Ignoring Science Is Killing Us
On the evolutionary roots of racism.
There’s an old joke about a drunk person stumbling around under a
street light late at night apparently looking for something. A good
Samaritan happens by and asks the person what he is looking for. The
drunk person replies “My keys.” The good Samaritan looks around and
says “Well, this is a fairly small area and I don’t see any keys here.”
The drunk person replies “Oh, I didn’t lose them here, I lost them over
there in the dark.” The Samaritan asks “Well, then why are you looking
for them over here?” The drunk person replies “The light is better.”
This joke describes what is going in many current conversations about racism. Activists and others are dealing with racism in part by working “where the light is better” and not where the problem really is.
This blog has championed the idea that human evolution is responsible for some very bad and yet nearly ubiquitous human behavior. The prime example explored here has been religion: religion is a biological, evolutionary adaptation (or exaptation, see below). In this month’s blog, another of humanity’s darknesses is confronted with the harsh bright light of evolutionary theory: Racism.
The US is in turmoil. Perhaps not since the ‘60s have things been this bad. And not since the ‘60s have students, especially college students, been this engaged – which is good. But unlike the ‘60s, many mid-20-teen students are not fighting the good fight, they are picking at safe edges, especially when it comes to racism.
In the ‘60s we protested the Vietnam War. One important idea behind such protests was that, a mere twenty years after World War II, no one was in a position to oppose all war, to declare all war completely immoral and swear never to go to war again. Taking on all war was too much. War, conflict, was too deep in the human psyche. But taking on one war, one war that was obviously immoral, that was being fought for the rich at the expense of the poor (for example, those who could not afford college had a high chance of being drafted) – taking on that one war was doable, feasible. So we did. And eventually we won . . . after a fashion, and only if you squint and tilt your head.
But today, college students don’t have this luxury of attacking the current embodiment of something bad, they have to tackle a monster at the very heart of something horribly human. Yet this is precisely what they aren’t doing.
The most overt and obvious incarnations of racism are now either illegal or culturally forbidden. And many citizens of all races actually embrace such laws and mores. We have a black president. And several other black men are currently running to succeed him.
But racism persists. It manifests now in more subtle ways, as is well-known. Such manifestations include everything from racial slights and slurs in the work place or school, etc., to the institutional or structural racism of the corporation where the work place is located, or of the administration of the school, etc. Activists, students, and others are left with the option of fighting against these more subtle ways or against all of racism itself. This latter battle strikes almost everyone as unwinnable, at least in the foreseeable future. So the battle against racism today is usually targeted at the more subtle ways. Here is where any similarity with the protests of the ‘60s against the Vietnam War vanishes.
Recently, the New York Times published letters from NYT readers about their experiences of racism on American college campuses (here). These ranged from slights, often called microaggressions (e.g., a mother of a student not wanting to speak to a black student about Greek life on campus), to threats (e.g., a noose hung on campus).
Fighting these microaggressions seems hopeless. They occur in the unnumbered thousands every day. But it’s worse than the mere numbers; microaggressions are a function of more than race: they are also a function of the fact that some people simply enjoy being rude, and many people feel the need to be rude on occasion -- so microaggressions are deeply human. Getting rid of rudeness would require getting rid of humans (and probably getting rid of at least all mammalian life – dogs are often rude to other dogs, pushing them out of the way, for example). (Getting rid of humans is an idea that surprisingly strongly recommends itself to the caring reader. See my “Homo sapiens 2.0” and “After the humans are gone.” Both here.)
This all suggests that fighting against microaggressions is unproductive. (I fully realize that that last sentence, and the many preceding it, might be regarded by some as microaggressions.) Getting campus administrators, for example, fired might seem like progress, but it is not. But if fighting against racial microaggressions is out, that leaves only fighting against structural racism. And doing that is probably as hard as fighting all of pure racism itself.
So what to do?
Noticeably absent from all American conversation on race, as in every other aspect of our lives is science. In a time when the truths and methodology of science are desperately needed, science is denounced by a majority of Americans. From global warming and climate change deniers to evolution deniers to the deniers of, e.g., the efficacy of vaccines, science shoved aside for easy, magical “solutions” to problems. As a stark data point: respondents from 34 countries to a survey found that the U. S. ranks second to last (just above Turkey) in the public acceptance of evolution. A full 40% of Americans reject evolution outright, while another 20% either aren’t sure or claim that evolution did happen “but with god’s help” – which is not evolution at all. (See J. D. Miller et al. “Public Acceptance of Evolution in 34 Countries,” Science 313, 2006, 765-66.)
Science is derided because science has some harsh truths for us (Earth is not the center of the universe, for one). And the truth is that racism has deep evolutionary roots. So like religion, it is going to be next to impossible to get rid of. This is because racism, like religion, is “in our genes.” It is not culturally constructed and it is not just a bunch of bad people behaving badly. And like religion, the evolutionary aspect of racism is quite complicated. Here are two major evolutionary theories of racism.
On the one side, there is the possibility of direct evolution of racism via group selection. We know that natural selection operates at many levels, from the gene level up to (and possibly beyond) the group-of-organisms-level (see David Wilson “A Theory of Group Selection” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 72, 1975, 143-46.) Group selection predicts that organisms favor within-group members and discriminate against out-group members. So on this theory, the down-side of group selection is that it creates an in-group/out-group division. Racism, then, is the likely result.
On the other side, racism might, like religion, be a side-effect of other mental capacities that were directly selected for (such evolutionary side-effects are called exaptations). Being religious is an evolutionary amalgam our over-active agent-detection algorithm, our need to explain things, and our ability to remember (indeed, our penchant for remembering) weird explanations. We had to have all these neural/mental devices and capacities to compete successfully in the job of getting our young into the next generation. The problem is, we over-use them, and that’s where religions come from. (For more see Part 2 of my, Excellent Beauty: The Naturalness of Religion and the Unnaturalness of the World, Columbia University Press, 2015.) Same with racism. Natural selection may not have selected for neural mechanisms designed to categorize others on the basis of their race. Instead, on this theory, categorizing via race is a by-product of our ability to detect and categorize coalitions and alliances. (See, Robert Kurzban, John Tooby, and Leda Cosmides “Can race be erased? Coalitional computation and social categorization,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 98 (26), 2001, 15387-15392. And see here.)
This joke describes what is going in many current conversations about racism. Activists and others are dealing with racism in part by working “where the light is better” and not where the problem really is.
This blog has championed the idea that human evolution is responsible for some very bad and yet nearly ubiquitous human behavior. The prime example explored here has been religion: religion is a biological, evolutionary adaptation (or exaptation, see below). In this month’s blog, another of humanity’s darknesses is confronted with the harsh bright light of evolutionary theory: Racism.
The US is in turmoil. Perhaps not since the ‘60s have things been this bad. And not since the ‘60s have students, especially college students, been this engaged – which is good. But unlike the ‘60s, many mid-20-teen students are not fighting the good fight, they are picking at safe edges, especially when it comes to racism.
In the ‘60s we protested the Vietnam War. One important idea behind such protests was that, a mere twenty years after World War II, no one was in a position to oppose all war, to declare all war completely immoral and swear never to go to war again. Taking on all war was too much. War, conflict, was too deep in the human psyche. But taking on one war, one war that was obviously immoral, that was being fought for the rich at the expense of the poor (for example, those who could not afford college had a high chance of being drafted) – taking on that one war was doable, feasible. So we did. And eventually we won . . . after a fashion, and only if you squint and tilt your head.
But today, college students don’t have this luxury of attacking the current embodiment of something bad, they have to tackle a monster at the very heart of something horribly human. Yet this is precisely what they aren’t doing.
The most overt and obvious incarnations of racism are now either illegal or culturally forbidden. And many citizens of all races actually embrace such laws and mores. We have a black president. And several other black men are currently running to succeed him.
But racism persists. It manifests now in more subtle ways, as is well-known. Such manifestations include everything from racial slights and slurs in the work place or school, etc., to the institutional or structural racism of the corporation where the work place is located, or of the administration of the school, etc. Activists, students, and others are left with the option of fighting against these more subtle ways or against all of racism itself. This latter battle strikes almost everyone as unwinnable, at least in the foreseeable future. So the battle against racism today is usually targeted at the more subtle ways. Here is where any similarity with the protests of the ‘60s against the Vietnam War vanishes.
Recently, the New York Times published letters from NYT readers about their experiences of racism on American college campuses (here). These ranged from slights, often called microaggressions (e.g., a mother of a student not wanting to speak to a black student about Greek life on campus), to threats (e.g., a noose hung on campus).
Fighting these microaggressions seems hopeless. They occur in the unnumbered thousands every day. But it’s worse than the mere numbers; microaggressions are a function of more than race: they are also a function of the fact that some people simply enjoy being rude, and many people feel the need to be rude on occasion -- so microaggressions are deeply human. Getting rid of rudeness would require getting rid of humans (and probably getting rid of at least all mammalian life – dogs are often rude to other dogs, pushing them out of the way, for example). (Getting rid of humans is an idea that surprisingly strongly recommends itself to the caring reader. See my “Homo sapiens 2.0” and “After the humans are gone.” Both here.)
This all suggests that fighting against microaggressions is unproductive. (I fully realize that that last sentence, and the many preceding it, might be regarded by some as microaggressions.) Getting campus administrators, for example, fired might seem like progress, but it is not. But if fighting against racial microaggressions is out, that leaves only fighting against structural racism. And doing that is probably as hard as fighting all of pure racism itself.
So what to do?
Noticeably absent from all American conversation on race, as in every other aspect of our lives is science. In a time when the truths and methodology of science are desperately needed, science is denounced by a majority of Americans. From global warming and climate change deniers to evolution deniers to the deniers of, e.g., the efficacy of vaccines, science shoved aside for easy, magical “solutions” to problems. As a stark data point: respondents from 34 countries to a survey found that the U. S. ranks second to last (just above Turkey) in the public acceptance of evolution. A full 40% of Americans reject evolution outright, while another 20% either aren’t sure or claim that evolution did happen “but with god’s help” – which is not evolution at all. (See J. D. Miller et al. “Public Acceptance of Evolution in 34 Countries,” Science 313, 2006, 765-66.)
Science is derided because science has some harsh truths for us (Earth is not the center of the universe, for one). And the truth is that racism has deep evolutionary roots. So like religion, it is going to be next to impossible to get rid of. This is because racism, like religion, is “in our genes.” It is not culturally constructed and it is not just a bunch of bad people behaving badly. And like religion, the evolutionary aspect of racism is quite complicated. Here are two major evolutionary theories of racism.
On the one side, there is the possibility of direct evolution of racism via group selection. We know that natural selection operates at many levels, from the gene level up to (and possibly beyond) the group-of-organisms-level (see David Wilson “A Theory of Group Selection” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 72, 1975, 143-46.) Group selection predicts that organisms favor within-group members and discriminate against out-group members. So on this theory, the down-side of group selection is that it creates an in-group/out-group division. Racism, then, is the likely result.
On the other side, racism might, like religion, be a side-effect of other mental capacities that were directly selected for (such evolutionary side-effects are called exaptations). Being religious is an evolutionary amalgam our over-active agent-detection algorithm, our need to explain things, and our ability to remember (indeed, our penchant for remembering) weird explanations. We had to have all these neural/mental devices and capacities to compete successfully in the job of getting our young into the next generation. The problem is, we over-use them, and that’s where religions come from. (For more see Part 2 of my, Excellent Beauty: The Naturalness of Religion and the Unnaturalness of the World, Columbia University Press, 2015.) Same with racism. Natural selection may not have selected for neural mechanisms designed to categorize others on the basis of their race. Instead, on this theory, categorizing via race is a by-product of our ability to detect and categorize coalitions and alliances. (See, Robert Kurzban, John Tooby, and Leda Cosmides “Can race be erased? Coalitional computation and social categorization,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 98 (26), 2001, 15387-15392. And see here.)
These two different theories have different consequences for how to, and how hard it will be to, get rid of racism, but on neither theory will it be easy. Yet we have reason to believe that getting rid of racism is possible.
Add to the two above theories of racism results from anthropology, economics, political science, psychology, etc., and you see that there is a wealth of science that is not informing our discussion of race. There is instead a lot of chest pounding, wringing of hands, concerned facial expressions, and protests. Given the above, all the talking heads across our scarred nation are wasting everyone’s time. Humans are African apes, and all discussions should begin with this fact. Without taking the science of race and racism seriously we cannot hope to solve the problem. Or any other problem, for that matter.
