How to Argue With a Racist: What Our Genes Do (and Don't) Say About Human Difference

by Adam Rutherford

“Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge,”

Most (though not absolutely all) contemporary geneticists disagree with the idea that genetic variations between traditional racial groupings of people are meaningful in terms of behavior or innate abilities.

It is perfectly possible for a paper in a reputable journal to be flawed, or even wrong. That is why we publish—so that other experts can test our ideas.

Of all the attempts over the centuries to place humans in distinct races, none succeeds. Genetics refuses to comply with these artificial and superficial categories. Skin color, while being the most obvious difference between people, is a very bad proxy for the total amount of similarity or difference between individuals and between populations. Racial differences are skin-deep.

When all you’ve ever known is privilege, equality feels like oppression.

Go back a few centuries further and we reach a mathematical certainty referred to as the genetic isopoint. This is the time in history when the entire population is the ancestor of the entire contemporary population today. For the people of Europe, the isopoint occurs in the tenth century. In other words, if you were alive in the tenth century in Europe, and you have European descendants alive today, then you are the ancestor of all Europeans alive today (we estimate that up to 80 percent of the population of tenth-century Europe has living descendants). Another way to think of it is like this: One branch of a family tree of two first cousins crosses in a shared grandparent; one branch of all European family trees cross through one individual in 1400 CE; at the isopoint, all branches of all family trees cross through all people for that population.

you cannot reason someone out of a position they did not reason themselves into.

We celebrate the fact that science is an endeavor built upon past knowledge with the maxim that “we see further by standing on the shoulders of giants.” We must also be aware of the centuries of pseudoscience perpetrated by some of the very men of power on whose shoulders we stand, because their ideas have percolated through time, and persist within science and society to this day, no matter how offensive, out of date, or absurd they might be.

If you are a racist, then you are asking for a fight. But science is my ally, not yours, and your fight is not just with me, but with reality.