October 20, 2007
The issues behind the Jim Watson row
In a recent interview the Novel prize winner appeared to suggest that Africans were less intelligent than whites. But after his remarks caused a furious backlash he said there was "no scientific basis" for believing that Africa was "genetically inferior".
However, today he attempted to justify his theory that there is a genetic basis behind differences in IQ.
"I have never been one to shy away from stating what I believe to be the truth," he told a newspaper. Admitting, "this has, at times, got me in hot water."
Although he does not refer directly to race, Dr Watson did again invoke the idea of Darwinian natural selection leading to differences in ability between people from different regions of the world. ----Daily Mail
The Jim Watson brouhaha is a new variation on an old controversy. The question of nature vs. nurture has long been the subject of one of the most polarizing debates between Right and Left.
In general, the Right asserts that nature is everything, and that human behavior is driven by inexorable biological forces. In its ugliest and most extreme forms, this viewpoint has manifested itself in eugenics laws, Apartheid, Jim Crow, and, most infamously, Nazi Germany.
The Left, meanwhile, has traditionally sought to downplay the role of biology and evolution in human behavior, placing its faith in “nurture-based” programs and social engineering.
This latter viewpoint, while more ostensibly benevolent, has also been used to justify atrocities. All Marxist governments have been rooted in the idea that human nature is fundamentally malleable. Mao Zedong, Pol Pot, and Josef Stalin killed tens of millions of people during the twentieth century, based on the supposition that biological- and evolutionary-based characteristics (like self-interest, attachment to family members, and even sexual desire) could be overcome by forcible social engineering from above.
But these above examples represent the extremes on both sides; and they are largely irrelevant in the Western democracies of the present age.
This does not mean that the larger debate has gone away. We still grapple with a variety of nature vs. nurture, and evolution vs. social engineering questions: Should marriage be strictly defined as one man and one woman? Do the differences between men and women ever matter in the workplace? Should adolescents be educated about safe sex, or admonished into abstinence? Should the legal system focus on rehabilitation or punishment?
While most readers will respond to Maoism or Nazism with unalloyed revulsion, opinions will be mixed on the more nuanced questions above.
Likewise, no one really knows why certain characteristics appear in greater frequency in particular ethnic groups----though theories and opinions abound. My grandmother’s people all immigrated to America from Ireland during the late nineteenth century. True to stereotypes about the Irish, many of them had problems with alcoholism, violence, and general self-destructiveness. At least two full generations of the family spent more of their time drunk than sober, giving credence to the old joke, “What’s the difference between an Irish wedding and an Irish wake?” Answer: “One less drunken Irishman.”
Yet despite this background, I have never displayed any predisposition toward alcoholism. As I noted in a previous commentary, I have not been intoxicated since New Year’s Eve 1986. I rarely drink so much as a single bottle of beer, in fact. I don’t even care for the taste.
Is the supposed Irish tendency toward alcoholism lurking deep within my DNA? Perhaps. Perhaps not. I have never spent much time speculating on this question. What matters to me is that I have overcome any innate tendency toward alcoholism that I might have---if I have it at all.
Similarly, no objective observer can deny that Africa is a mess: AIDS, poverty, internecine warfare, etc., etc. You name the problem, and you can probably find it in Africa.
Some of this mess can be blamed on the historic meddling of outsiders; some of this mess can be blamed on the Africans themselves. The dominant cultural mores of Africa may indeed contain deep flaws that have hampered the continent’s development.
But this is not the same thing as biological predestination. Too many people of African descent----both in Africa and abroad----have become doctors, engineers, and university professors. Clearly, when placed in the right environment and given the right tools, people of African descent can achieve just as much as anyone else.
Scientific hairsplitters could doubtless poke holes in this argument: what about the bell curve, they would ask. Well, what about it? Is it possible that correlations between IQ and race exist? As a hypothetical example, are there marginally more Asians with high IQs than there are whites with exceptional brainpower? Furthermore, is it possible that these differences at the margin have some basis in evolutionary factors?
Perhaps. Perhaps not. The important question is not whether any marginal IQ differences between the races can be scientifically established. (And disproving this hypothesis might be just as hard as proving it.) The important question is this: Even if such links can be discovered, so what? At the end of the day, such data has no bearing on the individual, who must be judged by his or her own attainments. As Ayn Rand once said: “A genius is a genius regardless of how many morons belong to his race. A moron is a moron regardless of how many geniuses belong to his race.”
