A few years back I posted about a study on the genetics of race—it’s surprising in that it turns out that skin color is not a robust marker of race. AHHH! Still many think it signifies something important about different members of the human race. Here is copy from back then:
Researchers studied which genes influenced skin color across several populations. Basically they found that we, including Neandertals, all have many of the same genes for lighter and darker skin, but they express differently in different populations because of other genetic factors. The gene promoting the lightest skin tones are actually very recent, appearing, they think, roughly 30,000 years ago primarily in northern European peoples and have spread because of the advantage conferred by the ability to absorb more ultraviolet light that is more limited in northern latitudes.
Their search for understanding also leads them to an important conclusion about ethics. Skin color is not a good indicator of racial differences; I don’t know what is but it is not our skins because we all share so many of the same genes influencing this particular trait. The scientists here have contributed importantly to the growing understanding that our definitions of race are based more on our proclivity for defining in-group/out-group in a discriminatory, defensive manner and not on any significant biological facts. To paraphrase Te-Nehisi Coates: the concept of race is an invention of racists, i.e., one group of people wants to define another artificially in order to rationalize their own greed for power and exploitation. (See post here on race 5/17/17). As Monod hoped, an ethic of knowledge leads to a knowledge of ethics. I wonder when our ancestors first used skin color to define in/out-groups—I bet it was relatively recently. Remember Homo sapiens interbred with Homo neandertals some 35,000 years ago so that speaks to some inclusion.
More recently I felt the need to contribute to the local debate on racial matters (here is SW Virginia the Confederate flag and white supremacy hangs on in the crevices and shadows. Here is my op-ed from our local paper:
WINNING THE PEACE
“Growing up in a military family we lived all over the USA, in Europe and Japan. Most summers we visited my parents’ families back here in Virginia. While still young I soaked up the romance of the Confederacy like Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson and Mosby the Grey Ghost. When I approached adolescence I began to wonder while visiting about these stories and the ubiquitous signs saying that the South shall rise again. What did that mean, a return to slavery? Surely not, but I began to listen to and watch more carefully my relatives’ attitudes towards African Americans. When my father was transferred to Montgomery AL a month after the Selma march, I knew that something was wrong with what I had learned from my family and that I needed other knowledge.
Now 60 years later I understand that the Confederacy lost the war but won the peace. Those white people terrorized black people, stifling their efforts to participate in American democracy, and promulgated myths about the Confederacy effectively hiding the real nature of their policies fomenting white supremacy. How their statues and monuments did rise above to shadow the truth! Remember the Alamo? I read The Half Has Never Been Told (a remarkable history about our American economy based on enslavement using old government and business records, first person contemporaneous accounts by current and ex-slaves and enslavers, and other documents) to learn that yes, Santa Ana was a dictator and that yes, he did ‘invade’ Texas, but this was in part to prevent Southern whites from establishing a slave based cotton economy. Mexico, it turns out, had outlawed slavery 20 years earlier.
During our visits in the early 60s my relatives were angry that black Americans and some whites were trying to win back the peace lost to Jim Crow after reconstruction, never mind the facts that they did so through non-violent means and that they simply sought equality and fair play before the law. While we made some progress then in legal rights, we failed to establish a culture of deep and abiding peace based upon respect born of empathy with our fellow human beings.
Now 60 years later I understand that each person is a gem with many facets, some rougher cut, some sparkle more, but each one of us is valuable. Every crystal has many facets shaped by our sex and gender, family roles, age, education, religion, profession, etc. In America the race facet seems very prominent but it is still only one facet, and truth be known, our individual calling as a community is to look through all the facets available and see the object whole, the gem within, a person deserving our respect and compassion.
Finally, now 60 years later I understand that we walk lightly on this earth. Lightning may strike at any moment; life is fragile and precious and Covid, cancer, dementia, car wreck, hurricane, derecho, or wildfire, may strike us out of the blue. However, racism is not lightning; racism means we focus on one facet, see it as different from our own as we impute something negative, and then fail to see the gem of many facets—we fail to see the person. And that means some families must be afraid any time one of theirs walks out the door. Indeed, sometimes racism breaks down their door. Our forebears like John Lewis fought for our peace and hoped to have turned the tide. Confederate statues coming down is a hopeful sign, but how will we know we have truly won the peace? When black families need only fear lightning and not the police or fellow citizens insulting and assaulting them because of the racist focus on only one facet of their being. When we all work to see the object whole, the gem within the facets, we will have truly won the peace. And not until then.”
Recently, given the state of civil society in the USA, regardless of the election’s outcome, I wondered aloud with my daughter if MLK’s thought that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice” was actually true. In the chaotic world of human culture growing around Gaia, does our social development really organize around an attractor that establishes this moral arc towards a culture of deep and abiding peace based upon respect born of empathy with our fellow human beings. Is the hope of a phase transition to a more just and equitable world more than a motivational trope? Is impulse towards power always based upon establishing the in group/out group as a way of reserving and protecting resources for the few? We think the great experiment of America manifests a movement towards true democracy, but we know that our society is more complicated than that. We also know that the economic stratification concentrating wealth to a morally corrupt (otherwise they would ensure equitable sharing to ensure others survive and prosper) elite along with the fomentation of racial division is not conducive to any advancement along the arc of the moral universe.
We are the great viral race inhabiting Gaia. We think our intelligence will keep us from cataclysmic catastrophe, but intelligence fails without the empathy grown from a vibrant community, and that is what worries me about what I see here in the USA.
Best travel on.