Is it reasonable to simply ponder the “possibility,” ever so idly and hypothetically, that bad genes might explain African-American underachievement? It is a an old and many-told tale, I know, but it just got a fresh re-telling at Harvard Law School this month.
A Harvard Law student recently apologized for comments she emailed to friends and colleagues following what sounds like an intriguing and heated dinner-time discussion about affirmative action. After first expressing concern that some of her earlier comments during that aforementioned dinner were misconstrued as politically correct, the student attempted to clarify her take on the matter.
“I absolutely do not rule out the possibility,” she wrote, “that African-Americans are, on average, genetically predisposed to be less intelligent.” Claiming that sound research could convince her otherwise, she seemed intent on dispelling any lingering sense among her friends that she might be too timid to consider potential linkages between race and intelligence.
She went on: ”I don’t think it is that controversial of an opinion to say that I think it is at least possible that African-Americans are less intelligent on a genetic level. And I didn’t mean to shy away from that position at dinner.”
The student then ended her e-mail with a joke. “Please don’t pull a Larry Summers on me,” citing the firestorm that Harvard’s former president caused by broaching the idea that the under-representation of women in math and science might be predicated on their genetic endowment. Summers was eventually forced to resign his post.
After a public reprimand from the law school’s dean, Martha Minow, the student apologized for her e-mail and took back her claim about being open to considering possible genetic links between race and intelligence.
“I emphatically do not believe that African-Americans are inferior in any way,” she said. “I understand why my words expressing even a doubt in that regard were and are offensive.”
But what is she apologizing for? The very thought? Is this an example of “politics” trumping science by deeming certain research questions impossible to ask?
Ironically, the law student appears to have been reprimanded (during that earlier dinner conversation) for a form of political correctness, for not clearly accepting the premise that genetics might explain race-based differences in intelligence (and, by extension, social achievement), a premise that her friends appear to have chastised her for “shy[ing] away from.”
This Harvard student’s e-mail has been overshadowed by Harvard Professor Skip Gates’s recent New York Times op-ed, which is equally controversial in terms of contemporary racial politics. The Gates essay emphasizes African complicities in the Trans-Atlantic slave trade as a way to problematize calls for reparations here in the United States. He asks, somewhat rhetorically, if African nations should be asked to fork over some cash, too.
One reading of the Gates essay (and its critics abound) castigates him for “blaming the victim” and letting Europe and America off the hook, for pretending that every link in chattel slavery’s horrible chain carried equal weight.
Of course, it is easy enough to read genetic explanations for racial achievement gaps as another way of blaming victims (and, in that case, their biological makeup), of letting real (social and political) culprits off the hook. If racial thinking is “bad biology” (as social constructionists and many physical anthropologists currently proclaim), we should be suspicious of any too-easy and essentialist invocation of racial groups as “natural” hooks on which to hang causal claims about inequality.
Gates isn’t going to apologize for his (postracial?) reading of history, and some people won’t accept this law student’s attempt at an apology. But, again, why is this student apologizing at all? That’s one of the most important questions we can ask. Is it simply for offending African-Americans? For invoking race as nature rather than nurture? For racial insensitivity? For fear of being labeled a racist? And why do we tend to invoke genetics as some kind of holy grail that can reduce the messy machinations of everyday life to supposed irrelevance? What kind of irrationality might that represent?
8 Responses to Race, Genetics, and Harvard Law School
jairrels - May 7, 2010 at 7:48 pm
I just sent Ms. Grace an e-mail and I hope she reads it. I suggested that she visit http://www.agi.harvard.edu and read “Testing for Racial Differences in the Mental Ability of Young Children.” I told her that many researchers believe that Sir Cyril Burt faked his data. I also told her that some researchers contend that even when twins are separated, they are adopted into similar families (in SES, lifestyles,). Then, I ended by promoting my trade book for African American parents, “African Americans and Standardized Tests: The Real Reason for Low Test Scores.” (Forgive me, Dr. Jackson.)
nordicexpat - May 9, 2010 at 4:48 am
OK, I’ll bite. I’m sure that the student (I’m not going to out her) is apologizing because she got caught making statements that later in life might come back to haunt her (say, in a job interview). While the situation is clearly not the same as Summers’s (his is more a case of incompetence), it doesn’t speak well for her that she suggests that research would have to prove to her satisfaction that African Americans are not genetically predisposed to be less intelligent than she is (given the comment she makes that her children would be just as beautiful and intelligent whether they were raised by her or in an orphanage in Nigeria) instead of the other way round. In other words, the burden of proof is on African Americans and not on those who want to claim that there is genetic link. That is a little bit more than racial insensitivity. I don’t see how that is good science, and, given her undergraduate degree is in socioloy, I don’t see how this can be argued as a case of academic freedom. After all, she is not a scientist, and it is telling that many of those assuming a link between genes and intelligence are in fields like economics and sociology (in other words, academic freedom doesn’t really apply to them because it is outside their field of expertise). By the by, my understanding of the timeline is that Dean Martha Minow did not make a public comment until after the student had already apologized, and the letter Dean Minow wrote was very carefully worded. She does say that it is a “sad and unfortunate incident” and that “the comment unfortunately resonates with old and hurtful misconceptions.” I think that is a fair enough assessment. And I can certainly imagine African Americans at Harvard would wonder about what Harvard Law students think about race and intelligence given the conversation that must have occured at that dinner party.
jffoster - May 9, 2010 at 8:01 am
She didn’t owe the Dean an apology. I would not have apologized and have not apologized for having done or said similar things.
sikora - May 9, 2010 at 8:26 am
This idea that differences are genetic is a modern version of a deep seated cultural idea that human characteristics are “bred in the blood” and thus essential and immutable. Way back in the 1980s, the anthropologist Atwood Gaines traced this idea of race, blood, and essential human characteristics to old Teutonic ideas about family, race, and social identity. The idea that differences, and thus inequality, are biological or genetic( updated terms for “racial”) permeates our thinking about almost everything. Mental illness? All genetics. Population differences in blood pressure or diabetes? Must be totally genetic. Talent for music or art? Inbred. Personality? Totally genetic. Gender differences? All due to X or Y genes. Preference for the color blue? You got that from your mom. Etc. Now I know I’m going to get flamed for this. I’m not saying that biology does not play a role in human differences. What I am trying to say here is that this idea that human differences are genetic is so deeply ingrained in US culture that it appears to be objective reality. As I’ve heard students say when challenged, “everybody knows,” or “it’s common sense” that human differences are biological. And thus, inequalities are biological and immutable. So, unfortunately, the “bred in the blood” idea continues to shape our discourses about race, ethnicity, gender, and inequality.
goxewu - May 9, 2010 at 10:01 am
A whole bunch of factors in play here:1. In the old, old days, it was genetics in a stupid, wholesale, and bigoted way, e.g., “Those [fill-in-the-racial/ethnic blank] are just born that way.” In the recent old days, the pendulum swung all the way over to kumbaya nuture-over-nature, i.e., anybody can do anything given given encouragement. These days, it’s back to genetics again, only it’s DNA-specific, e.g., this gene causes this attribute, and that gene causes that attribute.2. Nobody knows quite what “race” is anymore. Genetically, it’s those genes that cause physical appearance, e.g., straight or curly hair, long tall build vs. short stocky build, skin color, etc., which amounts to, in modern civilization, a fairly small sector of human qualities. Culturally, it’s the rather unsurprising fact that people of the same stock who live in the same geophysical place tend to create cultures different from those of other people of other stock who live in a different geophysical place.3. Nobody knows quite what “intelligence” is anymore. Although Howard Gardner’s “multiple intelligences” theory has been substantially (or at least partially) debunked (i.e., aptitude, talent, adaptability, etc. are different from “intelligence”), hardly anybody except Charles Murray takes the Stanford Binet IQ test for a reliable single index of “intelligence,” either.4. Lots of liberals (OK, “progressives”) who decry racial generalities when they cast an unfavorable light on a particular race, embrace them when they’re compliments, e.g., black people’s “soul,” Koreans’ “industriousness,” etc.5. The individual variances in whatever “intelligence” is far outstrip racial or ethnic generalities. (I’m white and, pace “The Bell Curve,” I know a whole lot of black people who are a lot smarter than I am, and a lot of East Asians who are not as smart as I am.)Nordicexpat is spot on when he/she says that the most untoward thing about the Harvard law student’s statement is that it implicity finds African-Americans guilty of lower “intelligence” than (presumably) whites until they can be proven not guilty by “sound research” (Prof. Jackson’s paraphrase.)What this whole little brouhaha does prove to me, however, is that the one thing the world could do without is more Harvard lawyers.
lawman - May 10, 2010 at 10:39 am
Dean Minow was wrong to shut down this debate. What is law school about if not a place to examine, test and, in appropriate circumstances, disregard all kinds of ideas? Frankly, Dean Minow herself ought to study up a bit on the concept of academic freedom and the application of the First Amendment her law school. As an alumn of HLS, I find her bullying of this student regretable. Thus, if anyone ought to apologize to anyone, it ought to be the Dean to the student.
ronpeden - May 10, 2010 at 6:13 pm
Anyone who thinks law school (least of all, HLS) is about the open expression of wide-ranging ideas doesn’t know jack.
deverylej - May 10, 2010 at 7:31 pm
What I want to know is why were African Americans and their intelligence levels being discussed over dinner anyway? Why are African Americans always being compared to other groups? However, since we are on the subject, I will tell you that I teach at a predominately white school, and I know first hand what caliber of students are being admitted simply because their parents have the money! I have seen things, like grade inflation, grade changing and low standards running rampant in this institution of “higher learning”–(Ha! What a joke)! What I am trying to say is that maybe the mistaken perception that African Americans are less intelligent stems from the insane amount of coddling and the Pez-dispenser grade granting that goes on at some schools which makes it seem that whites are smarter when that is clearly not always the case.