been claimed that England for instance does not have seasons it just has weather. It is possible therefore that the tribes who, in prehistoric times, lived on the Western rim of the Eurasian landmass may have evolved an enhanced capacity to deal with uncertainty in their daily environment. This would have entailed a greater degree of behavioural flexibility and a willingness to adapt rapidly to what the British Met Office nowadays calls ‘changeable’ weather conditions. A more general creativity in manipulating the environment may have been the result, and it is interesting to note in this context that the industrial revolution was largely the creation of Western European peoples. The corollary of all this is that deeper into the continent other races would have become better adapted and more finely tuned to the predictable seasonal variations produced by their more regular climates. It is important to add here that this is not an argument about the evolution of higher intelligence. It is perfectly possible to be both highly intelligent on the one hand but very limited in behavioural flexibility on the other. Higher intelligence may assist mental agility but the two are by no means identical.

Population Size and its effects on Evolution Our hunter gatherer forebears were small in number and widely dispersed across the face of the planet. Their way of life allowed only for very low densities of population by modern standards. Estimates based on the degree of genetic variation seen today suggest that shortly before the migration out of Africa began some seventy thousand years ago the world population of Homo sapiens probably stood at about 50,000 or so, equivalent to today’s English town of Winchester. By ten thousand BC this had risen to something like five to ten million; about the same as 65

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the present day population of London, but widely scattered around the globe.6 Small populations are particularly susceptible to one-off disasters, and low density populations tend to produce long periods of isolation for different sub-groups. Taken together over tens of thousands of years these two factors would have created the ideal conditions for the propagation of genetic variation in man. Our forebears lived in innumerable small roving bands of one or two hundred souls. Subject to many severe depredations from the weather, from predators and from disease, these bands would have passed through countless genetic bottlenecks when their numbers were reduced to small family groups. The lucky few who survived these traumas then became the ones who passed on their genes to their children. This is the founder effect mentioned in the last chapter. Although subsequent inbreeding may have led to some increase in genetic illnesses, this would not necessarily have been fatal to the group as a whole. At such a time just one family member more or less would have bequeathed a significantly different genetic legacy to the physical and mental characteristics of his descendants down the generations. As time passed some of the surviving families grew to become clans, clans became tribes, and tribes grew into races. Viewed in this light and despite some subsequent admixture of once separate populations, it is almost inconceivable that all the modern races of man should have ended up with exactly the same invariant mix of mental characteristics. Try this thought experiment. Consider yourself and your nearest relatives. Think about the mental qualities of your family, their personality traits and intellects, their quirks and their foibles. Remember those occasions when someone said of a young family member: “He is just like his dad” or “That’s just what her Auntie Flo would have said” or “Their granny was just like that”. Now imagine that as time passed your family grew and grew, with little outside contact, until at some point in the future it were to become a tribe and then a nation. Now imagine what that nation would be like! That will give you some feel for what a genetic bottleneck is really all about. 66

Genetic Diversity in the Human Population Genetic diversity within the present day population of Africa south of the Sahara is probably greater than in all of the rest of the world put together. This is partly because the direct line of human evolution has been going on there rather longer than anywhere else and so a great deal of genetic diversification has had time to occur. What’s more, the groups of people who migrated out of Africa in the initial dispersal were small in number and probably fairly closely related to each other. Because of this it has sometimes been argued that these small groups could not possibly have produced any real racial variation. A parallel argument relates to one of the findings of the Human Genome Project announced in June 2000, concerning the very high degree of similarity between the genetic codes of all human beings. As J. Michael Bishop put it in his recent book How to win the Nobel Prize, "The DNA of any two people on the planet is likely to be 99.9% identical. These findings have added a powerful biological argument against the fictions of race and bigotry."7 But this argument warrants further examination. If the genetic codes of any two humans are 99.9% the same, then it follows that they are 0.1% different. What can we deduce from this? As we know, the genetic code which each of us carries in our cells controls almost everything biological that there is about us, from eye colour to behavioural traits, and from blood group to susceptibility to disease. It is made up of 23 pairs of chromosomes containing in all some three billion separate 'bits' of information - base pairs in the jargon. This human genetic code may only display some 0.1% variation between individuals, but 0.1% of three billion still represents a sizeable three million base pairs which are available to code for human variation. Many if not most biological processes rely on the actions of a number of genes, sometimes a very large number, working together. The control of blood pressure alone for instance may involve up to three hundred genes. But even so it would be a mistake to argue that therefore single gene variants, or even more specifically individual base pairs only ever produce very minor effects on the individuals who carry them. Researchers are now 67

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discovering just what some of these single base pairs are capable of, and in the first instance they have concentrated upon looking for the causes of various genetic diseases. Two examples will suffice:Cystic fibrosis (CF) is a chronic, progressive, and frequently fatal disease of the body's mucous glands suffered mainly by people of European racial origin. It primarily affects the respiratory and digestive systems of children and young adults. On average, victims have a life expectancy of little more than 30 years. CF is caused by the absence of just three base pairs on human chromosome 7. If at some future date this horrible genetic defect could be corrected, the victim's genetic code would still be 99.9999999% the same. Tay-Sachs disease (TS) is most common amongst Ashkenazi Jews. During the first year of life, the victim's development begins to slow and neurological impairment and psychomotor difficulties become apparent. Blindness and helplessness follow, together with uncontrollable seizures, and eventual paralysis. Most people with TS die by the age of four. The most common form of TS is caused by an alteration in just one base pair on human chromosome 15. If in the future this dreadful genetic variant could be corrected, the victim's genetic code would still be 99.999999967% the same. As these two examples show, alterations in a small number of, or even in just one base pair, can have massive consequences for the individuals concerned. And since 99.9% identicality between individuals still leaves some three million base pairs available for nature to manipulate, there is ample scope here for the evolution of genetic variation between both individuals and races. What's more, even if we reduce this number by one or two orders of magnitude to allow for those base pairs not actually incorporated into genes, we are still left with a massive 30,000 base pairs available to code for variation. By whatever means you calculate it (and there are others), there is plenty of room in 0.1% of the genome for racial differences to have evolved. 68

There is a footnote to this story. In November 2006, an article published in Nature and based on the latest research findings, indicated that major structural (as opposed to individual base pair) variations in the human genome were much larger in number than had previously been thought.8 The headline finding was that within the species as a whole, as much as 12% of the genome was indicating differences between people. The knockon effect of this finding for studies of racial variation has yet to be explored, but the clear implication is that at this level too, race differences might be rather greater than had previously been supposed.

Summary Modern man originated in Africa out of a long line of Homo forbears. From Africa he migrated out into the rest of the world where, to some limited extent, he interbred with other hominids. Over thousands of succeeding generations he colonised the rest of the world. During that great span of time evolution created many different branches of the human line as it blindly adapted him to a variety of newly discovered environments and climates. At certain times and in certain places the survival of just a few lucky individuals would have speeded up that process of evolution enormously. ‘Race’ is a convenient word to use when referring to these different branches of mankind and we can use it without also having to deny that there are many people who lie somewhere between the different races. Despite relatively small overall variation within the human gene pool, it is clear there is still scope for considerable racial diversity within Homo sapiens as a whole. In the next chapter we look at some of the findings of modern research related to racial variation. But we opened this chapter with a quote from W.D. Hamilton, so let us close it with the thoughts of Harvard’s Stephen Pinker. In January 2006 The Edge website asked a wide range of prominent science writers to answer the question “What is your Dangerous Idea?”9 In response to this call for challenges to prevailing orthodoxies Pinker responded that “Groups of people may differ genetically in 69

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their average talents and temperaments”. He went on to argue that the current intellectual climate is very poorly equipped to deal with the likelihood of genetic data on group differences, something which may not be very far away. A hesitant formulation perhaps, but Pinker is still to be congratulated for boldly going where so few modern academics have dared to go before.

Notes 1. Berry, Andrew. Reasons for Being Nice and Having Sex. Review of some of the works of W.D. Hamilton in the London Review of Books. 6th February 2003. 2. Callaway, Ewen. Modern humans Neanderthal origins. P.8 of New Scientist, May 15th 2010. Subsequent work has now identified other contributors to the modern Homo sapiens genome. One of these, the ‘Denisovans’ are named after the cave in Siberia where a bone containing their DNA was first found. As with the Neanderthals, elements of their genome have appeared only in the genomes of modern humans living outside of Africa. Another research finding, first announced in September 2011, was that some specifically African populations may have received genes from an unknown ancient human lineage some 40,000 years ago – in other words after the ancestors of modern EuroAsians first migrated out of Africa. Calculations suggest this ancient lineage split off from the line which was to become modern man some 700,000 years ago. What all of this adds up to is that the foundations on which the ‘Out of Africa’ hypotheses were built, are beginning to look increasingly shaky. Multiregionalism may be about to make something of a comeback. 3. For further discussion see Cavalli-Sforza, Luigi Luca. (2000). Genes, Peoples, and Languages. Allen Lane, the Penguin Press 4. Pages 5-6 of McEvedy, Colin. (First Published 1967). The Penguin Atlas of Ancient History. Penguin Books 5. CIA: The World Factbook online. (March 2006).

6. P. 92 of Cavalli-Sforza, Luigi Luca. (2000). Genes, Peoples, and Languages. Allen Lane, the Penguin Press. 7. P. 202 of Bishop, Michael J. How to win the Nobel Prize. (2003). Harvard University Press. 8. Human Genomics: In search of normality. Article in Nature, Nov 26th 2006. 9. Pinker, Stephen. (Jan 2006), in an essay on The Edge website run by New York literary agent John Brockman.

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Chapter 5

Racial Realities: Out of the Dark Ages

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nlike individual differences, racial differences have until recently remained very much the taboo subject to be discussed only between consenting researchers in private.1 In Chapters 5 and 6 we take a look at a number of academic and other studies involving race which have been published during the opening years of the twenty-first century. There have actually been a quite a few of these considering how rare they were during the latter part of the twentieth century. Chapter 5 touches on medicine, genealogy and archaeology and asks whether human races are still evolving, whilst in Chapter 6 we take a look at an eclectic mix of studies that point to significant racial variation. The recent but as yet tentative academic forays into questions of race have yet to make a major impact in the mass media or amongst politicians and policy makers. So let us begin by looking at an area where getting the answers right matters most because it often involves issues of life and death.

Body Chemistry, Medicine and Race We are all familiar with the overt physical difference between races, differences of size and shape, skin and eye colour. Physiologists know too of others; the racial variations in blood group frequencies for instance and the racially determined genetic 71

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propensities for certain diseases such as those mentioned in the last chapter. There are many others including the Black African’s much greater vulnerability to sickle cell anaemia, the Northern European’s enhanced susceptibility to multiple sclerosis, and the increased incidence of diabetes and subsequent kidney damage amongst South Asians living in the West. Then there are the racial variations in genetically mediated reactions to different stimuli. Lactose intolerance – the inability to digest milk properly – provides an example of this. Across most of the world, as babies grow into childhood they lose the ability to digest milk. Post-infancy they can suffer a variety of digestive upsets if they continue with milk or other dairy products. But the distribution of this uncomfortable by-product of the maturation process is by no means geographically uniform.2 Races with a long prehistory of nomadic cattle-husbandry, principally but not exclusively in North West Europe, have evolved a special digestive system. This allows for the continued digestion of milk well into adulthood with no adverse side effects. In South America, Africa and Asia the problem of lactose maldigestion affects more than 50% of the population, with a high of nearly 100% in some Asian countries. Within Europe it is as high as 70% in Sicily, but go North and by the time you reach Scandinavia it is down to a mere 2%. In the United States with its varied racial makeup, maldigestion is 80% amongst blacks, 53% amongst Mexican Americans, but only 15% among whites. This American example in particular illustrates the importance to the individual of their racial ancestry, rather than their current environment or place of domicile, in determining the outcome. Medics are practical people, keen to get it right, and somewhat disinclined to let political sensitivities get in the way of their doing the best for their patients. Predictably therefore they have been at the forefront of an increasing acknowledgement of racial differences. In May 2002, The Guardian newspaper carried an article by US doctor Sally Satel which detailed some of the racial realities she and her colleagues took into account in their everyday working lives.3 Satel said she was not surprised by the racial clustering of genetic variations and she mentioned the knock-on effects of two of these. Because research had indicated 72

that black patients metabolised anti-depressants more slowly than other races, she starts them off with lower than usual doses of Prozac in order to avoid a potentially harmful build-up of the drug in their systems. She also said that African-Americans did not respond as well as other patients to the standard treatment for hepatitis C. Other American medics report further racial variations. Asians tend to have a greater sensitivity to narcotics than do other races, so there is a need for anaesthesiologists to start them off on lower doses of anaesthetics. This in order to avoid threats to their normal pattern of respiration. More generally, rates of metabolism in the liver vary between the races and doctors need to be aware of the implications of this. In 2001, trials began of a new drug BiDil, aimed at treating heart failure in black patients. In May 2005, the British Medical Journal reported on the results. When combined with normal heart failure therapy it reduced black patient mortality rates by 43%. The drug acted by lowering the blood pressure of black patients as it dilated their blood vessels.4 This race-specific treatment was needed because blacks, unlike their white counterparts, sometimes have unusually low levels of nitric oxide, a chemical produced by the body which in normal circumstances would help nature to do the job by itself. The story of BiDil and its race-based application created a sometimes heated debate in both the specialist and popular press but in the end the opponents of ‘racist medicine’ reluctantly gave way to the medical race-realists. The early drip feed of findings related to racial variation in matters medical is now becoming a steady flow. In January 2004 New Scientist magazine reported on genetic changes which had originally evolved in prehistoric times to help tribes that moved north out of Africa to survive colder northern conditions.5 It seems these same changes may now be acting to protect today’s northerners against Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases. Not all research produces such potentially useful findings however. The same magazine reported in February 2006 on an unusual study which had led Japanese scientists to discover the 73

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gene responsible for giving Africans and Europeans wet earwax, whilst most of their East Asian cousins could only produce dry! 6 Perhaps a more systematic programme of research on genetic variations related to medical matters would be in order, and the International HapMap Project initiated in 2002 does just that. According to their website , theirs is an international programme to identify and list “genetic similarities and differences in human beings”, with a view finding those genes which influence both health and disease. They also plan to study individual responses to different medications and varying environmental influences. The overall aim of the HapMap project is given as being “to compare the genetic sequences of different individuals”. But not just any individuals it would appear. The site reports that the HapMap’s genetic data is being gathered from several separate populations of African, East Asian, and USAbased North West European stock. But in a world where racial variation was really unimportant, all the samples could have come from just one population.

Race and the Common Man Experts normally get the details right, but Joe Public is often better at seeing the broader picture. Nowhere is this truer than on the subject of race. For late twentieth century identequalists it had always been an article of faith that ‘there is more genetic variation between the individuals of one race than there is between different races’. But this has proven to be the case for some human variables only. In many other instances several different genetically based racial characteristics tend to appear together, such as blue eyes, fair hair and a pale skin. These clusters of characteristics vary in parallel with each other, and hence produce a rather greater variation between the races than between individuals. Joe Public had always known this. A study conducted jointly in 2002 by the University of Southern California and Stanford University amply demonstrates this point. Developmental biologist Armand Leroi of Imperial College London referred to it when, in a high profile essay carried by The New York Times in March 2005, he called for recognition of the reality of race. 7 The study took a sample of people from 74

around the world and sorted them by computer into five subsets on the basis of genetic similarity. The five groups that emerged from this entirely automated process were native to Europe, East Asia, Africa, America, and Australasia. As Leroi pointed out, these were pretty much the main races identified in the annals of traditional anthropology. And we might add, of the ordinary layman’s perception too. In anticipation of further more detailed investigations to come, Leroi argued that soon it would be possible to analyse enough genes to divide the world’s population into many hundreds of groups “Ibo or Yoruba… Celt or Castilian”, each with their own unique geographical area of origin. As I write these words, that process is well underway, and yet again the results are simply confirming those racial categories to which common sense had always led us. A not dissimilar study by Professor Neil Risch of the University of California, San Francisco, was reported in the American Journal of Human Genetics in February 2005.8 Risch looked for patterns of genetic variation along 326 stretches of variable DNA taken from each of 3600 American volunteers. This analysis resulted in four clear groups emerging, these being White, African American, East Asian, and Hispanic. Next, in an elegantly simple addition to the experiment Risch asked each of the volunteers, before they were told their own results, to place themselves into one of these four biologically determined groups. He found that only five out of the 3,636 volunteers got it ‘wrong’. In other words the study merely served to confirm what the participants already knew about their own racial backgrounds. But how did each of these volunteers know their own race? Obviously their skin colour, parents perceptions, preferred companions, and wider social community all had something to do with it. But could there be rather more to it than that? Why is it that when I travel abroad I can often pick out the only other Englishman even in a European crowd? Perhaps, as with many other species, we humans recognise subtle variations in pheromones, or in other subconscious signals. We will leave this question open with a fascinating observation from Barbara Amiel writing in The Daily Telegraph in December 2003.9 Amiel commented that when she was growing up as an immigrant in 75

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Ontario, Canada, she found herself gravitating automatically towards friends who, like herself, were Jewish. This was so even though all but one of them were from non-practising families and to all intents and purposes appeared to be gentiles. “I wondered then, as I do now, what was it I sensed. What on earth makes Jews different – so slightly but nevertheless different – from gentiles?”

Race, Ancestry and DNA One area of research in which ordinary people have become increasingly interested in recent times is genealogy. Modern communications, the explosion in the ownership of home computers, and the vast increase in the online storage of historical records have all contributed to this phenomenon. Increasing feelings of deracination associated with globalisation may also have reinforced a growing desire on the part of many to rediscover their roots. One significant result of this has been a big upsurge in the work of companies offering individual DNA tests. These are not unlike the ones used in the Californian research above and they are useful in helping individuals establish their racial ancestry. Despite the current technical limitations of these services business is booming, particularly in America. In the three years to March 2006, some fifty thousand people had had their genetic ancestry tested, with one company reporting a 50% growth in sales every year.10 For the man in the street, establishing his racial ancestry is very much a growth area. The Melungeon people are something of a puzzle in terms of their origins. Described as being of European appearance but with dark skins, they are relatively small in number and have lived in the Appalachian mountains of the Eastern United States for a very long time, possibly since the sixteenth century. Speculation over their ancestry has abounded, with suggestions including Portuguese, Spanish, Viking, Moorish, African, Native American, Turkish, Jewish and Irish. Some Melungeons sport specific racial characteristics such as Asian pattern incisor teeth, blue eyes, an Asian epicanthic eyefold, and the ‘Anatolian bump’ at the base of the back of the skull. Their real origins were always unclear though because over the centuries many had 76

interbred with outsiders. In addition much of their history had been lost in the mists of time. All this confusion began to dissipate in the year 2000 when DNA samples were taken from 130 Melungeon volunteers. These revealed a mixed Eurasian, Native American and African racial ancestry. Although this was too broad to help much it did point to the direction for future research. Recently a second more refined DNA study has narrowed it down to European and subSaharan races, with one Melungeon family line hinting at specifically Iberian or Italian roots. This is an illustration of just how fast DNA ancestry investigation is progressing. Not all DNA analysis is of the same kind, and until recently two distinct lines of research have been followed. Either the Mitochondrial DNA, handed down solely through the female line had been investigated, or the exclusively male Ychromosome has became the object of study. A good illustrative example of the latter was mentioned by Nicholas Wade in The New York Times in May 2000.11 It concerned the origins of the Jewish Diaspora. The work was carried out in several countries by Michael F. Hammer of the University of Arizona and colleagues. It indicated the remarkable extent to which Jews had, at least in the male line, managed to retain their separate genetic identity down the centuries. Little outside blood was found to have been added since the original dispersal from their historic homeland in the sixth century BC. Wade added that the study indicated not only the YChromosome similarity of different Jewish populations around the world, but also their genetic similarity to the Palestinians, Syrians and the Lebanese. All are probably descended from a common ancestral population living in the Middle East around four thousand years ago. Further findings from this study suggested that the Jews who lived in Rome during Classical times were the ancestors of all Europe’s Ashkenazi Jews. The study calculated a rate of admixture with the surrounding European populations since ancient times of less than half a percent per generation. A mitochondrial DNA study of interest to people of European racial ancestry in particular, was carried out by 77

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Professor Bryan Sykes of Oxford University, and reported in The Times in April 2000.12 Sykes took DNA samples from some 6,000 European volunteers and found that in the majority of cases he could trace their ancestry back to one of just seven women who had lived in prehistoric times. It is important of course to remember that we are talking here only about the straight female line. That said, searching for their ancestral mother appears to be of great interest to many people. Oxford Ancestors the company which Sykes founded to offer his tests to the public appears to be thriving.13 With a keen eye to publicising his work Sykes gave names to his ‘Seven Daughters of Eve’, and by dint of further research has been able to tell us something about each of them.14 Ursula was the oldest, she lived some 45,000 years ago in northern Greece, “a slender and graceful contrast to the Neanderthals.” Xenia lived some 25,000 years ago in the Caucasus Mountains adjacent to the Black Sea, Valda in Spain about 17,000 years ago. Tara was born in Tuscany maybe 15,000 years BC, and as the climate warmed her descendants moved north across Europe. Helena has the most descendants in Europe today. She lived somewhere near the Pyrenees and she too moved north as things warmed up, reaching England about 12,000 years ago. Katrine was born 10,000 years ago somewhere near Venice and her line live today in the Alps. Finally Jasmine hailed from what is now Syria, her descendants probably taught Middle Eastern farming skills to the indigenous peoples as they travelled around Europe. During the 1960s and 1970s archaeology, in common with many other fields of study, felt increasing pressures to conform to a model where cultural phenomena were far more important than racial ones. Advocates of this so called ‘New Archaeology’ argued that any change of cultural form in the archaeological record, was more likely to represent the results of trade or other social contact, than of the physical replacement of one race by another. A recent study by Michael Weale and others at University College London brings this question into sharp focus.15 Their area of research was the Britain of fifteen hundred years ago. In particular they sought to discover how far the Ancient British race of what is now England had been replaced by 78

continental incomers following the collapse of the Roman Empire. Did Germanic invaders oust their Celtic forbears from central Britain, or were continental ideas and culture the only things which made it across the North Sea? The researchers concentrated on the ‘Frisian’ allele lying on the Y-chromosome, and they obtained DNA samples from several hundred men living in seven British towns. These lay on a line stretching from the East Coast of England to Anglesey in North Wales. Five of the sampling points were in East Anglia and the Midlands and two were in North Wales. For comparison purposes the researchers also took samples from Norwegian men and from men living in Friesland (northern Netherlands), one of the supposed homelands of the Anglo-Saxons. They then set about investigating the frequency of the Frisian allele in each of these sample populations. The results were fairly clear cut, and indicated that there had indeed been a large influx of male Germanic settlers into central England fifteen hundred years ago, with a marked replacement of population. The two Welsh samples however showed little evidence of these incomers, thus reinforcing the popular historical perception that the Welsh and the English are two separate races. In fact, the samples from the five English towns showed a greater similarity to those from Friesland than they did to either of the two samples from North Wales. One further finding was that the Norwegian sample proved to be dissimilar to both the English and Frisian ones. This strongly suggests that the later injection of Viking blood into the English population probably originated in Denmark, which lies close to Friesland, rather than further north in Scandinavia. Weale’s study provides powerful evidence that changes in postRoman Britain were in part due to northern European immigrants replacing the indigenous population, rather than just trade or cultural transmission between otherwise static populations.

Are Human Races still Evolving? In Chapter 4 we looked at the broad span of human evolution over hundreds of thousands of years. But now that we are considering more recent events it is time to ask whether 79

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evolution is still continuing in Homo sapiens. Those who would offer only sociological or cultural explanations for human diversity do not relish this question. For their own peace of mind they need to believe that human evolution probably came to an end with the development of farming. Many have gone even further and claimed that it ceased long before that - before man first set foot outside of Africa in fact. What does the latest research have to tell us on this important question? New Scientist reported in December 2005 that Robert Moyzis and his colleagues at the University of California had found some 1,800 genes, a full 7 percent of the total in the human genome, which had changed under the influence of natural selection or of genetic drift within about the last 50,000 years.16 Changes in other words which had happened since the first small bands of modern humans ventured north of the Sahara. Moyzis speculated further that human evolution did not even come to an end later when our ancestors first settled down and started farming. The development of culture and civilization may actually have placed all sorts of new evolutionary selective pressures on mankind. If true this would parallel the increased rate of evolution in the genomes of domesticated animals such as cattle, and in domesticated plants such as grain crops. Further work on recent human evolution was discussed in their 2009 book The 10,000 Year Explosion, by Cochran and Harpending17. The general theme of this book mirrors Moyzis’ speculation, but also presents considerable evidence to bolster the idea that, far from evolution in man having come to an abrupt halt with the birth of farming or earlier, it actually accelerated dramatically. They argue credibly that human evolution is now running at a rate about a hundred times faster than its average during the previous six million years of hominid evolution. Researchers have now begun to look for examples of recent changes in individual genes. In an article in The New York Times in September 2005, Nicholas Wade reported on the work of Dr Bruce Lahn and his team at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Chicago.18 Lahn had been studying two particular genes, Microcephalin and ASPM, which are known to be involved in determining brain size. He found that a new 80

Microcephalin allele which probably arose some 37,000 years ago, was today much more common outside of Africa than it was amongst sub-Saharan Africans. The other gene, ASPM, appeared to have thrown up a new allele perhaps as little as 6,000 years ago. Some fifty percent of today’s Europeans and Middle Easterners seemed to be carriers of this new allele, although it was found to be less common in East Asia and very uncommon amongst some sub-Saharan populations. Wade reports Lahn as saying the Microcephalin and ASPM genes are known to have been under selective pressure during primate evolution as brain size increased, and the chances are that the new alleles were a continuation of this process. In the New Scientist of 17th September 2005, anthropologist John Hawks of the University of Wisconsin in Madison commented that because some groups appear to carry this genetic advantage but others do not.19 “This has to be the worst nightmare of people who believe strongly that there are no differences in brain function between groups.”

The Rate of human evolution The extent to which different human races may have diverged from each other biologically is governed by the rate of evolution in our species. Two examples of recent research in this area are illuminating. The magazine USA Today reported in summer 2010 on evolution amongst Tibetans.20 These people live at high altitude in the Himalayas, and their bodies appear to have adapted to the low oxygen levels involved. They do not become exhausted in the same way as outsiders who ascend to the Tibetan plateau. A particularly interesting aspect of this research shows the Tibetan genome as having diverged from that of the Han Chinese less than 3,000 years or 150 generations ago. Despite this some 30 separate genes, nearly half of which are related to the body’s utilisation of oxygen, are now far more common amongst Tibetans than Chinese. A second and even more remarkable example of fast human evolution comes from South East Asia. The Fore people of Papua New Guinea used to suffer from kuru, a devastating CJD-like brain disease which they caught from eating the brains of recently dead relatives.21 The practice was banned in the 1950s 81

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when it was realised that this was how the diseased spread, and as a result kuru died out. But today’s Fore DNA still carries the evidence, and in particular researchers have discovered a genetic mutation which protects almost completely against the disease. This mutation probably arose in one individual just two hundred years ago. By looking at the DNA of several thousand current members of the tribe, the researchers have been able to show that the mutation has by now spread to some 8% of the population in the area hardest hit by kuru. And the mechanism by which resistance had spread? Quite simply, the individuals with this favourable mutation were the ones who had survived, so they in turn had been the ones to pass it on to the next generation. This second example shows human evolution in action over just a few decades rather than tens or hundreds of thousands of years. What price now the idea that human evolution stopped once the first man set foot out of Africa?

The Overall Picture So what is the overall picture since the beginning of farming some twelve thousand years ago? A New Scientist editorial in March 2006 addressed this question by looking at the work of Jonathan Pritchard and colleagues at the University of Chicago.22 Pritchard found that more than 700 human genes had been selected for within the past 10,000 years. These included genes for both body and, significantly, brain functioning. But not all peoples were found to be subject to the same selective pressures. In studying three different populations - East Asians, Europeans and Nigerian Yoruba - the researchers had discovered that only about 20 percent of these 700 still-evolving genes were common to the three groups. The other 80 percent were distributed more or less evenly between them. Put bluntly, the three races had all, within the last ten thousand years, been evolving along significantly different pathways from each other. Commenting on these and other findings in The New York Times in March 2006 population geneticist Dr Gregory Cochran of the University of Utah argued that the increasing evidence of evolutionary change during recent historical times means “we’re going to have to rewrite every history book ever written.” 23 This 82

because gene frequencies for various psychological traits will inevitably have varied from one time and place to another. Rome was not just physically different from today, it was mentally different as well. “The past is not just another country but an entirely different kind of people.”

Summary The picture is clear. Races clearly do exist and the acknowledgement of racial differences plays an increasingly important role in the practise of modern medicine. Within other academic disciplines however, the concept went through a dark age of denial during the latter part of the twentieth century. But for the man in the street it was something which had never really gone away. Today in some areas of learning at least, the study of race is re-emerging. Genealogy in particular seems to be one of these, aided and abetted by the enormous recent advances in our understanding of the structure and layout of human DNA. One offshoot of this is the rapid growth in companies offering DNA analysis as an aid in the search for our roots. Archaeology too is benefiting from this renaissance. Also in the last few years we have learnt that the races of mankind continued to evolve long after mankind’s early migration out of Africa. Identequalists may have wished it were otherwise but the evidence is that selective pressures, many newly generated since the advent of farming, may actually have increased evolutionary variation between the modern races of man.

Notes 1. See for instance pages 93, 258 - 259, and 284 of Bock, et al (eds): Transcript of the Symposium on the Nature of Intelligence, held at the Novartis Foundation, London, during 30th Nov - 2nd Dec 1999. John Wiley & Sons. 2. Tuula, H. et al. (2000). Lactose Intolerance. Journal of the American College of Nutrition, Vol 19, No. 2, 165S-175S. 3. Satel, Sally. A Question of Colour. The Guardian G2, 9th May 2002.

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RACE AND EQUALITY 4. Pharmacogenetics and ethnically targeted therapies. Editorial in the British Medical Journal, 7th May 2005. 5. Randerson, James. Ancestral ‘cold’ genes may protect against Alzheimer’s. P. 12 of New Scientist, Jan 17th 2004. 6. Probing the secrets of sticky earwax. Article in New Scientist, 4th Feb 2006. 7. Leroi, Armand Marie. A Family Tree in Every Gene. Article in the New York Times, March 14th 2005. 8. Risch, Neil. Article in the American Journal of Human Genetics, Vol 76, p 268. February 2005. 9. Amiel, Barbara. Racial differences don’t matter unless your roots are bigoted. The Daily Telegraph, 22nd December 2003. 10. Marshall, Jessicca. Genes, money and the American quest for identity. New Scientist, March 11th 2006. 11. Wade, Nicholas. Y Chromosome Bears Witness to Story of the Jewish Diaspora. The New York Times, 9th May 2000. 12. Ahuja, Anjana. So God created Woman. The Times, 19th April 2000. 13. Oxford Ancestors can be found at

14. Sykes, Bryan. (2001). The Seven Daughters of Eve: The Science That Reveals Our Genetic Ancestry. W.W. Norton. 15. Weale, Michael E., Weiss, Deborah A., Jager, Rolf F., Bradman, Neil and Thomas, Mark G. (2002). Chromosome Evidence for Anglo-Saxon Mass Migration. Molecular Biology and Evolution 19(7):1008-1021. 16. Holmes, Bob. Civilisation left its mark on our genes. New Scientist, December 24th/31st 2005. 17. Cochran, Gregory and Harpending, Henry. (2009). The 10,000 Year Explosion: How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution. Basic Books. 18. Wade, Nicholas. Researchers Say Human Brain is Still Evolving. The New York Times, September 8th, 2005. 19. Inman, Mason. Our Brains They Are A-Changing. New Scientist, September 17th 2005. 20. Weise, Elizabeth. Rapid evolution seen in Tibetans. USA Today. July 2010. 21. Recent evolution saved cannibals. Article in New Scientist, 28th Nov 2009 22. Editorial in the New Scientist, 11th March 2006. 23. Wade, Nicholas. Is an Evolving Genome Shaping Human Nature? The New York Times supplement in The Sunday Telegraph, March 22nd 2006.

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Chapter 6

Racial Realities: Difference and Diversity

I

n the last chapter we looked at racial variability as a general characteristic of humanity. In this one we look at a selection of reports on specific racial variations. These are drawn from a number of different sources, all in the public domain. They include variation at several different levels and involve the body, the mind and the DNA. Sometimes the writers of these reports have not used the word race itself, preferring instead some variant such as ethnic group or population. This may be because they genuinely do not acknowledge the concept of race. Often however it is because, perhaps understandably, they do not want to be seen to do so. Many good academics have seen their careers suffer or be cut short when the weight of their findings has driven them to talk publicly about racial differences. But to the best of our knowledge all of the reports referred to here are sound. As mentioned in Chapter 1 none of them should be taken to imply a general superiority of one race over another. Most importantly they all add to the sum of our knowledge about the human condition. In passing, this is a useful point at which to remind ourselves that we are using the term ‘race’ flexibly and at several different levels. Europeans constitute a separate race when contrasted with East Asians, but if we are considering Europeans 85

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alone then the Russians can be seen as a separate race from the English. Similarly in East Asia, where the Japanese and the Chinese may also be considered separately. This flexibility of usage is justified because our primary concern is to show that the identequalist model is wrong, so it does not matter at what level we establish variation. The studies that follow also illustrate how the urge to discount or ignore the evidence of race is still very strong. Indeed in some cases the evidence has simply been buried – literally. In the second part of the chapter we look at some examples of racial variation where the relative importance of nature and nurture has yet to be ascertained. Finally we take a brief look at the latest findings on racial differences in intelligence. ‘Route’ Memory In November 2000 Alasdair Palmer writing in The Sunday Telegraph reported on the case of Sherilee, an eight year old Australian aborigine girl who had scored 100% on a test of her visual memory.1 The author commented that the ability of Aborigines to remember exactly where different objects in their environment were located, was much better developed than that of other ethnic groups. In fact, under test conditions they generally did about 50% better than Australians of European extraction. This remarkable capability raised speculation as to how it had come about in the first place. It seems the answer may lie in the geography of Australia, a country with much featureless desert and scrub. Historically this had necessitated long journeys on the part of the indigenous people to find food and water. In such circumstances a good memory for what were often very minor details of the landscape would have been crucial to survival. The suggestion by evolutionary psychologists is that tens of thousands of years of evolution in this habitat had generated strong selective pressures for individuals who had good visual memories and, as an inevitable result, the genetic code of today’s Aborigines still bore these same successful genes. Elsewhere in the world other races’ memory skills must have been subject to natural selection for survival in some very different natural environments. The research is yet to be done. 86

The Vision Thing According to Zeeya Merali writing in the New Scientist in August 2005, Richard Nisbett of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, claims that Westerners and East Asians display contrasting world views.2 Following up on a wealth of anecdotal information to this effect Nisbett’s researchers tracked the eye movements of a racially mixed group of graduate students whilst they viewed a series of photographs. Each photo comprised both a prominent central figure and a visually interesting background. The tracking mechanism showed that students of European extraction spent more time looking at the most prominent central figure, whilst the Chinese student’s eyes roved around taking in more of the background. But this difference apparently goes further than just vision. Researchers observed European American and Japanese mothers with their children. When American children were playing with their toys, their mothers talked to their children about the objects themselves. Japanese Mums in contrast stressed context says Nisbett. An American mum’s “Look Billy, a truck. It’s shiny and has wheels”, contrasted with the Oriental mum’s “I push the truck to you and you push it to me”. A similar difference shows up in language development too, with Western children learning object words or nouns first, whereas Chinese and Korean children are more inclined to start with verbs relating things to each other. That several different studies should produce results pointing in a similar direction suggests this East Asian/European dichotomy is an important one. It also indicates the need for an investigation into the impact of such racial variation on differences in the workings of Western and East Asian societies. Language and the Brain Allied to this work is the research reported by Maryanne Wolf in her book Proust and The Squid.3 Wolf writes on the results of brain scans which show different areas lighting up according on whether the speaker is a user of an alphabetical language such as English, or a non-alphabetical one such as 87

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Chinese. The frontal areas of Chinese readers’ brains were shown to light up in a way which was entirely absent from the brains of readers of alphabetical languages. This raises the question of how the respective thinking processes of these two races may be affected, particularly as many linguists have argued in the past that a relationship must exist between the particular language we use, and how we view the world around us. WEIRD People ‘WEIRD’ stands for Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich and Democratic. It includes about 1 in 8 of the world’s population, and it suggests we (they) think differently. New Scientist ran the story in November 2010.4 The article claims that a “growing body of cross-cultural studies” is revealing big differences in the areas of perception, cognition, reasoning and morality. Westerners tend to use analytical thinking for instance, and are more inclined to use abstract concepts such as justice and individual rights. But other peoples elsewhere in the world tend to emphasise the individual’s obligations to their own particular group rather more. Similar findings have been reported with respect to the sense of fairness, with WEIRD peoples more likely to use fairer tactics in social interactions and to punish actions they consider selfish. The article suggests that these WEIRD ways of thinking, and the WEIRD institutions of society which they created “evolved to oil the wheels of social interactions in large–scale societies.” Although New Scientist avoids suggesting that Western peoples must therefore have evolved large-scale societies rather earlier than anyone else, it does admit that “Your prehistoric ancestors would not have shared your sense of fair play, and neither do most people alive today.” These findings should, in any rational arena, be enough to open up the whole subject of racial differences to major discussion. But identequalism is a powerful narcotic, and it is instructive to reflect on the novel choice of title for this subject. The acronym ‘WEIRD’ suggests that Westerners are odd or peculiar in some way, so easing the exposure of this racially embarrassing subject to the public gaze. It is interesting to speculate whether the same article, but under the acronym 88

WINSOME (Western, Industrialised, Numerate, Social, Organised, Moral and Educated) would ever have seen the light of day in any mainstream publication. Racial Temperament In Chapter 3 we saw how the innate temperaments of different races of the Asian Elephant had evolved in response to local environmental pressures. The temperaments of humans are also likely to vary from race to race. The Yanomamo are a warlike people living in the tropical rainforests of South America. Napoleon Chagnon who studied them found that men who had killed others in battle sired three times as many children as those who had not. But as we saw in Chapter 2, individual personality traits are in large part inherited. It follows that, as Nicholas Wade argued in The New York Times, such a wide variation in the chances of fatherhood is likely to have resulted in the Yanomamo evolving a fiercer disposition than would otherwise have been the case.5 This is a good example of the behavioural characteristics of one race being enhanced through selective breeding. But it is not just today’s isolated tribal societies such as the Yanomamo who may have been selected for particular temperamental traits. Matt Ridley in his book Genome discusses an interesting aspect of personality which he says has been known about by animal breeders for many years.6 Ridley reports that if you want to breed fox or rat strains that are less instinctively timid and therefore more tameable, you select the darker individuals to breed from. After several generations of repeated selections you would end up with a tamer and darker population. Taking his case further, Ridley reports on the work of Harvard psychologist Jerome Kagan who studied degrees of shyness or confidence in various children. Kagan had found that he could spot the more inhibited youngsters at just four months old. Then, by age fourteen, he could predict their degree of shyness or confidence in later adulthood. Both nature and nurture were involved so nothing unusual here. But Kagan also discovered that the personality trait of shyness correlated with certain of the subject’s physical features. In particular those 89

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adolescent Europeans who were inclined to shyness also tended to be tall and thin with a narrow face and blue eyes. These are mainly features of Northern Europeans; “Nordic types for the most part” adds Ridley. Kagan had advanced the theory that a shy phlegmatic personality and a pale appearance are evolutionary outcomes that, in the workings of the brain, are linked to the development of a higher metabolic rate. And why was a higher metabolic rate so useful that evolution had selected for it in Northern Europeans? Simply because it enabled them to cope so much better with the intense cold of the last Ice Age. Discussing the social implications of this finding Ridley is quick to add that it would clearly be wrong for any employer interested in taking on employees of a preferred temperament to select from among job applicants on the basis of eye colour. Even so he is a brave man for breaching the taboo on discussions of temperamental traits linked to differences of race. There is much more work to be done on the implications of these findings. What might they tell us about differences in how various societies around the world operate? How do nations of shyer individuals differ in the way they function, from countries inhabited by bolder souls? What other temperamental traits could have arisen amongst races evolving under very different climatic conditions, and how might these be reflected in their social, political and economic relationships and structures? A Mongolian Legacy Often some aspect of racial ancestry, lost apparently in the mists of time, can still have a marked effect on its bearers right up to the present day. In Chapter 3 we saw how laboratory bred deermice carried a ‘race memory’ of their preferred natural habitat, down through the generations. In early 2004 The Times reported on research emerging from Moscow, the capital of a country where, according to the article, people drink an average of 15 litres of pure alcohol per year.7 Russians are a European Slav nation in the main, but for some two hundred years they were ruled by the Mongol hordes who swept West in the 13th century under the leadership of Genghis Khan. Inevitably the 90

invaders interbred with the natives and in doing so they handed down to subsequent generations a distinctive genetic heritage. One element of this legacy was a particular variant of the gene responsible for the production of enzymes that deal with alcohol intake. Unfortunately the Mongol version of the gene was less effective than the indigenous Slav variant. Natural selection had created this difference over the millennia as European body chemistry evolved to cope with drinking habits centred on strong grape and grain based alcohols. The Mongolian constitution on the other hand evolved to cope with the rather milder alcoholic regime of fermented mare’s milk. Today something like 50% of Muscovites, unbeknown to themselves, carry this Mongol gene. Tests on mixed volunteer groups indicated that those who were carriers of the Mongol variant suffered far more when under the influence, than those who were not. They absorbed about 50% more alcohol into their bloodstream at peak levels, and they subsequently metabolised it much more slowly. Under the effects of alcohol those with the Mongol gene displayed much poorer reaction times and memory capabilities. Dr Vladimir Nuzhny of Moscow’s National Narcology Research Centre added that they were also more likely to feel aggressive or become depressed. This example highlights the general principle that when different races mix and interbreed, their genetic legacy does not simply average out at some happy medium. Many generations later behaviours may still be emerging, which had originally evolved in a very different environment long ago and very far away. Creativity An article in The New Scientist in October 2005 looked into the factors which made some world city-regions much more innovative and go-ahead than others.8 Amongst the leading innovators were San Francisco, Boston, Berlin, Tokyo and Paris. What was it that drew talented and creative individuals to these locations in the first place? A world class university was identified as a draw, as were clusters of creative industries, a diverse Labour market and cities that were open and tolerant. 91

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Accompanying the article was a diagram indicating the top fifteen countries on the Global Creativity Index, ranking them on the basis of R&D expenditure, numbers of patents issued and on each country’s degree of tolerance. In order of creativity those listed were Sweden, Japan, Finland, the USA, Switzerland, Denmark, Iceland, Netherlands, Norway, Germany, Canada, Australia, Belgium, Israel, and the UK. A marked feature of this list was that thirteen of these fifteen countries are populated mainly by people of Northern and Western Europeans origin. The article itself makes no mention of this, but its statistical significance becomes clear if we further note that there are approximately 190 sovereign countries worldwide, sixteen of which have populations of this North West European racial origin. (The three which did not make it into the top fifteen listed above were Austria, Ireland and New Zealand.) We may legitimately ask therefore what variable other than racial origin could have achieved such a high correlation with the results, yet warranted absolutely no discussion or debate? Trust

The level of trust between individuals varies greatly by country. The University of Michigan, Ann Arbour, as part of its World Values Survey, asked people in some seventy countries around the world whether they thought strangers could generally be trusted. Positive response rates varied enormously from about 65% in Norway to below 30% in much of Africa and South America, with a low of about 5% in Brazil. Nothing here which could not be explained by cultural or other environmental factors of course, and indeed the article in the New Scientist which reported the findings discusses many of these.9 But it also went into detail on the roles which such factors play in controlling the body’s levels of the so called ‘trust chemical’ oxytocin. But when the specifically American responses to this same question were broken down by internal US regions it was found that the areas with the highest trust levels were those with the most people of Scandinavian descent. And herein lies the interest, for it would seem that among this population at least, the tendency to trust had persisted over the generations, despite the 92

very different North American environments into which they had migrated in centuries past. Again though the obvious question was not asked: Does this American evidence not strongly suggest that the inclination to trust may involve a significant racial element? Aborigine Brains are Different Earlier in this chapter we looked at Australian research which appeared to show that Aborigines had better visual memories than Australians of European origin (Caucasians). But the article that featured this story also revealed something else. During the course of his researches, Clive Harper, a Sydney based professor of pathology had discovered that the part of the brain which processes and interprets visual information, the visual cortex, was about 25% larger in Aborigines than it was in Caucasians. In consequence aborigines also possessed many more nerve cells in this area. Here then was a strong indication of a link between a specific mental capacity and the physical structure of that part of the brain related to it. Different races exhibiting differences in the construction of their brains? What was the reaction of the media to this fascinating piece of research? Simply that Professor Harper could find no academic journal willing to publish his findings. The editors of the scientific publications feared such results could have been construed as ‘discriminatory’. Harper was also refused permission to outline his findings at a conference in the United States. There is a great irony in all of this. If Australian aborigines really do differ from Europeans in their cerebral configuration and in the mental processes that depend on it, then both races would be better off recognising and understanding those differences. Aboriginal teaching programmes should also cater for their psychological needs and not just for the needs of Europeans. The deliberate failure to acknowledge racial difference between these two peoples produces a one-size-fits-all education that contributes little to the progress of aboriginal children. 93

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Burying the Evidence In 1996 a set of human remains was found on the banks of the Columbia River in the North-Western USA. The bones turned out to be about 9,000 years old, and local tribes immediately went to law to secure their return for reburial. This was against the wishes of researchers who wanted to examine them. What made this case particularly interesting however was that the bones of ‘Kennewick Man’, as he came to be known, carried indications of a Caucasian rather than East Asian racial origin and, should this have proven to be the case, the claims of indigenous tribes to have been the first human inhabitants of the continent would have been seriously undermined. The legal debate over what to do with the bones, raged until 2005 when the courts finally agreed that they should be released to the scientists for detailed study to begin. But scientists in Australia were not so lucky. As New Scientist reported in May 2003, the remains of 22 aboriginals dug up from a swampy region of Northern Victoria, and dated to between 6,500 and 13,000 years ago met a very different fate.10 Certain characteristics of the bones were found to be similar to those of ancient Homo erectus individuals. This suggested that the peoples concerned may have carried some genetic input from earlier H. erectus peoples living in Java. Had this proven to be the case it would have greatly strengthened the arguments for the ‘multiregional’ theory of human origins, rather than the politically more acceptable ‘out of Africa’ hypothesis. No research took place however because the bones were quickly returned to the local aboriginal community for reburial. The same thing had happened earlier to bones from New South Wales which had displayed similarly H. erectus-like features. ____________________

Nature or Nurture or Nature and Nurture? Racial differences may be the result of nature or of nurture or of some combination of the two. Sometimes we know which, sometimes not. In the following section we look briefly at four examples where the answers are yet to be found. As we have seen, during the second half of the twentieth century the default assumption 94

had always been that some aspect of culture, of history or of education would be found to explain things. A little more balance would be in order. Of German Character In a chatty article in The Times of June 22nd 2003, columnist Matthew Parris conducted a strictly non-scientific survey into the achievements of American citizens whose families originated in Germany.11 His overall argument was that they had done particularly well for themselves in American society in terms of wealth, of power and of intellectual influence. A quick scan through the names of America’s top people in politics, business, the academic world and the military confirms Parris’s thesis. But it works both ways and America too has benefited tremendously from their input. Parris noted that their success story reflected both a German and a Jewish-German input into the American melting pot, and he commented on how the nature of modern America seemed to owe more to this energetic and workdriven component of its ancestry than it did to its English or British antecedents. Prior to this in 1990 an internal British government memo on German character had referred rather negatively to ‘angst, aggressiveness, assertiveness, bullying, egotism, inferiority complex, sentimentality, and self-pity’, but Parris says he would add “candour; a yearning for structure and direction; impatience with ambiguity; a weakness for approaching problems in a blindingly, sometimes self-defeatingly, methodical way; and overconfidence”. He saw too “an instinct to impose theory and system on a haphazard world”. Parris’s essay is refreshingly thought-provoking, emanating as it does from within a media world where speculation on group personality traits is usually strictly verboten. For rising to this challenge he is to be applauded, but what fascinating future research opportunities lie here. What are the relative importance of nature and nurture in these traits, and what might be the respective German and Jewish inputs into the overall mix ? 95

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Language and Personality In July 2005 The Sunday Telegraph’s science correspondent Robert Matthews reported on a study by the University of Texas which had looked into the relationship between language and personality.12 Using results from personality tests on more than 170,000 people, the psychologists had found that English speakers in the US tended to be more conscientious agreeable and outgoing than Mexicans, but also rather less neurotic. As we saw in Chapter 2, individual differences in personality traits involve a high degree of heritability, but this research produced the added finding that when people changed their language they also tended to change their personality. Here then is a clear example of findings which need further work to tease out the answers. How did Americans and Mexicans develop their different personality traits in the first place? Was it nature or nurture? To what extent does personality change when language changes, and does the propensity for change also vary according to the races concerned? Language and Music Also in July 2005 The Times reported on work by the Neurosciences Institute in San Diego California, which showed that traditional English, French, German and Italian composers all seemed to create music whose chords mimicked the speech patterns of their respective languages.13 In the English and French examples for instance the researchers compared pitch and rhythm in the two languages. They then studied the works of Elgar, Holst, Bax and Vaughan Williams on the one hand, and Debussy, Ravel and Faure on the other. They found marked structural similarities between language and popular tunes in both populations. The question here is whether the composers were, either consciously or unconsciously, incorporating the rhythms of their respective languages into their compositions. Alternatively, were both the linguistic and musical rhythms simply the common products of some underlying mental trait which, differed between the two nationalities? 96

Honesty and Corruption Each year the organisation Transparency International publishes a list of some 160 countries worldwide in rank order of their perceived degree of corruption, with the most honest at the top and the most corrupt at the bottom.14 The list is compiled with the help of businessmen, academics, and other analysts. The top fifteen in the 2006 list were Finland, Iceland, New Zealand, Denmark, Singapore, Sweden, Switzerland, Norway, Australia, Netherlands, Austria, Luxembourg, United Kingdom, Canada and Hong Kong. The bulk of the others followed, and bringing up the rear were Belarus, Cambodia, Cote d'Ivoire, Equatorial Guinea, Uzbekistan, Bangladesh, Chad, Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan, Guinea, Iraq, Myanmar and Haiti. All the countries at the top, with the exceptions of the City States of Singapore and Hong Kong, were racially very similar to each other. Those at the bottom comprised many different races. The question which again arises here is whether those similarities and differences were a result of history and culture, or of race. The research is yet to be done. ___________________

Race and IQ: The Longest Battle Finally in this chapter we come to the subject which, during the latter half of the twentieth century probably produced more academic sound and fury than almost any other: racial differences in intelligence as measured by IQ tests. Black-white differences in particular have lain at the heart of this controversy in both the United States and in Britain. Thirty years ago Professors Hans Eysenck and Arthur Jensen were brave enough to challenge the identequalist establishment on this matter. The ad hominem attacks they suffered went way beyond the normal tenets of vigorous academic debate. Three factors are relevant to this debate today. Firstly there is now at least some sort of agreement amongst professional psychologists working in the field that significant average blackwhite IQ differences really do exist. The extent of the genetic 97

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component of these differences is still disputed though. Secondly, and as we saw in Chapter 2, a general if somewhat grudging acceptance also exists that heritability plays a large part in determining the differences between the scores of individuals. Thirdly, as discussed in Chapters 3 and 4, there is a high probability that any genetic variation within a single historical population will lead eventually to different population averages between long separated daughter populations. Put these three elements together, and we have a recipe for racially varied IQ scores. The consistent finding from a large number of culture-fair IQ tests on US citizens is that on average American Blacks score about 15 points lower than American Whites; 85 as against 100. Further findings indicate that despite all the social and environmental factors which could account for this gap, a substantial component of genetic input remains. (For those who would like to pursue this subject further, a much fuller analysis of all the ins and outs can be found via Wikipedia and elsewhere on the web.15) But differences of IQ are not just confined to American Blacks and Whites. Today there is a quite extensive body of test results from around the globe involving most of the races of mankind. A slightly broader picture of mean IQ scores as reported in The Times of November 10th 2003 looks like this:- 16 East Asians (Chinese, Japanese, Koreans) Europeans, inc. in the US Canada and Australasia Latin Americans South Asians and North Africans Sub-Saharan Africans and Caribbeans

105 100 85 85 70

Within individual countries there is often further racial variation. At one end of a worldwide spread of IQ scores are America’s Ashkenazi Jews who average out at around 110 points, whilst at the other are South Africa’s Bushmen who score around 60. It seems inconceivable that these substantial differences in mean levels of intelligence would have had absolutely no effect upon the societies their owners inhabit. Indeed, the general theme of the Times’ article was that there is a significant worldwide 98

correlation between countries’ mean IQ levels and their inhabitant’s levels of wealth as measured by GDP per head. It is important to remember however that differences in one variable, in this case IQ, are just that and no more. No assumption of some general superiority of Ashkenazim over Chinese, or Europeans over South Asians or North Africans over Sub-Saharan Africans should be read into any of this. To do so would be just as absurd as to rank races generally on the basis of their average measured heights.

Summary Difference and diversity have been the themes of this chapter. From temperament to intelligence, and from the operation of the senses to the functioning of memory, the message is clear: human racial variation is probably the norm rather than the exception. What’s more there is increasing evidence that many of these racial differences are, in large part, a result of long term evolutionary processes rather than ephemeral cultural and sociological ones.

Notes 1. Palmer, Alasdair. He’s got a better memory than us. The Sunday Telegraph, 19th November 2000. 2. Merali, Zeeya. Are you seeing what I’m seeing? New Scientist, 27th August 2005. 3. Wolf, Maryanne. (2008). Proust and the Squid: The Story of Science and the Reading Brain. Icon Books Ltd. 4. Spinney, Laura. Who’s the Oddball? New Scientist, 13th November 2010. 5. Wade, Nicholas. Is an Evolving Genome Shaping Human Nature? The New York Times supplement in The Sunday Telegraph, March 22nd 2006. 6. Pages166-167 of Ridley, Matt. (1999). Genome: The autobiography of a species. Fourth Estate, London. 7. Page, Jeremy. Russians who get as drunk as a warlord. The Times, 19th January 2004. 8. Florida, Richard. Where It’s At. New Scientist, 29th October, 2005. 9. Grimes, Ken. To trust is human. New Scientist, 10th May, 2003. 10. Randerson, James., Ananthaswamy, Anil. and Young, Emma. Back to their roots. New Scientist, 31st May 2003. 11. Parris, Matthew. Mein Gott! America is the new Germany. The Times, 22nd June 2003.

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RACE AND EQUALITY 12. Matthews, Robert. A second language ‘changes personality’. The Sunday Telegraph, 3rd July 2005. 13. Smith, Lewis. Why Elgar not Debussy speaks to us as a nation. The Times, 7th July 2005. 14. 15. Wikipedia: Race and Intelligence

16. Owen, Glen. The wealth of nations is mapped by their IQ. The Times, 10th November 2003.

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Chapter 7

Race in Society

A

society is created by the thoughts and actions of its inhabitants. But these thoughts and actions are, in turn, the products of nature and nurture acting sometimes together and sometimes in conflict with each other. When we browse the newspaper or watch the TV news, we notice that different races of people around the world seem to have created many different kinds of society. One country may have formed for itself a strongly egalitarian social structure, another appears much more hierarchical. Some nations are aggressive towards their neighbours, others much more conciliatory. In one the people are demonstrative and flamboyant, but just across the border the natives are rather more inscrutable. Some appear open and honest, others more secretive and calculating. One society may boast an energetic, go-getting, even workaholic population, whilst another is more hedonistic and indulgent. Some nations are glitteringly rich, others unimaginably poor. Three Racial Processes. Neither racial evolution alone nor history and culture on their own can account for the great variety of societies which man has created. Both biological and social processes have been at work. In previous chapters we have looked at the evidence and found examples of racial variation. In this chapter we look at some of the social implications of this human evolutionary 101

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diversity. Three separate processes can be invoked to help us in this endeavour, these being the processes of Causality, of Change and of Community. The first of these, Causality, considers why we are the way we are. Change examines what happens when one race replaces another, and Community concerns itself with the way in which, as the old proverb has it, ‘birds of a feather flock together.

1. The Causality Process. The nature of a society is in part due to the nature of the people who inhabit it. Are we not stating the obvious? At the common-sense level yes, but such is the intellectual attraction of identequalism that this is a case which still needs to be made. Put simply racially distinct societies existing for any length of time in different natural and social environments are likely to have evolved different social structures and behaviours. In each case these will reflect the average dispositions of the inhabitants, broadened out by their range of temperaments, and spiced up (or down) by the actions of great individuals. My society, that of the English, is partly a reflection of England’s fifteen hundred years of island history, part a consequence of to its industrial revolution and history of overseas trade, and partly a result of its tradition of Parliamentary democracy. But, importantly, English society is also the way it is because of its Anglo-Saxon and Celtic genetic heritage; because of those allele frequencies bequeathed to today’s Englishmen and women by biological evolution acting on more than fifty generations of their forebears. The traditional image of an Englishman is of someone who is cool and formal - awkward even on first meeting, but after the passage of a little time ready to relax and be sociable. He has a strong sense of fair play and can be kind and helpful to others. In 1941 George Orwell wrote that "The gentleness of the English civilisation is perhaps its most marked characteristic".1 In its imperial manifestation it was this same aspect of Englishness to which the earlier writer George Santayana had referred in 1922 102

when he wrote “Never since the heroic days of Greece has the world had such a sweet, just, boyish master”.2 An Englishman is less flamboyant than many other races, but can be given to occasional outbursts of extreme ostentation as football supporter’s clubs and ‘last night promenaders’ will testify. He has a phlegmatic temperament, is slow to anger when provoked, but when he does get angry he can fight with courage and determination. He can be creative and individualistic as the long list of English inventors artists and scientists will testify. Our Englishman has a puritanical streak in him. He can be very conservative when threatened with change. He has a strong sense of duty to his fellows which manifests itself in the great number of voluntary organisations in England. Despite Clark’s hypothesis our Englishman can also be lazy and bumbling at times. He is given to understatement. He has a great selfreferential sense of humour which, given half a chance, verges on the anarchic. He can be snobbish and hypocritical and his country has not been called ‘perfidious Albion’ for nothing. He can also be extraordinarily polite and diplomatic. He has long had a love affair with the English countryside, an affair which is quickly reignited once he is released from his modern urban domicile. He is known for his kindness, some would say sloppy sentimentality, towards all manner of animals. Writing in The Times in August 2007, economics Professor Gregory Clark of the University of California addressed the hereditary link to national character directly.3 He reflected on the generations of preindustrial English upper class fecundity, which contrasted with a lower class failure to reproduce to replacement level before 1800. A sort of involuntary eugenics from about 1200 onwards, as the economically successful upperclass traits of hard work, deferred gratification, creativity and learning spread down through the population “by biological means”. This, he suggests, may have primed the English into kick starting the industrial revolution. As Clark puts it in his exhaustive and well-argued book A Farewell to Alms, on which the article was based, “The characteristics of the population were changing through Darwinian selection”. 103

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Now the caveats. There is of course far more to our Englishman than just these characteristics, and yes they are partly learned anyway. Yes his natural character may be overlain with layers of conditioning, and of course other races possess similar traits to varying degrees. But none of this negates the particular evolved balance of English genetic influences on his character. It would also be wrong to claim that every Englishman bears all of these traits. We are talking here about races rather than individuals so we again have to remember those bell curves from Chapter 2. We must be careful to claim no more than that on average the English can be formal or lazy or gentle or snobbish when compared to other races. Nor does any of this make him a better or a worse moral being, for no such judgements can be attached to the genetic code bequeathed to us by our ancestors. The salient point though is that the structure and behaviour of the English nation is to some extent bound to be a reflection of hereditary English characteristics. This will manifest itself in the institutions of English society; in the workings of its governmental agencies and private businesses; in its class structure and family life; in its religious and moral codes; in its approaches to the sciences and the Arts; in its buildings and transport systems and in the medical, social and welfare provisions the English make for their compatriots. Now we should look wider. English society is inevitably slightly different to Welsh society and to Scottish or Irish society, not least because each of these is beholden to a rather larger proportion of Celtic blood. But the genetic differences between these four British populations will be fairly minor compared to their joint differences from the Poles or Punjabis or Japanese or Yoruba. This is because it is much longer ago since each of these other peoples shared common ancestors with the present day peoples of Britain, so evolution has had plenty of time to lead them down different genetic pathways. As we saw in Chapter 4, these European, Asian and African peoples split away from each other at widely different times in prehistory, so their degrees of difference from the English will vary greatly. Put simply the genetic distance of the English from the others will be least in the 104

case of the Poles and most in the case of the Yoruba, with the Punjabis and Japanese somewhere inbetween. This in turn implies that traditional English society in its structure and behaviour will, all other things being equal, be most like that of the Poles and least like that of the Yoruba. What is true of the English must also be true of other nations. The nature of Chinese society is in large part a function of its Han Chinese genes, with all their own allele frequencies affecting temperament, intellect, behaviour and so on. Bangladeshi society was created by Bangladeshi minds, and these in turn were formed and moulded largely by Bengali genes. Kenyan society is a product of its Kikuyu, Luhya, Kalenjin and Luo genes; Uzbekistan of its predominantly Uzbek genes. In each case a distinct racial genetic inheritance acts in concert with differing histories, laws, social structures and national fortunes to create the nations concerned. So we might reasonably ask of anthropologists, just when will they see fit to start exploring inherited national traits, in an organised and systematic fashion? Although little such research has been done so far, there have been a few exceptions. One such concerns the work of Professors Richard Lynn and Tatu Vanhanen. In their 2006 book IQ and Global Inequality the authors collected together the results of many different nation-based IQ studies carried out by numerous researchers around the globe, and representing most of humanity.4 For each country they compared mean IQs with average levels of personal wealth and a wide range of other social indicators. These included the United Nations Human Development Index, economic growth rates, rates of gender inequality, rates of income inequality, numbers in poverty, infant mortality rates, and many other variables. The authors found significant positive correlations between average national IQ scores and relative positions on the lists, with the higher IQ countries producing the more ‘favourable’ social indicator scores. Although a country is not always the same thing as a race of course there is generally a high degree of correspondence between them. These findings therefore represent an important advance in our understanding of the effects on different societies of their varying racial compositions. 105

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2. The Process of Change As the racial composition of a society changes, so will the nature of the society change. This follows on naturally from the process of causality. Most countries around the globe are racially mixed to some degree. Although the extent of this mixing varies greatly, in most countries one race or another predominates. Racially, Japan is 99% Japanese, but Latvia is only 58% Latvian. Greece is 98% Greek, but Fiji only 51% Fijian. In some places different races inhabiting the same country remain largely separate from each other but elsewhere they are much more intermixed. Historically the countries of North America maintained a much greater internal separation of the races than did those of Latin America. When two or more races within one country live in separate communities, the societies they create may be very different from one another. This is the case for instance in South Africa (Blacks and Whites), the West Bank (Jews and Palestinians), and Australia (Europeans and Aborigines). Where historically the different races have mixed, a rather fuzzier racial cline develops. Examples include India and Brazil where racial boundaries are often far less clearly demarcated. Even in these countries however, it is still possible to observe racial differences in society. In India the ways of the Punjabi Sikhs for instance are very different from those of their Tamil countrymen. In racially mixed Brazil a cohort of relatively pure-bred descendants of Iberian incomers formed something of a separate upper class of hereditary landowners and professionals. Their social structures are a world away from those of the many communities of purebred Amerindians living elsewhere in the country. When people of one race move from their own country to take up residence in another, they tend to take their own customs and behaviours with them. When the British spread out over the globe during their age of Empire they created communities far from home which were mirror images of those they had left behind. From tropical India to the cold of continental Canada, and from the equitable grasslands of New Zealand to the heat of Southern Africa they built buildings and lived lives and created 106

societies that had far more in common with those of their homeland than with those of the indigenous peoples around them. So too the other colonial powers, and so too a host of other migrant races down the centuries. Today something akin to a reverse of this process is underway. South Asians in large numbers are moving into England, Algerians into France, and Latin Americans into the United States. In fact most countries with majority populations of West European racial stock are now subject to large scale immigration by many different races. This is not true of some other westernised countries such as Japan, Israel and South Korea. Immigrant races, when they move to new countries, tend quite naturally to cluster together with their own, just as the British did in India. Nowadays racial clustering usually happens despite attempts by host governments at race mixing and assimilation. Within their own areas immigrant races tend to create their own societies, usually reflecting those which they have left behind in their countries of origin. Again this is literally ‘quite natural’. Whatever one’s views on the matter, it is the case that parts of Los Angeles now have a distinctly Mexican flavour to them, many Northern English industrial towns present an increasingly South Asian aspect to the world, and some urban districts of France are today noticeably North African in character. The shape of these newly created societies is largely a reflection of the temperaments and dispositions of the incomers who now inhabit them. This large scale immigration should have come as no surprise to the host nations, because the countries of Europe and of European racial origin have, since the 1970s, been producing fewer young than would be required to maintain their numbers. Fertility rates amongst European derived populations today are markedly and almost universally below the replacement level of just over two children per woman. Worldwide, the number of people of European racial stock is falling and as a result other more fertile populations have simply stepped into the breach. Assuming no slowing in current rates of change, there will be no 107

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countries left of mainly European stock by the end of this century. Society in those countries will change accordingly. Just as immigration affects recipient countries, so emigration affects the societies left behind. A recent trend is for large numbers of educated people such as doctors and other professionals to move from the Third World into Western countries. In general such individuals are blessed with above average abilities and, apart from those who plan to return home, the consequent brain-gains for their new countries are at the expense of their countries of origin. Levels of ability being partly inherited, this process will, as time passes, tend to widen average differences between Western and Third World countries. Education and other good works in poor countries may ameliorate the effects of this widening but they will not stop it. Even within individual countries migrational change can have its effects. During the twentieth century in Great Britain there were recurrent references to ‘the drift to the South East’. Greater London and its environs were attracting young university educated people from many other parts of the country. But brains tend to marry brains and in turn pass their genes on to their young.5 Not only that, but brains are also better at earning money. The Britain of today is largely a reflection of these trends with a disproportionate amount of the country’s wealth now being concentrated in the South East. Perhaps the best example of these processes at work can be seen in the creation of today’s United States of America. Here is a country which during the twentieth century came to dominate the international scene. It was not the biggest country in the world nor was it the most populous. It was not even blessed with the most natural resources. What it did have however was a largely self-selected population. Twentieth century America was created by European immigrants and by their children and grandchildren. But unlike today when travel is easy, the journey a hundred years ago from some obscure European village to the great plains of the Midwest, or even just to the tenements of New York, was not for the faint hearted. Although it promised the possibility of building for a better future, for most it meant a long and difficult journey into the unknown with only the prospect of 108

hard physical labour at the end of it. Those Europeans and their families who rose to this challenge and boarded ship were often rather special. They were the ones most blessed with the genes that gave them their get-up-and-go. They were the natural risktakers, the constitutionally energetic and hard working ones, the ones who planned for the future. In fact, they were the ones who got up and went. America’s rise during the Twentieth century owed everything to them and, critically, to the genetic heritage which they passed on to their offspring down the generations. Europe for its part was the loser, its constituent races being stripped of a significant proportion of their constitutionally most hard working and go-getting citizens.

3. The Community Process People usually prefer to socialize with others like themselves. Some psychological pressures make races more internally cohesive but also more inclined to keep their distance from others. Prominent amongst these are altruistic impulses. Sociobiology teaches us that part of the instinctive pattern of human behaviour (and indeed of most other social animals’ behaviour), is to protect and care for members of our own family more than we care for members of others. This is because our blood relatives carry more of the same genes as us, so in protecting our nearest and dearest we are also promoting our own genetic lineages. Within the family itself we tend to care more for our brothers and sisters than we do for our cousins who are genetically slightly more distant. As parents we are inclined to help our own children more than those of our siblings and more again than those of our cousins. Go yet further afield however and the altruism wears a bit thin. How much effort do we devote to the needs of second or third cousins? Not much perhaps, but still rather more than we might to helping complete strangers. In recent times the mathematics of game theory has come to be applied to these matters. We do not need to delve into this specialist field here, but it is worth noting that the distinguished Oxford biologist Bill Hamilton was even able to develop a rule to quantify this tendency towards helping others who are like us. Hamilton’s simple but sturdy rule states that natural selection 109

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favours altruism when r x b > c, where c is the cost of the altruistic act to the altruist, b the benefit to the recipient, and r their degree of genetic relatedness. Altruism is related to trust, and there have been a number of scientific studies of ‘trusting’ behaviour in humans. In particular, researchers have sought to find out who we trust most and who we trust least. An article in The Financial Times in October 2006 commented on the recent findings of Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam that portrayed a “disturbing picture of contemporary American life”.6 It appears from his analysis that the greater the level of ethnic diversity in a community, “the lower the level of trust among the community’s citizens.” Where trust is low, so is altruism, and Putnam’s findings follow on from his earlier work revealing a dramatic decrease in general communal activities in late twentieth-century America. Tellingly, this was also a period which coincided with a rapid increase in the proportion of ethnic minorities in most American communities. In 2002 The Royal Society in London published a paper on the work of psychologist Lisa DeBruine of McMaster University in Ontario.7 DeBruine had presented her experimental human subjects with a bargaining game involving trust. Each player’s opponent was revealed only as an image on a computer screen. Subjects were not told that researchers behind the scenes were able to morph the images to make them appear more, or less, like the player’s own faces. The clear outcome of the experiment was that the more the computer image looked like its human player, the more that player was inclined to trust it. Morphing the image to look more like some famous celebrity did not produce the same effect. This indicated that familiarity alone was not enough, apparent relatedness was far more important. The paper speculated that if decision making was partly governed by this sort of matching, then trusting and sharing behaviours would also be more common between individuals who resembled each other. Members of our own race are the ones who resemble us most of course, and Harvard historian Niall Ferguson writing in The Guardian in July 2006 pointed to research by Andreas Olsson of New York University and others which suggests we 110

trust people whom we think of as being of our own race more than we trust those of other races.8 This research received further backing in 2011 when Nicholas Wade of the New York Times reported on recent findings concerning the effects of oxytocin on humans.9 It was already well known that presence of this naturally occurring hormone made people more inclined to trust those around them. What the more recent research showed however was that this internal regulator of our behaviour produced feelings of loyalty and trust directed specifically towards other members of our ingroup, rather than to outsiders. In simple terms, a biochemical basis for group loyalty would appear to be an inherent part of our makeup. Oxytocin is not the previously declared neurotransmitter of universal love, but rather a universal agent of ethnocentrism. The process of mate choice is rather special and rather important to all of us and when we indulge, a number of instinctive drives come into play. The almost universal human incest taboo is probably a biologically programmed response to the genetic defects which can result from sibling unions. Sensibly, nature favours a little genetic distance when it comes to finding a partner. But it apparently does not like too great a distance. Research undertaken by Martha McClintock and Carole Ober of the University of Chicago Medical Centre involved asking a number of female subjects to choose by smell, which they preferred from a collection of t-shirts worn by men of diverse genetic and ethnic origin.10 The clear finding was that “women prefer the odour of males to whom they are genetically similar, but not identical, over those that are either nearly identical or completely unfamiliar.” It seems therefore that in mate choice, there exists something which has come to be called the ‘optimum genetic distance’. Moreover this degree of genetic separation may not be all that great, with first cousins often being preferable to total strangers, provided that subsequent repetition down the generations does not lead to an overly inbred family. Such a pattern of mate choice would have been naturally selected for in prehistory as a way of maintaining the cohesiveness of the clan or 111

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tribe. A preference for one’s own race perhaps, but not for one’s closest kin. In the West today there are many freely entered mixedrace relationships. Most Westerners would accept free choice in such matters, but it is a curious observation that such relationships seem to be much more common in TV soaps than they are amongst the population at large. Be that as it may, and in the absence of any media pressure to the contrary, it would seem that the most biologically natural and likely choice for a Ruritanian girl would be a Ruritanian boy, though perhaps from the other side of town.

Race and Racism Finally in this chapter we come to the subject of racism. Conventional political wisdom has it that nothing more should be said on this subject other than a short sharp condemnation with a little moderate vitriol thrown in. Heads, sand, and burying come to mind: we need to investigate the concept a little further. According the 1999 edition of the Concise Oxford English Dictionary the word racism has two separate meanings. The first of these is ‘the belief that there are characteristics, abilities, or qualities specific to each race’; the second is that it refers to ‘discrimination against or antagonism towards other races’. Now it happens to be perfectly possible to hold to the first of these whilst opposing any application of the second. The OED has recently stated intention to change the definition.11 If they do it will be interesting to see what new word the OED comes up with to cover the first of these two meanings. Just as support for one’s own family does not require an attack to be made on the family living next door, so support for one’s own race does not demand a blitzkrieg on other races. The difference between family and race is one of degree. Each of us shares a lot of our genes with our own family, a moderate number with the rest of our race, and rather fewer again with other races. Consequently each of us is biologically inclined to do most to support our own families, somewhat less to aid other members of our race and, even if we find it morally discomforting, rather less again to help other races. It is important however to remember 112

that these are average behaviours rather than absolutes or invariants. If I as an Englishman were to delve several hundred years back into my ancestry I would find that I shared thousands of ancestors in common with many other English men and women alive today. For me to find many ancestors in common with people from China however I would probably have to go back forty thousand years or more, or in the case of Sub-Saharan Africans perhaps seventy thousand years. This does not make me hate Chinese or Africans, but it probably does mean that my genes will push me towards social interaction with my fellow Englishmen first, just as I am inclined to mix with my own family before others. Chinese and Africans too will be thoroughly familiar with this strong biological imperative. Most Western politicians though will quickly put any such thoughts out of their minds. This is because it is far far easier to pass laws saying everyone should treat everyone else the same, than it would ever be to deal with the political implications of unlegislateable biological drives. Western governments for instance are generally quite happy with large scale immigration, since it replaces declining native populations and provides a cheap source of labour. But what are the possible future implications of continuing mass immigration? For Britain three in particular come to mind. First we are likely to see a continued whittling away of the common mores and institutions of civil society. Despite a degree of intermixing at professional and managerial levels, this will happen as increasing numbers of different races, including the natives, retreat behind their own hastily erected social barriers. Secondly, as large numbers of people come to feel they have less and less in common with each other, we will witness a continued replacement of single universal public services with numerous and competing privatised ones. Thirdly we will all be subject to an increasingly authoritarian exercise of government, by whichever political Party is in power, as the modern managerial state seeks desperately to hold it all together. None of this implies the certainty of some general outbreak of inter-communal strife however, as a peaceful transformation is also perfectly possible. Baring any major U113

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turn on immigration policy though, these trends, or something like them will probably be repeated across most Western countries of European origin over the course of the next few decades. Charles Murray is one of America’s leading social commentators and a US government adviser on social affairs. Writing in Commentary magazine in September 2005 he reflected on these matters: “The European Union’s immigration policy has,

willy-nilly, decided that now you can move to Denmark and become Danish or move to France and become French. Is this true? Everyday experience suggests that Denmark’s culture works because it fits the characteristics of the Danes, that France’s culture works because it fits the characteristics of the French, and that these characteristics are importantly different and deeply rooted, whether in genes or in habits of the heart. Replace a large proportion of French with Danes - let alone peoples more distant - and French culture will be profoundly changed. But it is taboo among the elites to talk about such things (although ordinary people sense what is at stake), and so a momentous social experiment is under way without any reason to think that its assumptions are correct, many historical reasons for thinking they are wrong, and recurring stories on the evening news suggesting that the social fabrics of Europe will be shredded before the elites can make themselves come to grips with what they have been doing”.12

Murray may be unduly pessimistic of course, particularly with his reference to the ‘shredded social fabrics’. It is possible, just possible, that we might all be able to suppress our ethnic loyalties and that some fine utopia of harmony and plenty for all lies just beyond the next set of weighty government policy initiatives. Perhaps though, we should not hold our collective breaths for too long. Like most people I am strongly opposed to acts of aggression, whether racist or otherwise. Nor do I accept the recognition of difference as an excuse for the, anti-Somali, antiSemitic or anti-Wasp diatribe. The authorities too, regularly condemn racist outbursts. But many of their policies, particularly on immigration, actually make things worse. If governments really do want to create a harmonious future they could begin by exercising a little more legislative humility before the laws of nature. They should acknowledge the multiple biological 114

constraints upon their adopted ministerial omniscience, and try to work with the human psyche rather than waging an increasingly futile war against it. In the longer run this provides the only realistic way forward.

Notes 1. Orwell, George. (1941). England Your England. Essay in Orwell, George. (1953). England Your England and Other Essays. Secker & Warburg, London. 2. Santayana, George. (1922). Soliloquies in England and Later Soliloquies. C. Scribner's Sons, New York. 3. Clark, Gregory. England’s success may be in our genes. The Times (online), 18th August 2007. The article is based on his book A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World. (2007) Princeton University Press. 4. Lynn, R. and Vanhanen, T., (2006). IQ and Global Inequality. Washington Summit Publishers. Augusta, Georgia. 5. It would be wrong to imagine that very bright mothers and fathers always produce equally bright children. A statistical process known as regression towards the mean, results in the progeny of both very bright and very dim parents producing offspring who, in terms of their intellectual endowment, are normally a bit closer to the population average. However, the vast majority of these children will still be on the same side of average as their parents. 6. Lloyd, John. Research shows disturbing picture of modern life. The Financial Times (online), 8th October 2006. 7. DeBruine, Lisa M. Facial resemblance enhances trust. Online publication of The Royal Society, London, 11th June 2002. 8. Ferguson, Niall. We must understand why racist belief systems persist. The Guardian, 11th July 2006. 9. Wade, Nicholas. Depth of the Kindness Hormone Appears to Know Some Bounds. The New York Times. 10th January 2011. 10. Researchers discover first scientific evidence for inherited preferences. Press Release from the University of Chicago Medical Centre Office of Public Affairs. 20th Jan 2002. 11. Are Racism and Racialism the same? Article in the BBC online, 13th March 2007. 12. Murray, Charles. The Inequality Taboo. Excerpt from footnote 76 of an article in Commentary magazine. September 2005.

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Chapter 8

The Explanatory Power of Race

I

n this chapter we take a look at some of the ways in which acknowledgement of the role of race could contribute to a better understanding of social and political phenomena. As always though, it is important to remember that both racial and sociological factors are likely to be involved in the examples quoted.

The Politics of Left and Right Party politics in the developed world is conventionally divided into left and right, a legacy of seating arrangements in the 1789 French Estates General, where the aristocracy sat to the right of the king and the representatives of the lower orders to the left. In its simplest modern form this is normally illustrated by a single horizontal line. Communists and other hard-line Socialists are positioned at the left hand end of this line, whilst near the right hand end lie capitalists and dedicated conservatives of one sort or another. Near the middle sit the mainstream parties with Social Democrat or Labour parties just to the left of centre and Christian Democrat or Conservative Parties just to the right. In the United States the Democrats are usually seen as being a little to the left of centre, the Republicans a little to the right. 117

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Conventional wisdom has it that the ideology of the governing political party is what determines the overall direction of a society. Those at the bottom of the social hierarchy are inclined to vote for the political left because socialists promise to help them by reigning in the capitalists and reforming the social order to their advantage. Middle and upper class citizens on the other hand tend to support the parties of the right because these favour the status quo and support the wealth-producing capitalists that society relies on. But just how do capitalists and socialists behave in real life? If we take a look at four of them as individuals, rather than labelling them as ‘ists’, a much more varied picture emerges: * Joseph Rowntree and Robert Maxwell were both capitalists. Rowntree the nineteenth century philanthropic capitalist provided his employees with free education, a pension fund and considerable welfare and medical assistance. He also bought land on which to build houses for low-income families. Maxwell, the wealthy late twentieth century capitalist, took hundreds of millions of pounds from the pension funds of his employees, in order to finance his corporate debt and lavish lifestyle. * Clement Atlee was a socialist as was Joseph Stalin. As British Prime Minister from 1945 to 1951 Clem Atlee created Britain’s National Health Service and inaugurated the post-war welfare state, much of which survives up to the present day in one form or another. Joseph Stalin was an absolute and ruthless dictator. On his direct orders countless millions of Soviet and other citizens were killed through his bloody pursuit of ‘class traitors’, ‘bourgeois nationalists’ and ‘enemies of the people’. Each of these four men behaved as they did because of their individual temperaments, and these in turn were largely a product of their biology. Yes they were also creatures of their times and circumstances, and yes they had their own beliefs, but those beliefs usually served to justify their actions, not to drive them. Political ideologies are wholly human constructs, but personal temperaments precede them. We can understand this if we imagine each of these men in a radically different context. Imagine working in a large capitalist enterprise headed by Joseph Stalin. It would be a very different beast to one with Clem Atlee 118

at the helm. Similarly a Socialist state run by Robert Maxwell would have behaved very unlike one run by Joseph Rowntree. The general principle here is that whatever our chosen ideology, in practice we simply alter and adjust its rules and tenets to fit the demands of our own internal psychologies. In previous chapters we have seen that races, just like individuals, can vary in their temperaments and behaviours. It follows that capitalism, socialism, or indeed any other ‘ism’ in the hands of different races, is likely to present a range of different faces to the world – the causality process from Chapter 7. In the present context therefore it is interesting to note that even though both China and the USSR claimed to adhere to the same political ideology of Marxism-Leninism, Mao’s Chinese communism was a very different creation to that of the Slavic Soviet Union, and the Soviet Union’s authoritarian socialism was a world away from the gentle social democracy of successive Swedish governments. As with socialism, so too with capitalism. The nature of capitalist institutions or states will vary according to the natures of the people who own run or inhabit them. The social paternalism of Japan’s big companies makes them very different beasts to the rather more anonymous corporate giants of the United States. The left-right political spectrum obviously has value as an analytical tool in the hands of political scientists. But equally or even more important to an understanding of different social and political structures around the world, is some knowledge of the individuals and races who operate them. Why should we ever have thought otherwise?

The Welfare State – or lack of it During the twentieth century many Western countries developed Welfare State social structures. These were allied to progressive tax systems aimed at redirecting some of the wealth of the rich to the benefit of the poor. But the extent of Welfare State development varied greatly from one country to another. The Scandinavians were the people who took it furthest, whilst at the other extreme was the United States where centralised welfare provision hardly developed at all. In between came the other democracies of the Western world. 119

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As in the previous example conventional wisdom has it that this wide disparity in provision was simply down to the ideologies and policies of the governing political parties in each of the countries concerned. For most of the twentieth century the Scandinavian electorates had chosen moderate left of centre parties in election after election, and this made for the creation of some very advanced versions of the welfare state in Northern Europe. In the US by contrast no properly left-of-centre party ever made it into the mainstream so no fully developed welfare state was ever really on the cards. This explanation, relying as it does on political parties alone, is a rather superficial one. We need to dig deeper and ask why the Scandinavians consistently voted for welfare stateproducing governments? Why did other European countries do so but with rather less enthusiasm, and why did the United States fail to do so altogether? As we saw in Chapter 7, the community process predisposes individuals to be more altruistically inclined towards those who are most closely related to them genetically. Over the course of many centuries the Scandinavian peoples in their northern isolation have been relatively protected from the wars and consequent population surges that have flowed across much of the rest of Europe to their South and East. This in turn has meant that over the generations their mixing and mating has been very much an internal affair. As a result Scandinavians have developed an increasingly homogeneous gene pool. Any two Swedes taken at random are likely to share a much higher proportion of their genes in common than say any two Frenchmen or Italians. So each Scandinavian country constitutes rather more of a close genetic family than do any of its larger more racially diverse European neighbours to the south. Fully at the other extreme from Scandinavia sits the immigrant descended United States of America with its tremendous racial diversity. Genetic variation in the US is much greater than in any single European country and so the potential for society-wide altruism has always been that much lower. US voters reflect this in the political choices they make, and these have inevitably included a strong disinclination towards universal 120

social provision. Interestingly, and in marked contrast to this, some individual racial communities within the US have developed quite extensive internal networks of social support. It seems likely that for any given population the extent of community welfare provision, formal or informal, is in large part a function of its degree of racial homogeneity. If this is so then it has profound implications for the success or otherwise of many political and social policies, not least in the increasingly multiracial countries of the Western world. As Christopher Caldwell put it in The Sunday Times in April 2009, “welfare states require consensus, and society may now be too multicultural to provide it.” 1

The End of Empire In the early 1990s the world witnessed the break-up of the Soviet Union. Until that time the USSR and its satellite states in Eastern Europe had been Marxist-Leninist autocracies. Their widely propagated ideology included the belief that there were no such things as racial differences. Once authoritarian Soviet central control was removed the empire flew apart, and out of the chaos a score or more new countries were born. Today many commentators would argue that the Soviet Union had always been too big and unwieldy. It covered one sixth of the earth’s surface and stretched over eleven time zones. This great size was a legacy of Tsarist Imperial expansion followed shortly thereafter by Lenin’s quest for world revolution. Political economic and social control from one centre and over such a vast territory was, we are now informed, bound to fail in the end. And as Moscow’s power waned in the late 80s and early 90s, so its dominions separated out into many more manageable units. But this is only part of the story. Examine the relative sizes of the newly created states and where their borders lie, and an interesting pattern begins to emerge. When the break-up actually happened, not a single thought was given to creating new states of some optimum administrative size and shape. Far from it. The new frontiers followed closely the old dividing lines between its many constituent races, lines which had been carved 121

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out by wandering tribes long before the workers paradise ever came into existence. Russia itself stayed firmly united, even though it spanned a continent and was still the largest country on earth. At the other extreme the tiny enclave of Estonia achieved its longed for national independence. The one was home to a hundred times as many people as the other and covered three hundred times the land area. And why such an unequal partitioning of the Union? Simply because Russia was populated mainly by Russians whilst Estonia consisted largely of Estonians. In the end, seventy years of identequalist propaganda counted for nothing and more than a dozen new race-based states were born out of the body of the old proletarian monolith. Outside of the Soviet Union proper, but still within its Eastern European empire this same process of national re-births continued apace. But there was one exception to the sudden profusion of new/old countries. The inhabitants of the Soviet Union’s erstwhile satellite state, the Democratic Republic of Germany, were racially very similar to their Western neighbours in the Federal Republic of Germany. The two countries had been governed separately since shortly after the Second World War, and under intense geopolitical pressures had constructed two very different social and political entities. Both were perfectly viable states in their own right, but here as elsewhere in the Soviet bloc, ethnic loyalties were ultimately the deciding factor. This led not as elsewhere to fission, but to fusion with the two countries coming together as one. What’s more this process was driven neither by negotiation nor by treaty, but simply by the actions of ordinary people. As soon as the border guards took a step back in the autumn of 1989, Germans from both sides of the frontier began pulling down the walls that separated them. The politicians could but stand and watch. Only some time later were the administrators and lawyers able to formalize what popular sentiment had already achieved. Whether dividing or merging the underlying theme is the same: people ultimately prefer to live with and be governed by others of their own kind. Ninety years on from the Russian revolution the EU’s mandarin cheerleaders in Brussels may like to pause and reflect. 122

The USA: A Future without Races? The United States is a country unique in its degree of racial diversity. But it is also a country where distinctive racial characteristics are beginning to disappear as the young are stirred around in the great melting pot of social and geographical mobility. A model for others perhaps; a meritocracy in which the law treats all as equals and people of all races may aspire to achieve. We are told that those racial differences which do still exist are a legacy of the past. Given the right legislation and a little more time, they too will disappear. The future face of the USA is of a country lacking any distinctive racial characteristics. Unsurprisingly perhaps it is not quite that simple. Even within a racially diverse society like the United States most though not all people prefer to be with their own. Despite the official encouragement of racial mixing in most US public institutions, the great majority of Americans still choose friends and partners who are racially similar to themselves. But what about those couples who are inclined to mix the racial genes? Well just because different racial traits are blended together they do not simply disappear. Remember those East Asian alcohol handling genes we saw in Chapter 6, still resurfacing in Moscow many centuries after the Mongols had departed? Whatever happens to the diverse peoples of the USA, distinctive racial characteristics will still be on display down the generations for as long as Americans pass on their genes to their children. Today’s citizens of the USA are a little over 65% European in origin including just under 3% Ashkenazi Jewish. Beyond this they are about 14% Hispanic and 13% black with the rest coming from Asian, Native American and several smaller racial groups. A nation’s behaviour is a product of its people. In Chapter 6 we saw modern US behaviour described as largely a reflection of the German and Jewish-German elements in its ancestry, with the British legacy following on some way behind. And why his emphasis on the German input? Simply because nearly a quarter of the US population can boast significant German blood in its veins. No other race comes near, including the English. It should come as no surprise therefore that those 123

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characteristics ascribed to them in Chapter 6 are also the ones which American governments so readily display in their actions at home and abroad.

Racism in Employment? The media frequently report on cases of apparent institutionalised racism in job selection processes, but a proper statistical analysis of these will often tell us something else entirely, as the following two examples illustrate: 1) In 1994 the Chicago police force had vacancies for 114 new sergeants so they set a ‘culture-neutral’ exam to pick the officers to be promoted. Of those who took the test, 2,635 were white, 1,494 African-American, and 506 Hispanic. If the exam had produced results leading to promotions in proportion to these numbers, 64.9 whites would have made it to sergeant, as would 36.6 blacks, and 12.4 Hispanics. In the event 109 whites, 3 blacks and 2 Hispanics were successful. Immediately the cry went up of discrimination and bias against the black and Hispanic candidates, and the inevitable law-suit followed. But this is not the end of the story because, some extensive US military statistics are now available showing average IQ differences between these population. As a result it has become possible, using the means and standard deviations of their differing IQ scores, to work out the theoretical number of passes each group should have expected to gain.2 This indicates that 109.6 whites should have been successful, along with 2.4 blacks, and 1.9 Hispanics. As can be seen these figures are remarkably close to the ones which the exam actually produced. No institutionalised racism here then, just the predictable results of normal inter-group variation.

Chicago Police Force: Recruitment of Sergeants for 114 posts White Black Hispanic Numbers applying 2635 1494 506 Theoretical success rates based 64.9 36.6 12.4 on identical racial IQs. Numbers actually successful 109 3 2 Predicted success rates based on 109.6 2.4 1.9 known IQ variations by race 124

2) Harvard University recruits its undergraduates with no particular preference being given to people of either European or Jewish extraction, just as one would expect. It comes as something of a surprise therefore to discover that between 25% and 33% of the student body is Jewish, despite Jews constituting fewer than 3% of the US population as a whole. Is this not a clear case of pro-Jewish discrimination, as some have argued? Not at all. Since the average IQ of American Jews is markedly higher than that of the rest of the US population we should expect them to do better at getting into the nation’s top universities. Calculations similar to those in the Chicago example indicate that a truly fair Harvard recruitment policy would produce a Jewish undergraduate component of 27.9% - which is pretty much what it does. So equal group treatment does not have to result in equal group outcomes, and it is clear from these two examples that a proper analysis of the data is perfectly capable of providing answers where identequalism serves only to confuse and frustrate.

The Elite Effect In many countries the bulk of the population are of one ethnic group whilst an economic elite, as defined by personal wealth, business success and the like, are of another. Amy Chua in her book ‘World on Fire’ identifies many such examples including those of the Chinese in Malaysia, Whites in Latin America, Jews in Russia, Europeans in South Africa, Indians in Kenya, Lebanese in Sierra Leone, Ashkenazim in Israel and Slovenes in the largely Serbian Yugoslavia (as was).3 In each of these cases the particular minority elite involved is better off on average than the rest of the population. Chua’s historical and social analysis of each case is thorough and well developed and makes for a fascinating read. One element of her explanations warrants a closer examination however. Although she includes a number of references to ethnicity and ethnic phenomenon, her use of these terms includes not only racial but also linguistic, religious and cultural elements. In addition she also allows for peoples’ self designations of ethnicity. In other words she does not use ‘ethnicity’ here to mean race alone. 125

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What then would an introduction of race proper add to the discussion? Well as we have seen in Chapter 2, achievement in adult life correlates very well with intelligence as measured by IQ tests. In the modern world, nothing indicates adult achievement better than economic success, so it is worth examining Chua’s examples of economically dominant minorities in the light of the data on average national and racial IQ scores collected by Richard Lynn.4 When we apply this methodology to the Chua examples listed above we find the following pairs of results for IQ: Country

Majority Popn. IQ Econ. Elite

IQ

Malaysia Latin America Russia South Africa Kenya/ Tanzania Sierra Leone Israel Serbia

Malaysians Mixed race Russians Blacks Blacks Blacks Israelis Serbs

99 95 >100 94 91 82 103 96

87 86 96 68 74 64 95 89

Chinese Europeans Jews Europeans Indians Lebanese Ashkenazim Slovenes

As can be seen there is a clear pattern here. In each case the wealthier racial minority displays a higher average IQ score than the racial majority population. This suggests intelligence has been an important factor in the success of these minority groups. But a little caution is necessary because intelligence is not the only determinant of success, and personality factors, including of course hereditary ones, will also be implicated. It is important to remember also that in the world of statistics correlation is not the same thing as causation. The circumstantial evidence though strongly suggests that a mean racial difference in IQ has, in each case, led to a racial difference in economic success. It would be interesting to see this research extended to other countries.

The Administrative Jet-Set We live in a modern highly interconnected fast moving global environment where politicians and businessmen, the movers and shakers, are constantly crossing and re-crossing 126

international frontiers. All of this, we are informed, is leading to the creation of a sort of post-ethnic internationalist elite of leaders and professionals. These people have far more in common with each other than they do with the ways of their home countries, let alone with the races of their ancestors. Again, it’s not quite that simple. As a proportion of the planet’s nearly seven billion people, we are probably talking here about less than 1%, or sixty million souls. To put this figure into context it is also rather less than the annual increase in the world’s population. What is more there is nothing new in this internationalist class of rulers and administrators. Some two thousand years ago the Roman Empire with its legions and traders and Imperially appointed provincial governors was subject to exactly the same sort of cross-frontier intermingling at the top. In one form or another such internationalised strata have always been with us. Much more recently for example we can point to the strong multi-stranded links of kith and kin between the royal families and nobility of nineteenth century Europe. In the majority of cases none of this has had more than a passing effect on the continuance or emergence of separate races with their distinctive behaviours and temperaments.

Rejecting the Liberator In recent decades the USA, Britain and other Western countries have become involved in carrying the benefits of pluralism, representative democracy and an open society to other countries around the globe. This overall endeavour has involved both diplomatic and military measures but it seems to have met with rather mixed results. Commentators cite many different reasons for the rejection of liberty. In South Vietnam the US was thwarted by troops from North Vietnam coming to the aid of the local communist guerrillas. In present-day Afghanistan the opposition to a stable democracy comes largely from Muslim fundamentalists schooled in the Madrasahs of Pakistan’s North West frontier. In Iraq the remnants of Saddam Hussein’s secular Baath Party act in parallel with the Shiite militias to thwart Western ideas of freedom. Elsewhere, and more generally 127

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perhaps, these rejections of philanthropic intentions are explained as a popular political response to American imperialism. But two distinctly separate racial explanations are also possible here, and elements of both may be present in the various cases. Firstly, the liberating Western, or more specifically American troops may be just too racially different from the natives to make them acceptable. This follows from the community process mentioned in the last chapter whereby support for one’s own people usually comes first. For the South Vietnamese of a generation ago, the Vietcong and their North Vietnamese allies seemed far more ‘like us’ than those strange, large noisy Americans from across the Pacific. Measured against this deep-seated instinct of racial solidarity, the remote ideological game of Communism versus Capitalism probably counted for very little. It is interesting to speculate how the war in Indo-China might have gone if there had been no Americans or other Western troops involved, but if the North Vietnamese government had persuaded Russian ground troops to join in the fighting on their side. Would those alien Russians then have become the common enemy, just as they did a decade or so later in Afghanistan? There are echoes of this racial identification in present day Iraq. Initially the American troops who overthrew Saddam Hussein were welcomed as liberators, but it did not take long before they came to be seen by many Iraqis as an army of occupation. What’s more the all-embracing body protection and futuristic equipment worn by American troops did little to moderate their image of otherness, and for many Iraqis the war simply became one of ‘us against them’. Sunni may sometimes dislike Shia and vice versa, but large numbers of both reject the outsider with his strange and alien ways. At one level Western governments involved in nonWestern countries do recognise this atavistic urge to be governed by one’s own, and they are often keen to see the locals taking over from them. This is also true of some multinational companies and NGOs. But when it comes to military intervention, a follow-up strategy of indigenous placemen only 128

works if the locals who take on the task are accepted by their countrymen as genuinely independent of the foreigners. If not, then should Western forces withdraw, the puppet government’s future will be bleak indeed. Western governments have, in recent times, tried hard to persuade African troops to get involved in any peacekeeping activities on African soil. Similarly in the first Gulf War, the West was keen to include some token Arab units amongst the forces opposing Saddam’s Iraq. If race really was as irrelevant a factor as establishment wisdom maintains, there would have been no need whatsoever to pursue these nativising policies. A second racial factor may also be involved when the liberator is rejected. It is possible that conventional Western liberal multiparty democracy works better for some peoples than for others. Across the globe the fortunes of this form of government have varied greatly. It is the almost universal form of governance in countries of European racial origin, but elsewhere the picture is rather more mixed. It works in India. Amongst East Asians it is a hit with the Japanese and South Koreans, but not with the Chinese or North Koreans. For sub-Saharan Africans it has been very much the exception, and here power has tended to rest with dictators or with the most numerous or most powerful tribe in the country. In recent times a great deal of Western effort has gone into promoting multiparty democracy in the countries of the Middle East but the results have been more than disappointing to their sponsors. In Iran in July 2005 the conservative candidate for President was beaten by the more militantly nationalistic Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. In the Iraqi general election of December 2005 the electorate voted almost exclusively along religious and ethnic lines, presaging the sectarian strife which was to follow. In Gaza in the General Election of January 2006 the more militantly pro-Palestine Hamas movement beat the more moderate Fatah Party. In fact none of these Middle Eastern countries has yet seen the development of a conventional Western system involving mainstream parties set just to the left and right of centre. Usually the main party divisions have been along 129

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ethnic or religious lines, and it does not seem likely that the revolutions of 2011 will result in anything very different. Historically, European political parties have tended to form around universalist or abstract political and economic ideologies. These have included parties based on liberalism, socialism, conservatism, fascism and communism (though not Nazism which was race-specific). Universalist parties have, at least in theory, been open to support from any citizens of the state. This universalist tendency probably owes its origin to aspects of the WEIRD Western temperament referred to in chapter 6. In contrast to this European experience, the development of political ‘isms’ elsewhere in the world has been markedly less common. And when introduced from outside, their deployment has generally been much less successful. Amongst African and Middle Eastern peoples for example the tribal pull is stronger, and political parties in these areas are rather more inclined to promote the fortunes of one population or another. In East Asia the jury is still out, but it seems likely that before too long either the Japan/South Korea model or the China/North Korea model will triumph. Which one wins will probably depend on which is better suited to the East Asian temperament.

Race as Religion? We end this chapter with a speculation on things spiritual. To what extent if any do differences in religious beliefs and practices reflect the racial backgrounds of adherents? Roger Scruton in his book England: An Elegy; writes about English Christianity.5 He sees a people who were inclined to shy away from too much enthusiasm or overly complex doctrine in their acts of worship. Instead they preferred a calmer more routine communion with God. They embraced compromise, tolerance, and sometimes doubt, and their church catered for a wide variety of souls in search of solace. English Protestantism was uneasy with decrees and doctrines from abroad, preferring instead the reasoning powers of the human conscience, over “mystery, magic, and ritual”. This very English form of worship 130

made easier the eventual birth of the Enlightenment with its freethinking and exploratory ethic. Scruton himself eschews any racial description of Englishness. But he is right to do so only to the extent that we do not yet know whether these English religious ways are a reflection of English racial character. The suspicion must be that in large part they probably are. Within the UK as a whole the Anglo-Saxon adherents of the Church of England follow a slightly different act of worship to their non-conformist Celtic cousins in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. And the charismatic Christianity of the more recent Black immigrants to Britain is a very different creature again from either of these. But what of Europe as a whole? In Chapter 4 we saw how the peoples of Europe were traditionally divided into three main racial groups, the Germanics, the Latins and the Slavs. Christianity in Europe is also divided into three main Churches, the Protestant, the Roman Catholic and the Orthodox. The geographical boundaries between the three racial groups coincide largely with the boundaries between these three Churches. Protestantism emphasises the individual conscience and the private act of worship. It is pursued by the Germanics. Roman Catholicism emphasises the collective, and the authority of the Church and is favoured by Latin peoples. Orthodoxy is very formal and very conservative when viewed from outside and is the Christianity of choice of the Slavs. For each of these three, conventional scholarship would look to history and culture or to details of liturgical dispute, in order to explain the differences between them. More radical seekers after truth might look in addition to varying racial characteristics. Globally too particular religions usually coincide with particular races. Christianity is the religion of choice for people of European extraction around the world. Hinduism is the main religion of the Indo-Aryan and Dravidian peoples of India. Judaism is the religion of the Jews. Islam is favoured by Arab and Turkic peoples and, where it is allowed, Buddhism with its specifically Japanese variant of Shintoism, is the religion of the Eastern races. For each of these great world religions it is highly 131

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likely that racial temperament is implicated both in the beliefs and in the practices of its adherents. Soon perhaps it will become acceptable to test this hypothesis.

Notes 1. Caldwell, Christopher. Immigration and welfare: a bad mix. The Sunday Times, 26th April 2009. 2. The Chicago and Harvard analyses referred to, together with many similar examples, and the statistical calculations on which they are based, can be viewed at Some knowledge of statistics would be of advantage. 3. Chua, Amy. (2003). World on Fire. William Heinmann, London. 4. Lynn, Richard. (2006). Race Differences in Intelligence: An Evolutionary Analysis. Washington Summit Publishers. Augusta, Georgia. 5. Chapter 5 of Scruton, Roger. (2000). England: An Elegy. Chatto & Windus, London.

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Conclusion

Race in the Twenty-First Century

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E end this short investigation into race with a return to where we started, the concept of equality. Our biology may affect our thoughts and actions but within the constraints it imposes upon us we are all free, should we so choose, to treat members of other families and other races as we treat our own. Identequalists as we have seen are not content with this ethical precept alone. They feel the need to reinforce the egalitarian argument with a claim that there already exists some sort of equality, either in fact or in potential, between all the world’s races.

The UN Declaration on Race1 The 1978 UN Declaration on Race provides us with a good example of identequalist thinking: “The differences between the achievements of the different peoples are entirely attributable to geographical, historical, political, economic, social and cultural factors.” Here we see the unspoken assumption of a biological uniformity across all races in their ability to achieve. This the authors manage through the exclusion of any reference to innate racial differences, followed by the judicious use of the word ‘entirely’ 133

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before their list of non-biological influences on achievement. In choosing this form of words they betray their discomfort at the unlikely nature of the premise underlying it. For if they really did believe there were no innate differences in the ability to achieve, they would have found it so much simpler and easier to have written: “None of the differences between the achievements of different peoples are attributable to innate biological factors.” That the authors chose not to phrase it this way speaks volumes.

Denying Darwinian Selection Identequalists like those who drafted the UN declaration are vulnerable not only for assuming biological uniformity, but also at a deeper level. The basic premise underlying their beliefs usually remains unstated for to voice it is immediately to render it untenable. This premise is that thousands of generations of human racial evolution, in an unimaginably wide variety of environments, has involved absolutely no Darwinian selection for differing mental traits between peoples. The superficial attractiveness of this unspoken premise has encouraged it to spread far beyond identequalist ranks. Though hardly ever given voice, it is nonetheless the conventional default in any intelligent discussion of matters pertaining to race. ‘We are all the same under the skin’ is its clichéd but permissible abbreviation. This simplistic formulation serves as a reassuring fallback to which all right-thinking people feel obliged to return at the slightest hint of anything to the contrary. General and Special Creationism In the Introduction we likened this denial of human racial evolution to the more general rejection of evolution propounded by Biblical creationists. We can now take this analogy a little further. If we refer to the conventional Old Testament-based denial of evolution as General Creationism, then the latetwentieth century denial of human racial evolution becomes Special Creationism, applying as it does to humans alone. Both 134

General Creationism and its subset Special Creationism attract followers for similar reasons. Both represent a rejection of the uncertainties of science in favour of the certainty of belief. Both seek to replace undirected biological processes with organised intelligent design, in the one case at the hand of God, in the other by man’s constitutional declarations - ‘all men are born equal’ etc. Both General and Special Creationism provide strong emotional support to their adherents. Both put man in control of the otherwise uncontrollable, with the senior clergy interpreting God’s creation and the High Court interpreting man’s. Both creationisms are associated with a time contraction effect. General Creationism shrinks four billion years of biological evolution to the six thousand years interpreted from Genesis. Special Creationism reduces seventy thousand years of diverse human evolution to the three decades since the UN’s unscientific Declaration on Race. General Creationism provides succour to many on the political right, Special Creationism to those on the left.

Science versus Creationism Like all good theories, Special Creationism should be capable of making predictions which can be tested in the real world and, by default, it does. It predicts for instance, as we have seen, that freed from interference, all the races in a liberal democracy will come to be represented in that society’s institutions and hierarchies in rough proportion to their numbers in the community. Should this prove not to be the case then in the identequalist’s eyes ‘prejudice’ or ‘bigotry’ or ‘institutional racism’ must be holding some back. However, he has a problem here if, wherever he looks around the world, pretty much the same races always seem to end up at the top and the same ones at the bottom. Maybe this repeated pattern of under-representation is because the over-represented races are more inclined to oppress than are their victims? Perhaps the exploiters are inherently nastier than the exploited? But to argue this is in itself to ascribe different behavioural traits to different races, something our identequalist claims to reject. If on the other hand he sticks to his principles and accepts that all races must have equal potential for 135

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these sins, then the highly repetitive global nature of who does the exploiting and who is exploited remains unexplained. He will find no easy exit from this catch 22. In truth the only sensible and proper way to handle the subject of race is through the use of scientific method and analysis. But even if we accept the scientific realities, there is still one question which needs to be answered and it is this: in the long run why does any of this matter anyway? Would it not be better simply to leave well alone and ignore innate racial differences? It would not. The truth matters because rational progress does not come from denying the uncomfortable and the inconvenient. If we ignore the science, countless political and social policies in Western countries are simply destined to go on failing, based as they are on some imagined identequality across the races. Policy makers urgently need access to a well researched database of human evolutionary diversity. Racial differences of character, temperament, personality and intellect should now become the subject of legitimate scientific study. And it is not just in domestic policies that we need to face up to racial realities. The continued pretence of a blanket racial uniformity around the globe creates many dangers internationally, particularly when we in this country always think that they in that country always think like us. If their minds really do function differently to ours then we need to know how, we need to know why and we need to know when. Is it all really just down to their culture and history, as conventional Western wisdom maintains, or are their genes calling many of the shots? If the latter, then the kinds of societies which other races create may have to be very different to our own Western European derived liberal democratic model. Ironically then, to impose our model on others may be an extremely illiberal thing to do. What is more, if different races really do think differently we need to know the details in order to avoid misunderstandings and the potential for conflict. Is anyone in the CIA charged with investigating innate Chinese personality traits? Is Peking researching the racial behavioural characteristics of those very unChinese races who run the United States? If not why not, for all our futures could depend upon their getting it right. 136

A Final Challenge Identequalism is an extreme and bizarre ideology. It elevates the human brain uniquely above natural processes and in doing so it seeks to make men gods. It can brook no opposition, for acknowledgement of even the slightest variation between races would shatter the whole illusion. Identequalism corrupts both scientific and social processes. In its single-mindedness it lays the foundations for a narrow authoritarian polity and the end of free debate. In contrast to this, the rapid progress now being made in the fields of genetics and related sciences is presenting us with an ideal opportunity to open up that debate. In that same scientific spirit therefore we issue the following challenge to identequalists to present proof positive that: After seventy thousand years of human evolution in countless diverse habitats and through innumerable genetic bottlenecks, natural selection has failed to create any variation whatsoever in average racial predispositions, temperaments, habits, intellects, moods, emotions, instincts, passions and idiosyncrasies. As a result, all the races of mankind have ended up with a complete set of measurably identical mental characteristics. To date no such proof has ever been presented. Until it is, and on the evidence currently to hand, the only rational position is to assume significant variation between the races. If identequalists really do believe otherwise then the onus must now be on them to prove us all the same, and not on some brave new Twenty-First Century Darwin to demonstrate normal evolutionary diversity.

Notes 1. From Article 1 Para 5 of the UN Declaration on Race, 27th November 1978.

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Index

Aborigines, 20, 86, 93, 106 Africa, 51, 56-63, 98, 99 Alcohol, 90, 91 Alleles, 31, 42-45, 62, 64, 81 Altruism, 24, 109, 110, 120 Americans, 34, 123, 128 Amerindians, 106 Ancestry, 76-78 Archaeology, 78, 83 Asian Elephants, 48 Behaviour, 1-6, 24-25, 49-52, 61-67, 104-106, 109-111, 127 Blank slate, 15-16, 31-32 Body chemistry, 71-74 Bouchard, Thomas, 27, 30 Capitalism, 119, 128 Causality, 102-105 Change, 41-44, 73, 78-82, 106108 Chinese, 81, 86-88, 105, 119, 125, 136 Christianity, 130-131 Chua, Amy, 125-126 Clan, 58-61 Clark, Gregory, 103 Climate, 56, 60-65 Cochran, Gregory, 80-82 Communism, 119, 128, 130 Community, 13-15, 75, 102, 109, 110, 120, 121, 128 Conscientiousness, 32, 34, 49 Cosmides, Lida, 24

Creationism, 134-135 Creativity, 65, 91-92, 103 Cystic fibrosis, 68 Darwin, Charles, 17, 18, 25, 55, 137 Darwinian selection, 103, 104 Deermice, 48, 52, 90 Determinism, 3, 25, 26 DNA, 58, 70, 75-83, 85 Dog breeds, 50-52 Diet, 63 East Asians, 58, 82, 85, 87, 98, 129 Egalitarian, 11-16, 19-21 Elites, 114, 125-127 Emigration, 57, 108, Emotions, 7, 10, 13, 137 Empire, 106, 121-122, 127 Environment, 27-29, 41-48, 6069, 86, 91-93, 134 Equality, 7, 11-21, 36, 133 Ethnic minorities, 13, 14, 110 Ethnocentrism, 111 EU, 3, 114, 122 Eurasia, 63-65, 77 Europeans, 58, 59, 82, 85, 90, 93, 109 Evolutionary psychology, 24, 25 Extroversion, 19, 32, 49 Facts, 8-10, 14 Family, 58, 59, 66, 109, 112 139

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Forward planning, 63-64 Founder effect, 44, 66 Free will, 16, 22, 24 Genealogy, 76 Gene pool, 42-47, 69, 120 Genes, 16, 25-32, 41-45, 62-68, 80-86, 108-114, 135 Genetic bottleneck, 44,66,137 Genetic code, 41, 67-68 Genetic diversity, 43, 67 Genetic drift, 42, 43, 80 Genetics, 4, 43, 137 Genome, 24, 29, 41, 58, 68-69, 80, 81 Germans, 95, 96, 123 Great Tits, 46 Group differences, 4, 18, 33, 60, 70 Hamilton, W. D. 55, 109 Heritability, 29, 32 Homo Erectus, 56, 94 Homo Sapiens, 23, 56-58, 65, 80 Human evolution, 55, 67, 7982, 135-137 Human genome, 29, 67, 69 Humans, 17, 49-51, 56, 62, 67, 135 Identical, 8, 14, 67, 68, 137 Identical twins, 28, 30-31 Identequality, 14-21, 61, 74, 88, 133-137 Ideologies, 13, 118, 130 Immigrants, 13, 108, 131 Individual differences, 26, 29, 32, 61 Inequality, 7, 105 Inferiority, 20 Intellect, 5, 36, 66, 105, 136 Intellectual, 4, 25 IQ, 18, 19-20, 26-29, 38, 97-99, 105, 124-126

‘Is’ and ‘ought’ 8-10, 12, 14 Japanese, 33-36, 59, 104 Jews, 68, 77, 125 Lactose intolerance, 72 Language, 1, 50, 87-88, 96 Liberal Democracy, 129-130, 136 Liberators, 127-129 Lizards, 52 Lynn, Richard, 105, 126 Marxists, 13, 17, 121 Masai, 35-36 Medicine, 71-73 Meerkats, 23-24 Melungeons, 76-77 Memory, 86, 90-91 Modern man, 55-58 Mongolians, 90-91 Moral outrage, 19 Moyzis, Robert, 80 Music, 96 Murray, Charles, 114 Muslims, 13, 127 National Character, 103 Natural selection, 41-43, 56, 61-62, 109, 137 Nature, 1-5, 17, 25-27, 68-69, 86, 94, 95, 101 Neanderthals, 11, 58 Neuroticism, 32, 49, 50 Normal distribution curve, 3438, 60, 104 Nurture, 2-3, 25-27, 38, 86, 94, 95, 101 Optimum genetic distance, 111 Oxytocin, 92, 111 Peppered Moth, 44-46 Personality, 32, 49, 66, 89-90, 96, 136 Pinker, Stephen, 31, 69 Politics of left and right, 117 Population bottleneck, 44 140

Population genetics, 43 Primates, 13, 24-25 Pritchard, Jonathan, 82 Pygmies, 35, 58 Racial cline, 106 Racial variation, 46, 52, 69, 7174, 85, 98 Racial temperament, 48, 89, 132 Racism, 112-115 Random mutation, 41, 45, 46 Rate of evolution 80, 81 Religion, 130-131 Ridley, Matt, 27, 89-90 Russians, 86, 90, 122 Salmon, 47 Scandinavian, 72, 92, 119-120 Science, 5, 16, 18, 69, 135-138 Scruton, Roger, 130-131 Sexual dimorphism, 36-38 Socialism, 119, 130 Social processes, 101, 137

Society, 101-115, 118, 120121, 123 Sociobiology, 24-25 South Asians, 58, 72, 107 Superiority, 20, 85, 99 Tay-Sachs disease, 68 Termites, 1-2, 12 Tibetans, 81 Tribe, 36, 59, 61, 65, 66, 122 Trust, 92-93 Twin studies, 30-31 UN Declratn on Race, 133-135 USA, 123, 127 USSR119, 121 Values, 8-12, 14 Vanhanen, Tatu, 105 WEIRD people, 88, 130 Welfare State, 119-120 Wilson, Edward O., 1-2, 12, 24 Wolves, 49 Women, 4, 9, 36-38, 78, 111 Yanamamo, 89

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About the Author JOHN HARVEY grew up in the industrial town of Llanelli in South Wales. He graduated from the University of Wales, Swansea with a degree in Politics and Russian Studies. Following this he worked in public relations in the manufacturing industry for a number of years. In his late twenties he embarked on a change of career, enrolling on a Postgraduate Certificate in Education at the University of Sussex in Brighton. After completing his PGCE he became a teacher in a local secondary school where he taught maths primarily, but also subjects related to his earlier Social Science degree. He retired in 1999 and, since leaving teaching, has contributed a number of articles to journals and magazines on subjects as diverse as intelligence, Russian politics, psephology, and the future of the European Union. Race and Equality is his first full-length work.

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