Purpose
In this worksheet, you will compare and contrast differing viewpoints around the existence of biological races. Here, you will find a summary of the controversial book, The Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race and Human History by Nicholas Wade as well as reviews that praise and criticize Wade’s central argument(s) about intelligence and race.
SKILLS PRACTICED
• Evaluate and critique Wade’s argument about race
• Apply this course’s lessons surrounding race and human variation to your evaluation
• Compare and contrast the reviewers’ points of view
• Defend and critique the arguments or points of view and incorporate language and vocabulary used in anthropology in your statements
Part 1
Instructions:
1. Read the summary of The Troublesome Inheritance by Nicholas Wade from the publisher’s website: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/308785/atroublesome-inheritance-by-nicholas-wade/
Harmful - races are biologically different
Race is not more than a human construct
Human evolution ended in prehistory
Not correct
Lactose tolerance and survival at high altitudes (past few thousand years)
Race just has to do with separation of human populations and natural selection of traits
Genetic basis of human social habit (biological determinism)
Points to agrarian societies evolved away from hunter-gatherer societies in some crucial respects [also environmental]
Genetic basis of traits we associate with intelligence, literacy and numeracy
2. Read/skim Nicholas Wade’s Wikipedia page to get a sense of his background: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Wade
Nature, Science, The New York Times
3. Read a positive review by Charles Murray who wrote the book The Bell Curve in 1994 which argued that certain races are not as intelligent as others because of genetic differences. The review was published in the newspaper, The Wall Street Journal.
• The PDF is posted on Beachboard (~4 pages)
• (Optional: For an explanation of how the “computer program” that Murray talks about in his review is problematic, see Jennifer Raff’s review.)
4. Read a negative review of the book by David Dobbs on the newspaper, The New York Times.
• The PDF is posted on Beachboard (~3 pages)
Part 2
Instructions: Answer the following questions regarding The Troublesome Inheritance and its reviews.
1. Compare and contrast the viewpoints of the two reviewers – Dobbs and Murray — on how they view the notion of “biological races”. How do their views influence their opinions about A Troublesome Inheritance?
Murray does not think anything of the misinformation Wade is attempting to spread. He frankly hardly had a look because it is unlikely he cared about the science, only about the results. Dobbs, on the other hand, was very critical of Wade and did well criticizing him objectively by looking into his cherry-picking of data and circular reasoning. Murray had a much more emotional and manipulative approach.
Murray
Races are very close genetically (between groups)
→ he’s arguing then why are humans naturally sorted into races and ethnicities??
First of all what does that even mean? Natural? What about our white/black twins? Races? What based on their skin tone or their neighborhood?
“The most natural way” to group them
This is exactly what Jonathan Marks talked about, this guy just bit into NYT’s misleading sensationalist headline
Sure in general the most proximate people are the most genetically similar, so it makes sense if you tell the computer to group into five groups, you get the continents - the rest of the data was left out in the news
And human evolution minus cosmetic changes ended before humans left africa
See here this is where he is correct - mixed so he appears more credible
Becomes misleading with his concluding sentence discussing bone structure and diet with cognition and sensory perception → its clear he is trying to reach into intelligence differences between races
Relating natural selection to race is loaded and also misleading
Variation has occurred with environment
Our skin tone is included in that
If he wants to talk about culture, that is also environmentally influenced
What does he even mean genetic regions “under selection” - isn’t all of it “under selection”??
More than cosmetics, okay yeah, again agreed
Involve brain function which “could be implicated in a cascade of effects” - yes that’s exactly what he wants
Makes implications about brain gene natural selection and races then says hey its so complicated (true) we dont know how it works yet...but yeah its likely
Okay so he’s saying people are complicated and different and that should be celebrated but immediately goes back to “we don't know yet what the genetically significant racial difference will turn out to be, but we expect that there will be many.”
Putting us in boxes
Emphasizing biological determinism
UNHELPFUL???? → “race is a social construct”
& his diction: “in the face of this looming … reality”
He’s using “looming” to scare people
Suddenly what is so scary about our differences??
→ He is dealing with one true and one false premise to describe this orthodoxy
He is manipulating facts and research to prove his point that people are still evolving and therefore the differences we see between races is evolution related.
→okay he’s saying BOTH tenets of the orthodoxy are wrong
The other disgusting thing is he’s totally fabricating credibility
Denouncing a geneticist and a paleontologist while elevating a science journalist, with only a bachelor’s degree above them without any other reasoning other than he’s worked for the NYT for more than 20 years and is a highly regarded writer. That really doesn’t mean much, and especially if they are fibbing data.
His admission that he’s now backing away from data and using speculation to reach conclusions is TOUCHING??
Taking a stance that the guy isn’t perfect/ there’s “some good and some bad” but its still worth the read
Using this to attack other reviewers, making it seem like they attack only the bad
This is just in order to do some well structured projection: the orthodoxy are saying we are doing all these horrible things, ugh they are just so mean and biased (while we actually do those things I just said)
“Afraid to look stupid” - wow well this is what scientists do who are not good scientists because they are not openminded, and this is lowkey projection too
Oh great and now he’s praising the book for opening the door for racists to come out openly to advance their degrees in research and medicine in order to push their ideology
Then citing more racist and bigoted books, repeating each of those works should’ve made it “easy” for people to acknowledge difference between people
Jesus, those people crave “easy” they want easy boxes and they want to make sure once they are stacked they are on top.
More blame - b/c political correctness and scare tactics of orthodoxy might win nonetheless
Dobbs
Wade saying 3 races as distinct as subspecies
Differences underlie “rise of the West”
Natural selection for traits including behavior (biological determinism)
Discredits this
He based it on views that different societies represent different levels of evolution (false paradigm)
Wade indulges circular logic
Avoid filtering science through politics while doing just that
He cannot point to genes that give races distinctive social behaviors
Tries though with bad data
Uses paper basically talking about similarities via proximity
And said they “saw little evidence that selection shaped the small genetic differences they found”
Wade: By omitting certain information from papers he cited he is cherry-picking
Uses speculations to substantiate his case
Dangerous largely because opposition to racism is NOT now well entrenched
2. Which review would most anthropologists agree with? Explain why by pointing out one argument from each review article and explain why anthropologists would agree or disagree with it. Try to incorporate lessons from class in your answer.
The Dobbs review most anthropologists would agree with. Murray agrees with Wade that races are very different between them, and that humans are naturally sorted. However, Jonathan Marks wrote about the study they are most likely referring to with that information. People are more genetically similar with proximity, so if you tell the computer to create five groups it is going to base the grouping off the continents. This is how you get “natural” racial groupings when there aren’t any. There are just a bunch of gradients. Dobbs talks about Wade’s belief in biological determinism and shuts down his reasoning because it is based on unilineal evolution, the false belief that cultures go through linear phases of advancement. Different societies do not represent different levels of evolution.
