A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race and Human History.

AuthorBlock, Walter E.
PositionBook review

* A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race and Human History

By Nicholas Wade

New York: Penguin Press, 2014.

Pp. 278. $27.95 hardcover.

This is a courageous book. It not only attacks received wisdom in a highly contentious area but also absolutely pulverizes political correctness insofar as race is concerned. Nicholas Wade deserves mention among only a very few authors who pay no never mind to the views that all races are equal in every regard worth mentioning and that, worse, whatever differences do exist are due not only to environmental factors but also to (gulp!) heredity.

I will let Wade speak for himself. As he explains it, "Analysis of genomes from around the world establishes that there is indeed a biological reality to race, despite the official statements to the contrary of leading social science organizations.... [T]he fact [that] human evolution has been recent, copious and regional is not widely recognized, even though it has now been reported by many articles in the literature of genetics. The reason is in part that the knowledge is so new and in part because it raises awkward challenges to deeply held conventional wisdom" (p. 4). The truth is that "[t]hrough independent but largely parallel evolution among the populations of each continent, the human species has differentiated into races. This evolutionary process is hard to explore, however, when the question of race is placed under taboo or its existence is denied outright" (p. 67). Unfortunately,

the idea that there could be meaningful genetic differences between human groups is fiercely resisted by many researchers. They cling to the idea that the mind is a blank slate on which only culture, not genetics, can write, and dismiss the possibility that evolution could have effected any recent change in the human mind. They reject the proposal that any human behavior, let alone intelligence, has a genetic basis. They make accusations of racism against anyone who suggests that cognitive capacities might differ between human population groups. All these positions are shaped by leftist and Marxist political dogma, not science. Nonetheless, most scholars will not enter this territory from lively fear of being demonized by their fellow academics, (p. 201) Nor does our author pull his very sharp and devastating punches even against those with whom he mostly agrees. Consider his overwhelming criticism of Steven Pinker (The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined [New York: Viking, 2011]) in this regard:

On the basis of Pinker's vast compilation of evidence, natural selection seems to have acted incessantly to soften the human temperament, from the earliest times until the most recent date.... But at the last moment, Pinker veers away from the conclusion, which he has so strongly pointed to, that human populations have become less violent in the past few thousand years because of the continuation of the long evolutionary trend toward less violence. He mentions that evolutionary psychologists, of whom he is one, have always held that the human mind is adapted to the conditions of 10,000 years ago and hasn't changed since.... But since many other...

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