How to Argue With a Racist: History, Science, Race and Reality

by Adam Rutherford

People have spoken of DNA as a ‘blueprint’ for years, but this is misleading and has little explicatory value, as it implies a detailed, mapped-out plan, each instruction describing a component of our biology that is determined by its nature. Genes are sequences of coded chemicals that determine the order of amino acids that form the proteins that enact our biology. The steps from the raw written code to a lived life are extraordinarily complex. Proteins come in the form of enzymes, hormones, cellular architecture, molecular machines, transporters, and all operate in networks with other molecules, in a range of cells and organelles, in tissues and organs, expressed in time and space from conception to death. When we speak of nature and nurture, it is not useful or accurate to think of these two phenomena in opposition. Nature – meaning DNA – has never been versus nurture – meaning everything that isn’t DNA. Our genomes are the totality of our DNA, and that is where our genes are. Nurture – meaning the non-genetic environment – does not mean whether your parents cuddled you or ignored you as a child; it means every interaction between the universe and your cells, including how you were raised, but also everything from the orientation of you as foetus in utero, to the randomness of happenstance, chance and noise in a very messy system.