Don't you love genetic determinism? Michael Medved does. He writes:
The idea of a distinctive, unifying, risk-taking American DNA might also help to explain our most persistent and painful racial divide – between the progeny of every immigrant nationality that chose to come here, and the one significant group that exercised no choice in making their journey to the U.S. Nothing in the horrific ordeal of African slaves, seized from their homes against their will, reflected a genetic predisposition to risk-taking, or any sort of self-selection based on personality traits. Among contemporary African-Americans, however, this very different historical background exerts a less decisive influence, because of vast waves of post-slavery black immigration. Some three million black immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean arrived since 1980 alone and in big cities like New York, Boston and Miami close to half of the African-American population consists of immigrants, their children or grandchildren. The entrepreneurial energy of these newcomer communities indicates that their members display the same adventurous instincts associated with American DNA.
No comment necessary.
I am flabbergasted.
This something out of a phrenology text, right?
This didn’t appear on the pages of a major metropolitan newspaper.
No can still be this ignorant.
They hate us ’cause of our freedom-loving DNA.
Now that Medved has mastered eugenics, get him a book on proctology so he can extract his head from his ass.
Take time to read the whole article. It’s an apologetic for white American genetic superiority. There’s a pattern of bigotry from this ugly human being. He simply dresses it up in pseudoscience.
Here’s a good review http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/05/michael_medved_says_something.php
This seems like an “embrace-and-corrupt” strike against science: genetic determinism is valid, and look at all the crazy racist stuff it implies! Or, if you’re Gerson, genetic determinism is valid, and look at how it validates our fluffy metaphysical concepts like “the sacred”…Maybe they’ve given up fighting science, and the new tactic is to claim that their values are supported by scientific facts, something they bitterly accuse us scientists of doing…
People who don’t understand science tend to project their own fears and wishes on it. Yep.