Human Biodiversity's Genteel Revolution
As the revolution in human biodiversity goes mainstream, many of its ancestors are unfairly maligned or forgotten.
Written by Bo Winegard.
Like many revolutions, the revolution in human biodiversity will likely disown its own forebears.
Consider Harvard scientist David Reich, a pioneer in human genetics, who has pushed back against racial equalitarianism more effectively than almost anyone in mainstream discourse. His 2018 New York Times article, ‘How Genetics Is Changing Our Understanding of Race,’ accomplished the apparently impossible, making the case for human biological and psychological diversity in a prestigious liberal outlet. In that piece, Reich explicitly rejected the dogma of human sameness and warned that genetics would discover undeniable evidence of racial differences.1
So how should we prepare for the likelihood that in the coming years, genetic studies will show that many traits are influenced by genetic variations, and that these traits will differ on average across human populations? It will be impossible — indeed, anti-scientific, foolish and absurd — to deny those differences.
His book Who We Are and How We Got Here is, among other things, a sustained attack on the implausible notion that human races are the same, telling the unique evolutionary stories of different human populations, each facing different selective regimes.
For this, Reich should be commended. Yet his strategy for engaging liberals and others potentially resistant to human diversity is not wholly commendable. It relies heavily on cautious hedging, selective engagement with previous scholarship, and the castigation of more candid or speculative writers.
Strategic caution is understandable. Winning hearts and minds matters. HBD bloggers who attack pieties about human equality with a rhetorical sledgehammer are unlikely to persuade; they even may do more harm than good by alienating the educated lay reader. But caution has limits. It does not require mendacities. Nor does it require maligning others.