The latest issue of Science contains three ideological articles on how teaching of science must be reformed to be more inclusive and antiracist. Most of the authors of all three pieces are affiliated with departments or institutes of science education, and this may explain the mission-oriented tone of the pieces. I’ll discuss one of them today and another one soon.
This article argues that genetics education remains systemically racist, and must be attacked, dismantled, and made explicitly antiracist. In fact, the article could have been written by an Ibram Kendi—if he knew anything about genetics. As usual with such pieces, the problems it raises occurred largely in the past and are not currently “systemic” in genetics education. The article gives no evidence that today’s genetics classes are rife with racism, white supremacy, advocacy of eugenics, and other bad behaviors that create divisions between people. On the other hand, the article nevertheless wants to emphasize divisions between people—most notably “races:—as they see these divisions, conceived as “socially constructed”, as groups having differential power that must be recognized and effaced.
Besides being divisive, my main objection to the piece is that it assumes genetics is taught today as it was seventy years ago, which it isn’t, and, most of all, it tries to turn a science class into a class in ideology: a course in “dismantling” modern genetics to eliminate its white supremacy and then re-infusing it with “antiracist” values. Having taught genetics and sat in on other genetics classes, the authors are dealing with a non-problem, and their solutions will only make genetics education worse: turning out a generation of ideologues who know less about genetics than the previous generation.
Click on the title to read, and you can find the pdf here. Excerpts from the piece are indented
First, the problem, stated in postmodern terms. Note the jargon:
The methods of conducting genetics research and its outcomes are steeped in, and influenced by, power and privilege dynamics in broader society. The kinds of questions asked, biological differences sought, and how populations are defined and examined are all informed by the respective dominant culture (often Eurocentric, white, economically privileged, masculine, and heteronormative) and its predominant ways of knowing and being (3). Findings from human genetics and genomics research subsequently play into existing sociopolitical dynamics by providing support for claims about putative differences between groups and the prevalence of particular traits in particular groups (3). Historically, such research has been used in support of eugenic movements to legitimize forced sterilization and genocides. [JAC: this happened in the past and is not happening now.[ Yet it would be a mistake to assume that such research is merely a discredited past relic, a stain on the otherwise objective and rational track record of genetic research. Rather, it was mainstream work conducted by prominent researchers and supported by major professional societies. The reality is that some modern human genetics is still informed by the same racist logic (4). [JAC: no examples given.]
I’m not sure what the “racist logic” is here. If you look up reference (4), you don’t find evidence of “racist logic” in modern science, but a description of its use in older teachings and then a discussion about how one should conceive “ancestry”. In fact, that reference gives evidence that there are average genetic differences between “races” even though populations vary continuously with geography and there are no diagnostic and fixed differences between named “races” (I prefer to use the term “geographic population”, a claim that Duncan et al, deny. Luana Maroja and I, in our recent paper on ideology and science, show that even in America, typological “races” of “white, East Asian, Hispanic, and black” (“Hispanics” aren’t normally considered a race, but in America are distinct because they’re largely from Mexico), are not sociopolitical constructs lacking biological meaning, but do differ on average in traits and constellations of genes. From knowing only an American’s genes, you can guess their self-reported ancestry with over 99% accuracy.
What these differences mean for traits, behaviors, and medical outcomes is only beginning to be explored, but they reflect the geographic distribution of ancestors, for geographic isolation leads to genetic diffrences via natural selection and genetic drift. This is why genetic ancestry companies can give you a pretty accurate view of your genetic ancestry (I, for example, am nearly 100% Askhkenazi Jew). This wouldn’t work if geographic populations were genetically identical.
The purpose of the paper, then, is to expose and then dismantle the systematic racism of modern genetics education. You must be “antiracist” rather than “race-neutral”— something that Kendi emphasizes in his book on antiracism—and must at every turn deny that human races or populations differ biologically, for that leads inevitably to ranking and racism. In other words, it’s bad for society to even study genetic differences between populations:
Genetic distinctions between human populations are not natural; they are the consequences of categorizations developed by geneticists for the purposes of their research and the questions they pursue.
. . . The search for genetic differences among populations, even when not done using explicit racial categories, can still yield findings that are problematic in that they can make social hierarchies appear “natural”. , , [JAC: they then cite the caste divisions in India, and I know little about that. But the point—that differences equal ranking and racism—is the same.]
. . . . Our contention here is that successful genetic education has to be antiracist, it cannot be race-neutral. Therefore, a core learning objective for human genetics education should be understanding that neither the environment nor scientists’ definitions of genetic populations are neutral but rather that they are shaped by the historical, social, and political contexts in which they exist.
Actually, one can parse out genetic groupings using statistics alone, free from “historical, social, and political contexts.” Now what you call these groupings—races, ethnic groups, or populations—is arbitrary.
Further, the goal of genetics education must be dismantling this racism, not so much teaching how genetics works:
First, if one wishes to dismantle racism (and other systems of oppression) in science and society, then one needs to understand the ways in which such oppression is woven into the fabric of genetics research and disrupt and counteract these practices early and often through education.
But, as I said, the evidence for the ongoing racism of genetics is nil, and, in fact, the authors have to resort to making doubtful statements like this:
In this sense, the Human Genome Project was developed in, and sustained by, a sociopolitical context that upheld (and still upholds) value-laden group differences.
So the “sociopolitical context” was supposedly based on showing group differences that could be the basis of bigotry (not the case), but this “fact” is even used to tar the Human Genome Project, which was supposedly not only developed in the context of bigotry, but sustains that bigotry! To wit:
To dismantle racism, you must first recognize that racial differences are purely a social construct, but at the same time must recognize them, probably because these socially-constructed differences are correlated with well-being. (I of course don’t deny that racism has lowered the well-being of minorities, but also recognize that even to practice racism, one has to somehow recognize different populations, and that’s partly genetic, even if the genetic differences we see were only used as platforms for historical racism and bigotry.
And so we must avoid color-blindness because recognizing color (which of course is largely genetic) is said to be the key to eliminating disparities between races. (The authors barely mention hardly anything about socioeconomic differences within populations; their entire focus is on race.):
The understanding that race is not genetic (or biological) does not automatically translate into an understanding that race is a social construct, or that it can, and does, shape our biology. Moreover, knowing that race is a social construct does not automatically explain racial disparities in health or any other arena because it ignores the systemic nature of racism and the resulting inequities. Solely countering beliefs in race-based genetic differences and focusing on the similarities between racial groups obscures the real and devastating differences in the well-being of minoritized racial groups. This can lead to racial “color blindness” of a genetic flavor that sees everyone as the same and turns a blind eye to the impact of racism on people’s biology.
1.) Emphasize the sociopolitical context of the environment
2.) Entangle environment and biology.
3.) Scrutinize the sociopolitical categorization of human populations.
Point 1 is made to emphasize the debilitating effect of racist environments on minorities, point 2 is to show how the environment, which imposes differences on people via racism, has biological effects on people, and point 3 is to show how the definition and use of races has served the political ends of gaining power over others. The authors recommend some textbooks that will help create “brave and safe spaces” for students:
There are powerful exemplars of curricula at the high school level that engage students with ambitious science, its sociopolitical dimensions, and a focus on social justice (13, 14). There is a growing number of excellent books (15) and online resources for anti-racist genetics and biology education—for example, the LabXchange’s “Racism as a Public Health Crisis” curriculum, and the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center’s materials on “Race, Racism, and Genetics.” These resources include supports for teachers in creating brave and safe spaces for discussions about race and genetics. Funding and committed support of national and professional science and science education organizations will also be instrumental for these efforts.
Of course using these books turns a genetics course into a course in antiracist ideology, so that there is less time for students to learn “race-neutral” genetics. But the authors don’t really care how much genetics students learn; they are far more concerned with propagandizing a generation of students to create the kind of social change they see as salubrious:
In the short term, we see scientists’ role in the education of future scientists and teachers as one powerful lever for change. Undergraduate coursework in biology and genetics, often taught by faculty in those departments, is a space where we can begin “sowing the seeds” of sociopolitical awareness in genetics.
Now I think it’s great to work to rid the world of what racism that still exists, though I don’t see much of it in genetics courses. And I see nothing wrong, when you teach human genetics, with revealing the flaws in the old diagnostic “big-genetic-difference” view of human races, and emphasizing instead that they are populations that now intergrade, so the delineation of specific races becomes arbitrary. But one has to also tell the truth: races are populations that evolved in ancient geographical isolation, and there are real biological differences between them. And, of course, one should at least insert the caveat that the differences that do exist do not efface the moral dictum that members of different groups have equal rights and deserve equal treatment.
The worst part of this paper—and the two papers that accompany it (one here, the other here)—is that it’s part of a nationwide drive to turn education into propaganda, and of to change the purpose of all education from teaching students the truth to teaching students the temporary and political “personal truths” of their woke overseers.
From the article :
“Historically, such research has been used in support of eugenic movements to legitimize forced sterilization and genocides. ”
It is said The Iron Law of Woke Projection never misses.
I find it very strange that these ideas, (woke “progressive”) is becoming so common in USA and Canada, As a recently retired science teacher (chem, bio and physics in high school) I can say that this has not become a major issue in Norwegian schools yet. And there’s certainly lots of woke, “progressive” people here also. We are not immune from the problems however. Some schoolbooks do contain some “wokey stuff, this is especially seen books in primary and secondary school introducing concept like “gender identity” to children and adolescents. In high school it’s little thankfully. I think one of the reasons is that Norwegian teachers are quick to protest when ideological woke ideas is introduced into schoolbooks. Also, probably the most important, teacher union orgs are not yet fully onboard the ideological woke ideas bandwagon. There’s 3 of these unions, my union (for teacher with master degree) seems to be rather anti woke and free speech fundamentalist. The two other seems rather moderate to. Seems to be the same resistance to these ideas in university science courses too, at least compared to USA and Canada. For example, the teacher union in Canada seems to have gone out in fully support of “gender affirming care” and member go out in the streets to protest when politician try to resist this (like in Alberta recently). I can’t see that this could happen here.
When the newpapers write about this stuff (BLM, Critical race theory, gender stuff) is higher education, it’s always in courses/department like “gender studies”, art and theater schools, creative art (film school) and the like. So far, science seems to be resistant to this stuff.
Yet another reason to admire Norway. Like there weren’t enough already.
Scandinavia and Japan embarrass the rest of the world so frequently.
(I used to say the same about NZ but…..)
And they’re so damn nice about it!
D.A.
NYC
Racial homogeneity is a beautiful thing, eh David?
Scandinavia has the strength that there is, for now, only a small ghetto of non-Viking “others” to be the source of trouble and the resulting race-based advocacy for the kind of “studies” programs that spread the rot. Unlike blacks in America, the “others” can be seen as belatedly unwelcome interlopers, rather than as a legacy they were stuck with. Societies don’t just drift this way by the spontaneous generation of bad ideas. They are driven there by people hoping to gain power.
As Steven Pinker has said: the downside of diversity is the cost of reduced social trust.
I’ve not been to Scandinavia, unfortunately. One day…
BUT: It took me two years living there in my early 20s and over a dozen visits in later decades to understand why I really, really liked living in Tokyo. It was the high social trust I think. (I do speak Japanese so the milage of other gaijin there may differ).
That said, I’ve happily lived in NYC for 25 years and you can’t get more diverse than that. Except, perhaps the Australia/NZ I grew up in. Growing up in Oz in the 70s was very multicultural and Australia is kind of a model for that. (Of course, while there were many refugees, the immigration program was balanced and controlled. You can’t swim or walk to Australia! Or… you could try but…) hehehe
As Thomas Sowell says there are no solutions, only tradeoffs.
D.A.
NYC
For goodness’ sake Bjorn, GO WARN YOUR PEOPLE!
Run, screaming in Norwegian (you’ve got the vowels for it!) to every longhouse, viking settlement, oil rig and coffee shop and warn them!
Yes it DOES start in the “studies” departments of unis and progresses to newspapers before it infects the entire society, like a fungus on the anglosphere.
WARN THEM BJORN!
D.A.
NYC
I can only suggest that different countries are early or late adapters of the current ideologies, but they too can be … assimilated. So maybe in 10 years?
And yet I’ve read in several place (e.g. here: https://www.ynetnews.com/article/rk4md2d2a) that Norway is the most antisemitic country in Western Europe. Maybe you could mention whether there’s any truth to that?
Hitchens’s Razor
The general pedagogical (is that the word for higher ed?) strategy described in the original article is not new. It is nearly the same as Paulo Freire’s ideological remoulding plan developed in e.g.Pedagogy of the Oppressed, The Politics of Education, and – one I have to read still – A Pedagogy of Hope.
Spoiler, it is explicitly Marxist and Maoist and – spoiler – never intends to develop individuals as independent thinkers and – spoiler – intends Freire’s “conscientizaçao” – or conscientization – to drive activism.
That’s it. Ideological remoulding for social activism to overthrow the existing society — solving the Marxian “problem of reproduction” (perhaps most relevant to PCCE’s quote “it assumes genetics is taught today as it was seventy years ago, which it isn’t”) — replacing it with the image in Freire’s thought – which he pretends will eventually be identical to that in all of society.
It Won’t Work This Time Either – no matter how many words someone chops up into a spiffy new Science Magazine word salad of the same old Marxist cult beliefs.
Coleman Hughes was on NPR this morning, if you can believe it. He was rational and lucid but if people don’t want to listen, they won’t. He has a book out “The End Of Race Politics –Arguments for a Colorblind America”. We need more young people like him.
Very smart interesting guy.
I just finished reading Coleman Hughes’ new book. One of my best take-aways is his use of the term “neoracist” for the self-proclaimed anti-racists like Kendi and d’Angelo. No love lost here! For indeed, Hughes points out: these guys are racists! Pure and simple. He talks a good deal about the colorblind concept and historical instances where the U.S. shied away from fully implementing colorblind language in policy and law when opportunities presented themselves. It is a worthwhile read.
This is the clearest illustration yet of the woke attack on the science of genetics per se. But the new Lysenkoism does not stop at genetics. The hucksters of ethno-math, decolonialized chemistry, and so on, are well aware that every single scientific subject can be “a space where we can begin “sowing the seeds” of sociopolitical awareness” “.
It is reassuring to learn (comment #2) that this wave has not yet reached Norway. But Vær advart, Bjørn: it starts in grievance studies departments, than moves to “education” schools and departments, and spreads out from there.
I think there’s tons of political quotes about “seeds”, but of course I bring :
“The Long March is also a seeding-machine. In the eleven provinces it has sown many seeds which will sprout, leaf, blossom, and bear fruit, and will yield a harvest in the future. In a word, the Long March has ended with victory for us and defeat for the enemy. Who brought the Long March to victory? The Communist Party. ”
-Mao Tse-Tung
On Tactics Against Japanese Imperialism
27 Dec., 1935
And in Marx’s Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League, 1850 – but don’t fall for the canned quotes out there – one must read the piece. Marxists dot org usually delivers (AWK-warrrd!).
You are correct about education.
There been some changes in curriculum which suggest that The Ministry of Education and Research (governmental org deciding curriculum) have been influenced by trans activist. Older teacher often fight against this, while younger seems to more or less accept “the modern view on gender”. As I said, the teacher unions seems to be rather neutral concerning this and as such there’s usually no problem for teachers and educator protesting. Of course, if you protest, you will be called right-wing, but in generally cancel culture is far from as bad as in the USA and especially Canada, There’s been some cases outside the education sector (art and culture orgs of course), which is worrying, but as the discourse here in Europe is changing (restriction on gender affirming care in public health care) more and more pople seem to speak up.
This article in the teacher’s unions magazine would most likely cause serious problem for this professor in many places in North America. Here, he may be called right wing and “uninformed” on the issue, but that’s about it
https://www-utdanningsnytt-no.translate.goog/kjonn-laererstudiet-stig-r-wigestrand/vi-bor-snakke-sant-til-barn-ogsa-om-kjonn/372055?_x_tr_sl=no&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=no&_x_tr_pto=wapp
https://www-utdanningsnytt-no.translate.goog/kjonn-kjonnsidentitet-stig-r-wigestrand/skal-laereren-styres-av-elevers-folelser/378526?_x_tr_sl=no&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=no&_x_tr_pto=wapp
An aside: Razib Khan talks a lot about the genetics of caste in India and is very interesting on it. Differences in caste – vertical vs horizontal/geographical differences in genetics are amazing. And only found there.
————————
I’ve learned over the years now anytime I see … well most of the words of the terrible and boring and wrong excerpted essay – to just dismiss it as stupid and activist.
“Systemic racism” is always the reddest of flags and always – but always – lacks any evidence of actual racism. It is a handwaving catch all to say “Got no evidence”.
D.A.
NYC
Sergiu Kleinerman recounts how universities are making us dumber:
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/universities-are-making-us-dumber .
Why are people who accuse science of racism blind to the racism of religion? The “power and privilege dynamics in broader society,” and the “dominant culture” with its “predominant ways of knowing and being,” are even today far more religious than scientific.
“Systemic racism” doesn’t rely on the actual content of a subject or practice, but on the fact that they take place within a social superstructure that is racist, i.e., bourgeois capitalist.
Blame all this nonsense on the Science editor-in-chief: Holden Thorp. Since he started his tenure at the journal, it has been publishing woke anti-science ideology non-stop.
Sometimes a gene is just a gene.
If there is residual racism in people’s minds and in our institutions, let’s weed them out. I never perceived any systemic racism in my 13 years in the professoriate or in my 25 years in the software industry. (Oh. There’s a well-trodden rejoinder to that. There was pervasive racism all right, but it must have been unconscious or covert. Give me a break.) But shouldn’t the focus in genetics class be, well, genetics? Do we really need our genetics professors (and, presumably, professors across all the science disciplines) to be reprogrammed to be social justice warriors. Don’t think so.
For K-12, the actual science content meets the curriculum road at the state level for each of our states and DC. State boards of education are in general appointed by the governor as is a state superintendent of public instruction or commissioner of education. The state boards make policy which is carried out by the professional staff of a state department of education. Local school boards generally implement the state dept of ed recommended curriculum. State departments of ed get guidance from public working groups made up of teachers, subject matter experts, and other citizens. Since 2013, in STEM areas, these working groups have had the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), developed to be a national reference set of curriculum content and processes. The NGSS were developed with plenty of input from subject matter experts. So a woke governor or a reactionary right wing christian governor can start to do some damage, but in general the inertia of current curricula is pretty strong. Even if a majority-woke or young earth creationist state board were to be appointed by a governor, the gears of the education bureaucracy will grind slowly as professional staff slow walk any ridiculous changes. Whether it be sociopolitical genetics or MM/indigenous ways masquerading as enlightenment science. (Unfortunately they also sometimes slow walk good changes geared to bring curriculum into the current century)
A very interesting point, and one with far-reaching implications. Beyond the case of educational curricula, the US political system as a whole is characterized by tremendous inertia. Leftists complain about this—for example, about the century it took to construct even a modest national health system. But it has its good side, illustrated by the inability of Donald Trump’s administration (the first one, that is) to accomplish much. Even a second Trump administration may, for the same reason, fail to get anywhere with its transformational fascist goals. It will be so bogged down in resistance, inertia, and slow-walking that its government will be mostly paralyzed—or so postulates David Frum, a keen observer (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnphP8HekwE ). Of course, a paralyzed US might have unfortunate consequences in the international and ecological realms.
Long Live Trofim Lysenko! John Lilly! The Secret Life of Plants by Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird!
The tension and dynamic between the cultural and the political.
The world has gone completely bonkers. I want to bang my head on the wall, but I won’t, because I don’t want a headache!
Look at the author affiliations. Almost all of them are in education-related fields, rather than actual science.
The vast majority of intelligent liberal Americans are now able to sniff this type of critical pedagogy when it appears in their daily lives. And they are losing sympathy and patience with the vector of argument. The big tell is trading the Rx of definable, material improvement for effected groups in favor of the quest to chase the greased pig of systemic oppression.