The more we come to know about the human genome, the more we come to recognize a certain, awkward fact. Genetic differences endow some folks with significantly more of certain desirable (or undesirable) traits than others.

Last month, James Watson, the legendary biologist, was condemned and forced into retirement after claiming that African intelligence wasn't "the same as ours." "Racist, vicious and unsupported by science," said the Federation of American Scientists. "Utterly unsupported by scientific evidence," declared the U.S. government's supervisor of genetic research. The New York Times told readers that when Watson implied "that black Africans are less intelligent than whites, he hadn't a scientific leg to stand on."

I wish these assurances were true. They aren't. Tests do show an IQ deficit, not just for Africans relative to Europeans, but for Europeans relative to Asians. Economic and cultural theories have failed to explain most of the pattern, and there's strong preliminary evidence that part of it is genetic. It's time to prepare for the possibility that equality of intelligence, in the sense of racial averages on tests, will turn out not to be true.

Now what does this mean for the question of equality? Does it mean that we need to abandon the notion that we all are created equal, given that it is manifestly untrue? I'd answer in the negative, because even at the time Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, it was already quite clear that there were differences between people based upon a whole host of factors that in no way undermined the essential equality and dignity of every person in the eyes of God. Indeed, that Jeffersonian equality was based upon the notion that our common humanity was the basis for our equality, and nothing more. That was true even in the case of slaves -- remember, of course, that Jefferson's condemnation of slavery (which presumed the equality of Africans) was stricken by the Continental Congress because of its threat to the "peculiar institution".

Ultimately, of course, there are two ways of dealing with the manifest inequality in the state of persons while still holding to the radical equality of persons as persons.

One, radically liberal in the modern sense, presumes that society must be leveled so that the inequalities are minimized and eliminated. Unfortunately, the result is that we round-down human achievement to the lowest common denominator. In literature, this is best modeled in the Vonnegut short story "Harrison Bergeron".

The other, today called conservative but in reality classically liberal, supports permitting individuals to rise to the fullest of their abilities, even if this results in socio-economic inequality and the concentration of wealth and power. While often accused of being a betrayal of equality (which it is, indeed, if one defines "equality" as equality of outcome ). The focus there is equality of opportunity, in the sense that one makes the most of what one has.

The problem with the notion of genetically based inequality is that it could lead some to presume that Huxley's Brave New World is the model for society to follow. It clearly is not, for the system there enforces a radical inequality. As such, the challenge ahead is to determine how to understand equality in an age where inequality is in part defined in our DNA.

Posted by: Greg at 11:56 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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