How to Argue With a Racist What Our Genes Do (and Don t) Say About Human Difference

self-and-identity

• "Race" is a very poorly defined term. Since the seventeenth century, attempts to categorize people into racial types have resulted in the number of races being anywhere…

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• Our pedigrees fold in on themselves, the branches loop back and become nets, and all of us who have ever lived have done so enmeshed in a web of ancestry.

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obedience-and-authority

• Some are actual racists, others merely contrarians convinced they have unearthed secret knowledge quelled by a conspiratorial majority.

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• IQ testing in the US was applied as part of assessment for state eugenics policies, resulting in the forced sterilization of more than sixty thousand people.

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mind-and-cognition

• Genes involved in metabolism might be active in cells in different tissues all around the body, given the intense metabolic demands that eighty billion brain cells exert.

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• I checked the disease genes suggested to drive selection for Jewish smarts. The result? Not one of them associates with brains or cognitive abilities.

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