Stating that there are genetic differences should not translate into affirming that we must also create policies based on these differences, at an almost eugenic level, or that it encourages racism, machismo and other isms.
This knowledge is just that, knowledge. If anything, if there are differences that produce deep inequalities, knowing these differences should allow us to correct these inequalities, not accentuate them.
Know to legislate better
If someone has a genetic propensity to do something bad (let's imagine that is possible), we should not excuse them, but rather create even more coercive measures to prevent them from becoming a victim of their own genetic determinism. Mutatis mutandis, finding that a race is genetically inferior at an intellectual level (for example) does not automatically mean being racist.
On the contrary: by identifying a basic problem we can combat it better, as the cognitive psychologist argues. Steven Pinker in his book The blank slate: precisely identifying a genetic tendency can be the stimulus to monitor it more vigorously from a moral and legal point of view.
There is no reason to think that it is more difficult to fight against a genetic tendency than an environmental one, just as I explain in That wasn't in my genetics book.:
Knowing whether a particular group of people, whether black, women, or any other politically sensitive division, is less capable of something than the rest also allows us to correct it more effectively. For example: girls seem less interested than boys in mathematics. Do they have less mathematical intelligence? Is it something genetic? Or maybe it has to do with culture? Or maybe it's a mix of both?
That Wasn't In My Genetics Book (Scientific Dissemination)
Another thing, of course, is that scientifically it is correct or incorrect to affirm that there are substantial differences between human groups, or that there is something similar to races (no, it doesn't exist: there is more genetic diversity between two black inhabitants of Africa than between an African and a European; we are all amazingly mixed).
Furthermore, it is difficult to isolate genes from the environment: we are facing an indisocial jungle that results in a phenotypic variance that is altered depending on as many dimensions as we are able to measure. There is always genetic influence, there is always environmental influence, and both genetic and environmental influence feed off each other in ways that we are not yet able to distinguish.
There is no embracing genetic determinism, but neither is there any escape from it. Nor should we do that with environmental determinism: the criticism of poorly understood genetic determinism involves the assumption of an environmental determinism so inflexible that, if true, tIt would also turn us into puppets.
If you want to go deeper into this and other things, you can do so in this interview about the aforementioned book:
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The news
The fact that there are genetic differences does not mean that we must also discriminate based on these differences.
was originally published in
Xataka Science
by
Sergio Parra
.