Value

There's an article in the New York Times about recent discoveries in DNA research and how those might be applied and misapplied:

Scientists, for instance, have recently identified small changes in DNA that account for the pale skin of Europeans, the tendency of Asians to sweat less and West Africans’ resistance to certain diseases.

At the same time, genetic information is slipping out of the laboratory and into everyday life, carrying with it the inescapable message that people of different races have different DNA. Ancestry tests tell customers what percentage of their genes are from Asia, Europe, Africa and the Americas. The heart-disease drug BiDil is marketed exclusively to African-Americans, who seem genetically predisposed to respond to it. Jews are offered prenatal tests for genetic disorders rarely found in other ethnic groups.

DNA markers and racial difference came up a few weeks ago when James Watson, co-Nobel laureate for the identification of the structure of DNA, was interviewed by the UK's Sunday Times:

[Watson] says that he is "inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa" because "all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours-–whereas all the testing says not really," and I know that this "hot potato" is going to be difficult to address. His hope is that everyone is equal, but he counters that "people who have to deal with black employees find this not true." He says that you should not discriminate on the basis of colour, because "there are many people of colour who are very talented, but don't promote them when they haven't succeeded at the lower level." He writes that "there is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically. Our wanting to reserve equal powers of reason as some universal heritage of humanity will not be enough to make it so."

Watson's conclusions about intelligence were soundly debunked by researchers in the field of intelligence (nice summary with links here), who point out that, unlike pale skin or the presence of specific diseases, native intelligence is difficult to measure, and most of our attempts are hindered by socioeconomic and environmental factors; when these are controlled for, racial differences dissipate. Shortly after these remarks, Watson retired from his post at the Cold Spring Harbor Lab on Long Island. Watson's remarks were a (characteristically, for him--more below) extreme response, but the New York Times article goes on to suggest that there is still reason for concern:

Such developments are providing some of the first tangible benefits of the genetic revolution. Yet some social critics fear they may also be giving long-discredited racial prejudices a new potency. The notion that race is more than skin deep, they fear, could undermine principles of equal treatment and opportunity that have relied on the presumption that we are all fundamentally equal.

But it's a not question of racial difference (or ethnic, or whatever), but of our fundamental values as a people. We may want, as Watson says, to value everyone equally in our society--and why shouldn't we? The fact of genetic and biological difference, if it exists (and it does--men and women are biologically distinct, and no one would argue otherwise, but the fact that certain of my genes and working parts differ from a man's has little to do with my test scores or aspirations or how good I am at my job), doesn't matter unless we decide it does.

Come on, we all know stupid people. And some of them are people we value and love. Does lack of academic ability or of the facility to quickly reason and resolve a complex problem (the kind of things we tend to think of when we use the nebulous term "intelligence") make a person inherently worthless? Of course not. Someone who can't get a decent score on a standardized test may be a hard worker or a compassionate person, may have many other skills and talents, and can contribute to the society and the community just as much as the "smart" people. If we drew an IQ line--even if that measure as it exists today weren't so fatally flawed--what would we as a society lose by excluding those below it? A great deal. That's why we don't do it. We have acknowledged that the constellation of valuable things in a person is varied, complex, and possible infinite, and the way to recognize that is to value all persons.

Those who point at the possibility of racial differences in the measure of intelligence are just looking for support for a prejudice they already harbor, an easy excuse to exclude by race; if they weren't, they'd be lobbying instead to exclude all people below a certain IQ line, regardless of race. (As an aside, Watson in earlier comments also suggested breeding out stupidity. To my mind, it's pretty stupid to cull people based on a single measure, as though no other thing had value. He also suggested genetic selection to make all women beautiful--I guess he gets to decide what constitutes beauty, and bad news for you if you're not his type--and giving mothers the option of aborting fetuses that carried a hypothetical genetic marker for homosexuality. Because apparently being pretty and straight and doing well on IQ tests is what you really need to get every job done.) The debate would be about where exactly that dividing line should rest, not the color of the people on one side or the other.

Here's a measure that is not genetic but is clearly and unequivocally linked with better health and survival, higher standardized test scores, greater access to education and other resources, and a more prominent and influential role in the society: money. Many societies through history have recognized this marker, and explicitly valued those born into better economic circumstances above those born into poverty: for example, societies in which a vote or other political influence is tied to ownership of property.

But we as Americans have chosen to value individuals in our political system without regard to the economic circumstances of their birth: everyone gets the same vote. We believe in access to education for all, and that the opportunity to gain money shouldn't be restricted by how much you're born with--you should have the chance to rise from poverty, you should have the chance even to become rich. But why? After all, it's proven that people born into a higher socioeconomic class are likely to do better overall . . .

It's a matter of what we choose to value, how we have chosen to define justice.

We've made the choice to value more than one thing in a person, in fact to value many things, by attempting to treat everyone equally. (In practice, this needs some work. But that's several other conversations.) In that scenario, what DNA research may show about racial difference in any particular respect is immaterial.

And that is something I value very highly.

Sorry Doesn't Cut It

Don Imus called the Rutgers female basketball players something offensive to them as women and as women of color (which I am choosing not to repeat; once was enough). He has been slapped on the wrists, with a two-week suspension from his radio show, and has been running around apologizing left and right. He says he wants to apologize directly to the Rutgers women, but I will not be surprised if they choose not to accept his apology, not least because it's all about him, and not at all about them. He kissed up to Al Sharpton on the latter's program, and Sharpton cut to the point:

“I’m scathed,” Mr. Imus said. “Are you crazy? How am I unscathed by this? Don’t you think I’m humiliated?”

Mr. Sharpton replied, “You’re not as humiliated as young black women are.”

Exactly.

All the sorries in the world won't change the fact that those young women were called that name. (Need a little Ntozake Shange right here.) All the sorries won't change the fact that he even thought that for a moment about them (even if, as he claims, he meant it as a joke--the fact that he thought the remark was humorous is just as offensive as if he meant it seriously). All the sorries in the world don't change the fact that these women have worked hard in their sport, and what do they get? Called a racist, sexist, all-around offensive name. How exactly does sorry make that go away? How does beating his breast in public and calling attention to his sorry do anything for anyone but Don Imus, when you get right down to it? It doesn't.

Firing Don Imus (which won't happen) wouldn't make it better. I don't know what would make him experience the same degradation that he dished out by deriding and dismissing young black women's accomplishments with an epithet. In fact, there is probably nothing that could be done to him that would be equivalent.

Which is itself the heart of the problem.

Social Engineering

Last week we went to a taping of the Daily Show. Rob commented while we waited in line outside that it was peculiar that such a large agglomeration of liberals didn't attract panhandlers or proselytizers of any sort: after all, we were essentially captive in that location for an hour or two, and there was no one to stop people from working the line. But maybe the audience weren't such flaming liberals after all.

Once we had been seated by a cast of cheerful minions (Disney Park-happy, if Disney Parks permitted slacker haircuts and jeans and T-shirts), it was time for the self-described "warm-up monkey," who said his name was Paul. He began by making us cheer and shout as loudly as we could, over and over, and then the same for laughter, repeating that it was important that we were loud once the taping began. We practiced cheering and then laughing until we were just short of hoarse.

Then commenced the comedic warm-up, in the form of patter with the audience. There were jokes about a frat guy in the front row, Jon Stewart's height--nothing original. Then Paul said, "Hey, a black guy!" and proceeded to indulge in a series of stereotypes about black men. When someone pointed out that there was another black man in the audience (yeah, so-called liberal gatherings do tend to be mighty white, but Paul didn't do anything with that potentially rich satirical point, one that I expect Jon Stewart would have done a great deal with), he went on in the same vein: black guys prefer white chicks, black guys like to have lots of them, blah blah blah. "Uncoooomfortable!" Rob whispered.

Thing was, though, no one appeared to be uncomfortable. Pretty much everyone laughed.

The jokes weren't funny, but we'd been pretrained to laugh, and laugh a lot. We'd spent the previous few minutes learning that loud laughter earns praise.

The humor was offensive, but we'd been told to laugh. And if you don't laugh, you're left out of the fun.

The black guys who were the focus of these remarks laughed, so that made it okay for us white liberals to laugh.

And come on, this is the milieu of Alpha Liberal Jon Stewart: nothing anti-liberal could be happening here, right?

(There was a black woman in the audience too, but Paul the Warm-up Monkey never took note of her. She too laughed.)

Maybe those gentlemen genuinely enjoyed the racial humor at their expense; I have no way of knowing. But were Rob and I the only people in the place who did find it a bit skeevy? Either Jon Stewart's program isn't the liberal bastian it has been portrayed as (seems implausible, given the content of the show), or it's pretty easy to get us all to check our values at the door.

Which would be a fascinating social experiment, and one ripe for Stewart's pointed wit. But alas, I don't think it was that knowing. More likely that at the Daily Show they're just thoughtless idiots like the rest of the world.