Drawing on startling new evidence from the mapping of the genome,*an explosive new account of the genetic basis of race and its role in*the human story*
Fewer ideas have been more toxic or harmful*than the idea of the biological reality of race, and*with it the idea that humans of different races are*biologically different from one another. For this*understandable reason, the idea has been banished*from polite academic conversation. Arguing that*race is more than just a social construct can get a*scholar run out of town, or at least off campus, on*a rail. Human evolution, the consensus view insists,*ended in prehistory.
Inconveniently, as Nicholas Wade argues in A*Troublesome Inheritance, the consensus view cannot*be right. And in fact, we know that populations*have changed in the past few thousand years-to*be lactose tolerant, for example, and to survive at*high altitudes. Race is not a bright-line distinction;*by definition it means that the more human*populations are kept apart, the more they evolve*their own distinct traits under the selective pressure*known as Darwinian evolution. For many thousands*of years, most human populations stayed where*they were and grew distinct, not just in outward*appearance but in deeper senses as well.
Wade, the longtime journalist covering genetic*advances for The New York Times, draws widely on*the work of scientists who have made crucial*breakthroughs in establishing the reality of recent*human evolution. The most provocative claims in*this book involve the genetic basis of human social*habits. What we might call middle-class social*traits-thrift, docility, nonviolence-have been*slowly but surely inculcated genetically within*agrarian societies, Wade argues. These “values”*obviously had a strong cultural component, but*Wade points to evidence that agrarian societies*evolved away from hunter-gatherer societies in*some crucial respects. Also controversial are his*findings regarding the genetic basis of traits we*associate with intelligence, such as literacy and*numeracy, in certain ethnic populations, including*the Chinese and Ashkenazi Jews.
Wade believes deeply in the fundamental*equality of all human peoples. He also believes that*science is best served by pursuing the truth without*fear, and if his mission to arrive at a coherent summa*of what the new genetic science does and does not*tell us about race and human history leads straight*into a minefield, then so be it. This will not be the*last word on the subject, but it will begin a powerful*and overdue conversation.
