In his 2007 book “A Farewell to Alms,” the economic historian Gregory Clark argued that the English came to rule the world largely because their rich outbred their poor, and thus embedded their superior genes and values throughout the nation. In her comprehensive takedown, the historian Deirdre N. McCloskey noted that Clark’s idea was a “bold hypothesis, and was bold when first articulated by social Darwinists such as Charles Davenport and Francis Galton in the century before last.” Indeed, over the past 150 years, various white Western scientists and writers have repeatedly offered biological explanations for Caucasian superiority. They have repeatedly failed because, as McCloskey noted, none ever mounted a credible quantitative argument.
Now, in “A Troublesome Inheritance,” Nicholas Wade, a longtime science writer for The New York Times, says modern genetics shows that “the three major races,” Africans, Caucasians and East Asians, are genetically distinct races that diverge much as subspecies do, and that their genetic differences underlie “the rise of the West.”
This racial divide started, Wade says, when humans began migrating out of Africa some 50,000 years ago. As groups entered diverse environments, they faced differing pressures that selected for gene variants creating different traits, including dissimilar social behaviors. Genetic selection for distinctive physical traits in different populations, such as lighter skin to maximize sunlight absorption, is well established and widely accepted. Decidedly not well established, however, is Wade’s proposal that genetic selection gives different human populations distinct behaviors. Because this is the heart of his argument, and because social behavior is far more complex than, say, skin color, it seems fair to ask that his evidence clear a high bar. Does it?
Wade builds much of his case around historical ideas like Gregory Clark’s hypothesis about English breeding; the political scientist Francis Fukuyama’s notion that Western democracies represent a high point in the evolution of social institutions; and the economic historian Niall Ferguson’s view that the West “succeeded because it was an open society.” These values and institutions, Wade says, were both shaped by and drove the evolution of Caucasian genes.
As a key event he cites Europe’s adoption, starting around A.D. 1000, of the principle that law is the ultimate ruler. This, Wade argues, allowed a transition from closed, insular tribal social organizations to more open, interactive nation-states, and Europe then entered a self-reinforcing cycle: Its rules-based, trade-oriented culture selected for gene variants generating trusting and productive social behavior, and these genes in turn made the culture more trusting and rewarding of hard work.
Meanwhile, the other two major races developed their own distinctions: East Asians (and their genes) evolved to embrace a disciplined, state-dominated culture more respectful of rigid authority. Sub-Saharan Africans evolved to better fit and support their culture’s greater allegiance to tribal imperatives than to wider forms of social organization.
Wade runs into much trouble making this argument. He indulges in circular logic. He tells just-so stories. While warning us to avoid filtering science through politics, he draws heavily from conservative historians who minimize the roles played by political power, geographic advantage, momentum, disease and dumb luck. Conveniently, this leaves more historical questions for genetics to answer.
And despite his protests to the contrary, Wade often sounds as if he sees the rise of the West as a sort of stable endpoint of human history and evolution — as if, having considered 5,000 years in which history has successively blessed the Middle East, the Far East and the Ottoman Empire, he observes the West’s current run of glory and thinks the pendulum has stilled.
If Wade could point to genes that give races distinctive social behaviors, we might overlook such shortcomings. But he cannot.
He tries. He tells, for instance, of specific gene variants that reputedly create less trust and more violence in African-Americans and, he says, explain their resistance to modern economic institutions and practices. Alas, the scientific literature he draws on is so uneven and disputed that many geneticists dismiss it outright. Wade also cites a 2008 paper that analyzed the genomes of almost 1,000 people from 51 populations around the globe. That paper found that people from different regions do indeed tend to have distinctive genomes. But Wade errs in saying the paper supports his idea that genetic selection has created races with particular social inclinations.
To begin with, the 2008 study mentions nothing about race. It merely establishes that many of the slight differences between human genomes cluster by geography at many scales, including continents, and that genomes from any given location will most likely be similar, just as two people from a particular place will most likely speak with similar accents.
Second, and far more serious, the paper’s authors specifically state that while selection may sometimes create genetic differences between populations, they saw little evidence that selection shaped the small genetic differences they found. In fact, they say the differences can be largely explained by “random drift” — arbitrary changes in genes having little to no effect on people’s biology or behavior. All of this directly contradicts Wade’s argument. Yet he baldly claims the study as support.
And he does this sort of thing repeatedly: He constantly gathers up long shots, speculations and spurious claims, then declares they add up to substantiate his case.
The result is a deeply flawed, deceptive and dangerous book. Its most pernicious conceit is that it’s finally safe to talk of racial genetics because “opposition to racism is now well entrenched.” The daily news — a black teenager’s killer walks free in Florida; a former Ku Klux Klansman shoots up a Jewish community center; and tearful survivors observe the 20th anniversary of the Rwanda genocide, in which 100 days of mass murder rose from ethnic distinctions pressed on the populace by European colonists a century before — says otherwise.
One can find more productive ways to think about genes. As a physician who researches and treats rare genetic disorders, Sharon Moalem, the author of “Inheritance,” sees firsthand how sharply DNA can constrain our lives. Yet “our genes aren’t as fixed and rigid as most of us have been led to believe,” he says, for while genetic defects often create havoc, variable gene expression (our genes’ capacity to respond to the environment with a flexibility only now being fully recognized) can give our bodies and minds surprising resilience. In his new book, Moalem describes riveting dramas emerging from both defective genes and reparative epigenetics.
Moalem sometimes tries too hard to entertain, and he may overstate the extent to which trauma-related gene expression changes tend to be lasting and heritable. But the man is loaded with weird findings and great stories. For example, researchers have found they can predict which teenagers will shed pounds at a weight-loss camp by examining methylation patterns — “the way their genes were turned off or on” — in about five sites on their genomes.
Most fascinating are the genetic conditions Moalem describes, like fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva, or F.O.P., in which the bone-repair genetic machinery works overtime, and muscles are turned to bone. There is no effective treatment as yet.
Moalem’s earthy, patient-focused account reminds us that whatever its promise, genetics yet stands at a humble place.