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PDF FormatDoes it matter? Cochran and Harpending make a strong case that it does, and that the races are different in significant ways. I doubt, however, that they will convince many people. The idea that the races are differently abled is just too odious and frightening for most of us to stomach. Perhaps there are some things that we shouldn’t believe—or at least say—even if they are true.
This, however, may not be one of them, because the implications of Cochran and Harpending’s theory are not as frightening as you might think. Even if they are right, the sky will not fall. Instead, we will have to rethink some things that, in the end, are not very important to the way we live. For example, we will have to dispense with the notion that people then were basically the same “under the skin” as people now. As a historian, I don’t find this threatening in the slightest. Far from it: I can’t wait to get to work fleshing out what it might mean for our understanding of the human past. We will also have to toss out the notion that people here are the same “under the skin” as people there. This doesn’t particularly bother me either. I already accept that people are different “over the skin,” and I have no problem living happily among cultures that are acknowledged to be different from each other. Though I can’t say for sure, I doubt I would have any difficulty living happily among kinds of people—races, descent groups, populations, or whatever you want to call them—that are acknowledged to be different as well. This is true for two reasons. The first is an “is,” and the second is an “ought.”
By happy accident, the differences that genetically divide us into types are not that significant. The majority of them are, in fact, completely trivial, at least to fair-minded people. They don’t affect what we consider “merit” in any way, and the few genetic characteristics that do—the troublesome traits—are neither very numerous nor very influential. At present, we can identify only one trait—or rather one cluster of traits—that could be called troublesome with any degree of confidence: intelligence. This shouldn’t really worry us, because differences in intelligence among races, if they exist at all, do not appear to be very large. Moreover, it’s not as if all members of race X are always smarter than members of race Y or Z. In fact, the differences appear to be so slight that one cannot confidently predict that any given member of race X will be significantly smarter than any given member of race Y or Z. The differences show up in the aggregate, not among individuals. Of course, there may be other traits—the jumble of characteristics we call “temperament” is a possibility—but we have every reason to believe that they too will be minor.
There is a sense, however, in which none of this really matters. More or less all of us believe that it is wrong—not to mention irrational—to treat people differently on the basis of race. This is not an empty conviction; it has repeatedly moved us to action. It was on the basis of this belief that slavery was ended, fascism defeated, civil rights secured, and apartheid shunned. In each of these instances, lives and treasure were sacrificed in the name of this idea. Today, only people on the lunatic fringe base their political beliefs on folk racial categories like “white” and “black.” Clearly, we are not the same people who concluded that because the races are different, we must treat their members differently. That conclusion simply no longer makes sense to us. Humanity appears to be reaching the point when it can discard the immature idea that being marginally different in the aggregate—even when it concerns important traits—has any bearing on the way we should treat individuals. After all, we are not the groups to which we accidentally belong; we are ourselves, and we must be treated as such.
Marshall Poe is a professor of history at the University of Iowa and host of New Books in History, a podcast of interviews with historians.
