The Culture War over History and Fiction

In this post I have three parts to present. First, the context of my piece: a battle is being fought over who should tell the narrative of history. Second, I demonstrate that the same fight is taking place in fiction: who gets to be the storytellers is changing. Third, I discuss how these cultural wars have played out in the fiction genres of science fiction and mystery. 

All of these lead up to my next three posts, a look at how this has played out in the split between The Best Mystery Stories of the Year 2021 and The Best American Mystery and Suspense 2021, two anthologies that used to be one.

History

Over the past decade the United States has experienced some particularly nasty fights over questions of what should be included or excluded from its historical narrative. 

I certainly grew up with the relentlessly heroic white American narrative. As a child, cowboys were good guys and Indians were the villains and this fit into games we played, much as we played cops and robbers. (I preferred being the Indian because shooting someone with a suction cup arrow was more satisfying than pointing a toy gun and saying bang-bang.) George Armstrong Custer was an unquestioned hero, played on the screen, in one turn, by Ronald Reagan. But times were changing. The television show Custer (1967) which glamorized the exploits of the general was successfully booted off television following Native American protests.

Custer's exploits in a Dell Book. George Maunder from the 1967 series as Custer. That wide-open mouth suggests he ate his enemies.

There is a line from Arsenic and Old Lace, a Joseph Kesselring play from 1941. The protagonist, Mortimer Brewster, is citing his crazy ancestors, "You know in those days the Indians used to scalp the settlers, [his ancestor] William Brewster used to scalp the Indians." Which was standard funny way back when. However, historically, the settlers scalped the Native Americans at a much higher rate. General bounties were set on the lives of Native Americans and scalps were proof of kill. Dark skin Mexicans and Mexican-Americans often became victims: their hair and skin could "pass." 

I love history. But what I love about history is that it is not the simplistic story I was told as a child with memorizing dates and often memorizing the prejudices of my teachers. (As a child my experiences took place in public schools.) Sometimes the prejudice was eye-popping to me, even as a gullible kid. From a Southern teacher in a New Mexican school: first of all, Abraham Lincoln was the ugliest person who ever lived.

Those who would attack a multi-perspective history often use the term "Critical Race Theory." Critical Race Theory has become an umbrella to cover all history that some people don't want to hear. More than that, it has become a selling point for fear-driven narratives in the same line as Sharia law taking over America, Happy Holidays means "War on Christmas," or Obama must have been born in Kenya. All of these are nonsense except to the very uncritical. 

This is not to say the liberal view of history is right, and the conservative view is wrong. History is more complex than that. I am saying the conservative view of history permeates the narrative. Including multiple points of view fills the picture.

Culture Wars as Played Out in Fiction

Sixty years ago, the white male narrative was the overwhelmingly dominant story. Even when minorities figured as part of the stories, those stories were written by whites. (Sometimes to great effect such as To Kill a Mockingbird. Often in cringeworthy forms.) As America became more diverse in its population, voices with authentic experience have had a greater opportunity to speak for themselves. 

The Growing Diversity of Storytellers.

I first became interested in the question of male versus female authorship when I performed analyses of those books chosen as the 100 greatest mystery novels by the Mystery Writers of America (1995) and by the Crime Writers Association of Great Britain (1990). Before I ran the numbers, I suspected female authors would be on parity with males. Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, P.D. James, among others would match, novel for novel, those of Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, and Peter Lovesey. Of the 67 authors who wrote the novels that appeared on the MWA list, 16 were female and 51 male. Of the 64 authors who wrote the novels in the CWA list, 17 were female and 47 male. 

Times are changing. There has been no update to the CWA and MWA all-time best mystery lists, so I directed my attention elsewhere. I went on to analyze male versus female authors as to who had the most weeks atop the New York Times Adult Fiction Bestseller list and how that has changed. From the years 1960 to 1990, books authored by men were on top 81% of the weeks. Some years, even into the 90s, men had the top seller every week of the year. In the 2010s, women were on top more often than men. This switch may have occurred a decade sooner, except that, with the popularity of the Harry Potter books, the New York Times evicted JK Rowling from Adult Fiction sending her to a newly invented bestsellers list, Childrens Literature. She was later kicked off that list in favor of a list for series books. Dan Brown was safe. 

The percentage of weeks and total weeks of male and female authors having the #1 New York Times Bestselling Fiction. In this graph, the 2010s include through 2015.

It would make an interesting study to see how many weeks The Da Vinci Code would have been #1 if it was explicitly up against Harry Potter. When science switches over its methodology, it usually continues for a time with a "legacy" calculation: how the figures would rank using the old method.

The Changing Demographic of Genre Fiction and the Puppy Wars

The changing demographic of authorship extends beyond more female authors. Blacks, Latinos and Latinas, and other minorities began infusing fiction and genre fiction with distinct perspectives. Some saw this as an affront, dismissing their achievements as being praised because they were minority voices. Others saw this as finally getting in after a history of exclusion.

With inclusion came backlash. One ugly example took place in the 2010s in science fiction as some authors and supporters of the "traditional" alpha-male explore the stars and kick alien butt, felt crowded out by the diversity of voices of minority writers who were dominating the genre. Those who felt disenfranchised created a manifesto, calling themselves the "Sad Puppies" with the more aggressive becoming the "Rabid Puppies." Some members of these groups resorted to personal attacks against those favoring the newer inclusive science fiction and its minority authors, hurling invective, and threatening authors with violence. 

The Hugo Awards accepts nominees via voting at the World Science Fiction Convention. The puppies attempted to seize control of the 2015 awards. Their supporters flooded the nomination process so that every nominee in every category were those from their slate. One author, not wanting to be associated with the puppies, withdrew. The judges replaced that nominee with Liu Cixin and his novel The Three-Body Problem. He became the winner. As for the other categories, none of the nominations from the puppies were given awards.

This article from NPR, on the other hand, said the puppies won by losing.

Female authors have come to dominate science fiction awards. The Nebula award for best novel has gone to women in ten out of the last eleven years. The fresh perspectives provided by the recent writers have been thrilling, including my favorite, three-time Hugo winner, NK Jemisin.

There is a general rule behind this. Authors are often "strangers in a strange land" (a Bible verse and the name of a famous Heinlein novel). Marginalized groups can have a fresh perspective on the world we live in and they provide us their eyes. Life experience is broad and varied. Great authors who are white can also see as strangers: Joseph Conrad or Truman Capote. Conrad was an immigrant to England from Poland and could see colonialism more clearly than British authors. Capote, being gay, was an outsider who had a calculating eye when it came to describing the world.

Being a Latino who looks nothing like a Latino, I have often thought of myself as an undercover spy. Over the years, racists have confided in me, saying remarkable things.

Coming Up Next. A Divide in the Mystery Writing Community

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I have several short stories coming out soon, including ones in Mystery Magazine and Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine. A science fiction story has been accepted in El Porvenir ¡Ya! Chicano Scifi Anthology. It has a Kickstarter page now, a new experience for me. My late mother, a Chicano activist, would be proud.

Martin Hill Ortiz is a Professor of Pharmacology at Ponce Health Sciences University and has researched HIV for over thirty years. He is the author of four novels and numerous short stories and poems.

https://mdhillortiz.com/

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The Bell Stops Here. God, Democracy, Evolution, Human Migration and Prehistory.

I have dedicated these several posts to examining the fallacies of the white supremacist's creed. I believe this is an important effort because a superficial look at questions of race cause some to adopt toxic behaviors and promote toxic public policies.

In the first entry, I described how geography and climate combine to define where knowledge accumulates. This knowledge led to the technological advancement of civilization occurring more rapidly in some places than others.

In the second entry, the topics of genetics, intelligence and race were introduced. Intelligence is complex and is represented by a variety of genes. Race has little meaning in the context of genetics.

In this entry, I will look at whether race can genetically define intelligence. First, however, one advantage of the transition between posts is that it allows me to take a necessary diversion.

Genes and Humans and God.

Until the late eighteenth century, the predominant theory of the differences among groups of people was: God ordained it. This justified the birthright of kings and aristocracy, the birthwrong of those in the lower classes, and the enslavement of those "others."

Among some, this is still an explicit or implicit belief. Halley's Bible Handbook, a guide to the Bible, which has sold over five million copies included up until in the late 1990s, the story of how Noah had cursed black people to live a life of subjugation.

In the 18th and 19th centuries, two major assaults came to the theory that God had ordained the rulers and the ruled. The first was that democracy took hold as both a philosophy and as a practice. The people, not the king, knew what was better for the people. The founding fathers of America kicked King George's ass, not only on the battlefield, but intellectually. Simón Bolívar one-upped Washington by winning independence for several nations while at the same time freeing their slaves.

The second challenge came in the mid-19th century: Darwin detailed the elements of evolution. Evolution not only impacted science but profoundly changed philosophy and how people saw the world. The meaning of evolution varied according to people's viewpoints. Those who believed in democracy over aristocracy saw evolution as a validation of merit, those who performed better succeeded. Some saw evolution as not only an assault on King, but on God. Beyond the notion of whether God created the whole diversity of life at the time of Genesis, churches had hierarchies who claimed that God had decided such matters as that only men could become priests (and bishops and popes).

Evolution sparked revolution. If people should be allowed to succeed on merit, then why shouldn't women be evaluated according to their abilities? If individuals should be allowed to succeed or fail, why not open universities to women and to all races?

In contrast, others interpreted evolution in favor of the empire. Those believing in the subjugation of races and nations saw those who had not succeeded as being inferior and those who had succeeded as superior. Now, "God ordained it" did not need to be their battle cry: science ordained it. With the 20th century, evolution, genes and intelligence theories, the supremacists had new elements needed to decorate their hatred.

Neither evolution nor God dictate any such conclusions. Those seeking to justify their bigotry will claim any and everything validates their beliefs, whether it be The Sermon on the Mount, evolution or their latest fart.

Survival of the fittest? I'm fond of saying that if evolution allowed only the strongest to survive, the kiwi bird would have disappeared long ago. (For those who aren't familiar, the kiwi is what would happen if you made one of those bobbing sippy bird toys out of pipe cleaners and a potato.)

Let's look at survival of the strongest in another light. Eugenicists are people who worry that weak genes are infiltrating humankind. A woman has type-1 (insulin-dependent) diabetes, a genetically heritable trait. That woman can take insulin and survive and have a productive life. Why? Because mankind has the ability and compassion to discover the need for insulin and produce that insulin. Evolution is not about whether that woman would survive for long if shipwrecked on a desert island. Not many of us would, and of those who did, half would start talking to volleyballs. Humans have the ability to modify their surroundings and their lives in order to live and thrive.

In Norway, it gets very cold, especially in the winter. Naked humans do not have the genes for surviving the cold outdoors. So a long time ago humans invented warm clothing. Humans invented shelter. Genes have provided us with the ability to adapt, so we adapt. People who use clothing and houses are no different from the woman who uses insulin, the latter being a more recent invention. Both enhance their lives and survive using things someone else invented.

Back to Race and Genes and Intelligence.

When I ended the last post, I mentioned that race has relatively little meaning genetically, but that it does have some meaning. Is it possible that intelligence might cluster with race?

Let's state this as a theory.

There exists a genetic difference among the intelligence of people that is defined or described by race.

Problem #1. The Polygenic Nature of Intelligence.

The first problem is that, as previously described, intelligence is extremely multi-faceted. Each aspect is a trait. With so many different traits, we can say that intelligence is polygenic, mapped on different genes. It is unlikely that all the genes should exist on the same chromosome.

As mentioned in the previous post, inheriting genes is, to some extent, like rolling dice. Each chromosome is a dice being rolled. With all of the dice throws that take place from generation to generation among large groups of people, the intelligences will balance out.

But evolution is not only dice throws: evolution involves selection. Could there have been selective pressures that required more intelligent people in one set to survive?

Problem #2. If selection pressures aided in the survival of one set of intelligent humans over another, when did this happen? And how could it have happened genetically?

Let's look at the migration of humans throughout the world.

Timeline of Human Migration.

• 200,000 years ago. Homo sapiens appear, Southern Africa.
• About 80,000 to 60,000 years ago. Humans migrate out of Africa into the Middle East and spread across Asia.
• About 70,000 years ago. Evidence suggests 3,000 to 10,000 humans.
• About 45,000 years ago, Humans moved to New Guinea and on to Australia.
• About 40,000 years ago, Homo sapiens make it to Europe.
• About 14,000 years ago, Humans migrate into North America.
• (All times are approximate and argued, but not so much as to make these numbers meaningless)

Here we have a major problem. Races, to the extent that they exist genetically, diverged tens of thousands of years ago. If one group was smarter than the other, why did it take thousands to tens of thousands of years for one group to contrive the most basic of inventions? And how is it that the most basic of inventions appeared in diverse places? (Table below.)

How is it even possible to have a polygenic trait spread over a sizeable group, such as a founding population? Within a group, a small number of some who are smarter seems within the realm of possibility, but how does this help the "average" intelligence? Genes are handed down, not passed around.

This gets back to one of the fundamental principles put forth in the first post, and one that has the most and most obvious evidence to support it: you don't have to invent something if you acquire it. We can live in skyscrapers, talk on cell phones, visit the internet not because we are smarter than those people 150 years ago, but because we adopt and assimilate inventions into our lives. Acquired knowledge is good enough.

How does this relate to the perils of cave living? If a group of cave dwellers is being challenged by a particular nasty winter, if smarts are needed to survive, they don't need the smarts of the group as a whole. Not everyone invented a better way of sheltering their fires. If one person did and the others adopted it, that was enough. And that one person who may have been bright, did next to nothing to change the gene pool.

Here is a table listing the major inventions of the last 200,000 years and their locations, up to the invention of writing. I left out a few that were repetitive, e.g., the domestication of yet another animal.

Prehistoric Inventions.

• About 170,000 years ago, Evidence of clothing, Southern Africa.
• About 63,000 years ago, Bow and arrow invented, Southern Africa.
• About 42,000 years ago, Deep sea fishing, New Guinea.
• About 40,000 years ago, Cave art, Spain and New Guinea.
• About 36,000 years ago, Weaving, Turkey.
• About 28,000 years ago, Clay figures, Czechoslovakia.
• About 20,000 years ago, Clay pottery, China (and we still call dishes china!)
• About 15,000 years ago (or earlier), Humans domesticate dogs, first clear evidence, Germany.
• About 11,000 years ago, Agriculture, Middle East, Eastern Mediterranean, China.
• Agriculture developed along a band of latitude stretching from China (rice, e.g.); to the Mediterranean (e.g., wheat, barley).
• About 11,000 years ago, Domestication of sheep, Mesopotamia.
• About 11,000 years ago, First villages, Middle East.
• About 8,700 years ago, Lead smelting, Turkey.
• About 6,500 years ago, Copper smelting, Serbia.
• About 5,500 years ago, The Wheeled Vehicle, uncertain as to Central Europe, Southern Russian or Middle East.
• About 5,200 years ago. Writing is invented, Middle East.
• *Although I talk about Middle East and Mesopotamia, the current popular phrasing is the Levant region which includes the Middle East and Eastern Mediterranean.

In the first post, I wrote about historical progress through knowledge. When you had writing, knowledge was made solid and passed along and things moved forward at a relative quick pace. The invention of writing is the official definition of the beginning of history versus prehistory. So, what drove prehistorical progress? In this case, climate superseded geography.

Okay, climate is, in a sense, applied geography. What do I mean by that? First of all, obviously, our planet is very cold in the Arctic and Antarctic and warm in the middle. Beyond this, the location of deserts and jungles are determined by rainfall and latitude, the former of which is defined by bodies of water and mountain ranges. The latter is location.

It might surprise some to learn that we are currently in an Ice Age. This is not a comment on global warming, nor is it a comment on the number of sequels the movie Ice Age has generated,  it's just that the time when  the world was very cold from 110,000 years until approximately 10,000 years ago was a "glacial period" and part of the current Ice Age which began about 2.5 million years ago. Okay, with that bit of trivia out of the way, let's have one more table. This will list the major climate events of the last 200,000 years.

Climate Events of Human Pre-History.

• 110,000 years ago. Glacial period began. Why this is significant. Glaciers covered Northern Europe. Europe and Northern Asia remained relatively inhospitable. Glaciers prevented transit across Siberia to Americas.
• 25,000 years ago, Peak glaciation. After this point the glaciers recede.
• 15,000 years ago, With the relative warming, the Sahara is moist and habitable.
• 15,000 years ago. With the relative warming, humans can cross from Siberia to the Americas.
• 10,000 years ago, Major glaciation has disappeared.
• 8,200 years ago, the collapse of the Laurentide ice shelf in North America leads to drier conditions in Mesopotamia. This concentrates the population around the Fertile Delta.

Climate and geography explain why Mesopotamia area and the Levant region in general became the cradle of civilization. With the desert at either side and the fertile land in the middle, agriculture became a better idea than hunting and gathering. It is widely accepted that agriculture drove human progress for millennia.

In summary:

• For much of history, God was considered the power behind class divisions.
• When democracy and evolution took hold as ideas, two thought-lines diverged. One group said that evolution proves people should be judged by their merit. The other group said evolution proves that some had less merit.
• It is virtually impossible for a polygenic trait to cluster in what are called races.
• The migration of humans is inconsistent with the theory that one race is smarter than the other and does not support genetic differences in intelligence.
• The pre-historic progress of humans was not defined by race but was defined by climate and geography.

Up next: What do we mean we talk about race?
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Martin Hill Ortiz is the author of Never Kill A Friend, Ransom Note Press.

Never Kill A Friend, Ransom Note Press

Never Kill A Friend is available for purchase in hard cover format and as an ebook.
The story follows Shelley Krieg, an African-American detective for the Washington DC Metro PD as she tries to undo a wrong which sent an innocent teenager to prison.

Hard cover: Amazon US
Kindle: Amazon US
Hard cover: Amazon UK
Kindle: Amazon UK
Barnes and Noble 

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The Bell Stops Here: Genetics, Intelligence and Race

What we have thus far.

In my previous post, while addressing the myth of white supremacy, I discussed at length how geography and climate affect the advancement of civilization.

• The acquisition, storage and maintenance of knowledge defines the advancement of civilization.
• The ability to acquire, store and maintain knowledge is most determined by geography and climate.
• The places where civilization advanced are those that had the optimal geography and climate.

Here I will begin to tackle the alternative theory, the one embraced by white supremacists: superior genes have provided certain races with more intelligence thus advancing those races.

Genes and Intelligence.

My contentions combine information from several different subjects: genetics, intelligence, race, evolution, prehistory, history, geography and climate. I am not following someone else's template to put this together, but rather weaving the various threads on my own and trying not to end up with an ugly Christmas sweater. After trying for a too-ambitious presentation which would have had this a very lengthy post, I decided to divide up this post into more modest-sized chunks, even though that means critical pieces will be presented later. In this post, I hope to add to the picture the basics of genetics, intelligence and race.

An Introduction to Genetics.

I liken genetics to the study of atomic physics. The theory of atoms comprising the particulate building blocks of matter goes back to ancient Greece and India, although early theories thought of every material having their own atom, i.e., wine was composed of wine atoms. The idea that only a certain number of elements mixed and matched to make molecules and chemicals was championed by Dalton at the beginning of the 19th century. It was only at the beginning of 20th century that we determined that atoms were made up of protons, neutrons and electrons, a microscopic solar system which is still easy to wrap the mind around. But then these were found to be made up of six types of quarks, six types of leptons, twelve regular bosons, and the Higg's boson. Waves are particles and particles are waves. Uncertainty is the ruling principle. Atomic physics is complicated.

Genetics is the same. Many people have a basic concept of Mendelian genetics: the genes from one parent mix with the genes of another and the child has a mix of traits. For centuries breeding has told us that if you put together a schnauzer with a Chihuahua you get a Chi-schnauzer. Many people know that genes are written out in something called DNA, a chemical that looks like a spiral staircase.

In reality: genetics is complicated. DNA doesn't look like a spiral staircase. It exists all bunched up with parts of it being shut down by proteins or chemically modified. There are jumping genes, silent genes, silenced genes, epigenetic events, transposed sections, promoters, etc.

The increasing complexity of DNA conformation from double-helix to chromosome.

And even when DNA is expressed, the products can be bound up with hairpins, blocked by antisense coding, and have to overcome molecules which attack them.

Rule #1 of genetics: Anyone who claims genetics is simple is lying.

Rule #2: Because genetics is not simple it is easy to weave jargon around their pet theories. These people will tell you the others are liars. Don't trust them.

Rule #2a: Don't trust me.

Seriously. Maintain a degree of skepticism toward anyone claiming to be expert. Test everything. Hold fast to what is good. (1 Thessalonians 5:21) Being able to separate the real from the bullshit is a necessary survival skill, more so these days with the internet tailoring information to feed biases.

A Brief Genetics Glossary.

I have a habit of talking over some people's heads, even when I think I am being clear. So that everyone is on the same page, here is a brief glossary of the genetic terms I'll use.

Trait: Any feature of an individual, whether it be physical, functional, or mental.
Heritable: Something that can be passed from parents to child or, in the bigger picture, from ancestors to descendants. A tall parent can have tall children. A parent who loses a leg in a car accident will not have a child who is missing a leg.
Gene: A single heritable trait. Sometime the word is used imprecisely to refer to a chromosome (below).
Genes: Collectively, all traits that can be inherited.
DNA: This is the chemical that makes up the genes. Your DNA can be thought of as a long series of letters that spell out the blueprint that is you. In humans, 3 billion letters long. In book form, this would be about equal to 5,000 books with 100,000 words of six letters apiece, a decent-sized library.
Chromosomes: Genes are bundled into long strands of DNA called chromosomes. Humans have 23 pairs of these, one member of each pair is received from each parent.
Evolution: The science of diversity within species and between species.

Before I go on to genes and intelligence, let's look at intelligence.

An Introduction to Intelligence.

One reason I brought up the analogy of atomic physics is that a parallel argument can also be made in regards to the second topic: intelligence.

For centuries, intelligence was not quantified, but rather expressed as a relative term: one person versus another, one group versus another. The proof of intelligence was individual mental skills, either basic (e.g., the ability to read) or advanced (e.g., the ability to compose abstract arguments or music or invent), or group skills (e.g., the degree of civilization). The last of these three was often retrofitted to define the ruling class and the ruled.

Near the beginning of the 20th Century, when humans finally got around to quantifying individual intelligence they came up with a single number: IQ. (Intelligence Quotient). Seriously. So-called intelligent people put forth that an individual's intelligence could be summarized as a single point on a line. Intelligence had no breadth, no width, no height, no shading.

Around 1940, intelligence was given two forms. Over the course of the 1990s, the modern theory developed and there were eight broad abilities each with their own bundle of narrow abilities. Linguistic intelligence is not necessarily mathematical intelligence, etc. This is the theory of Howard Gardner. Others have focused on the dimensions of intelligence, by analogy, depth being acquired knowledge, width being ability to process the knowledge, and length being editing, imagining, etc.

So how does one go about determining who is more intelligent given multiple forms of intelligence? Do you average them up? Why? Why should each be treated as an equal part to overall intelligence? Do you determine that some forms are more important than others? Which? Don't some of them overlap? Are these seventy forms of intelligence even the last word?

Howard Gardner's Multiple Intelligences, another and influential way of dividing up intelligence

Let me add a few more aspects of intelligence. I once had a boss who was intelligent. He had a PhD and at times he could give brilliant, thought-provoking presentations. The problem was he had the emotional control of a two-year-old and this served to dim any amount of brightness and it sabotaged any intelligent output. When confronted with a personal error, he would insist on a conspiracy. He interpreted the most benign of statements as a personal attack. Having determined the conspiracy, he would rewrite his own work and dismiss those of his employees. In summary, he was a self-destructive buffoon. Intelligence has an emotional component.

In a different line, numerous studies have shown that child nutrition is linked to educational performance. In other studies, in third world countries where intestinal worms can lead to anemia, eradicating this parasite led to an increase in IQ. These findings makes instinctive sense: low energy and trouble concentrating equal low intellectual performance.

Energy level and ability to concentrate are also related to hormones. Too little thyroid or too much glucocorticoids can dull one's intelligence (or dull brain development). This is not only need to be seen as a disease condition in life, but could be related to the inherited levels.

Too little sleep can make a person dull. Beyond environmental or lifestyle causes, this could be the result of a variety of heritable factors, such as anatomical obstacles which lead to sleep apnea.

I have taken two formal IQ exams as an adult. I don't respect these tests enough to present the results, but I will say on the two days they were 20 points apart. That much, I believe. There are days when I'm smarter than others.

Low blood sugar, too much sugar, anemia, too little sleep, emotional control. Taken together, I'd like to propose the obvious: on top of all of the various forms of intelligence, intelligence has a dimmer switch. In the right circumstances it can be put on high or low.

Intelligence and Genetics: What We Have Thus Far.

Adding the above to the discussion of genetics, let's define two more terms.

Polygenic traits: Features of an individual that can be mapped to different genes.

Intelligence, with its many forms and influencers, is a polygenic trait. It appears on different genes and, because it has so many components, it is likely spread out over several chromosomes.

What does this mean when it comes to inheriting intelligence? This is a bit like Yahtzee. Yahtzee is a game where you role five dice. Even if your first role is a six, there is no guarantee you will have a high total, the numbers tend to balance out. Another way of putting this (for those who have no experience with Yahtzee), is saying that intelligence is like the lottery. Not that 1 in 10 million lottery, more like the Pick 3. Luck happens, but luck cannot be reliably counted on.

The results of this can be often seen historically. Although there have been geniuses who have had children of equal genius, there are many more with children of ordinary accomplishments.

Up to this point, I have not delved much into environment and intelligence. How much of intelligence is genetic and how much is the environment you grow up in? No one has the answer (or rather, everyone has a different answer). I've seen the number 50/50 just because people like to compromise and the reason why that number is chosen is because the person is making a statement that in the absence of a rigorously defined number, both should be considered equally. In the absence of a definitive answer, I guess that's an okay, although not precise way of looking at it.

I've seen many in favor of gene theories toss out numbers like 90% genes, 10% environmental. I look at these with suspicion because of the complexity of intelligence and how that can't be a single number. At least the 50/50 people admit that it isn't scientific.


There are those who believe they can translate "divided twins studies" into genetic versus environmental influences. Identical twins have the exact same genes. Those identical twins who are divided at birth and adopted by two different families in theory would provide a perfect opportunity to look at to what degree specific traits are inherited and to what degree they are environmental. They do provide some insight with the following limitations: the pregnancy environment was the same for both children; intelligence, being many things, it ends up with a lot of things to study and compare; epigenetic events (described below) which are both environmental and genetic; biases that can affect intelligence assessment (if both have dark skin, they may be treated with the same biases in intelligent assessment, in upbringing, or in teaching). In regards to the last of these, a world prejudice, genes can define environment and interactions.

There is another way in which environment and genes are linked. People inherit not only those genes that shout out their traits, they inherit genes that only speak up in the proper circumstances. This leads up to the next definition.

Epigenetic events: DNA is not only written down and passed down from parent to child, DNA can be turned on or off. If a gene is kept silent, it is as good as not being there. For example, without the person having the proper nutrition a gene might not be expressed.

To me, this is somewhat comforting. We not only inherit traits, we inherit potential.

In summary, X percentage of intelligence is genes; Y percentage is environment.  Even when saying intelligence is in the genes, it is not the same as saying intelligence is passed along: there is a mix and match of a various clusters of intelligence. As with anything you get from your parents, you get a little of this and a little of that.

On to the next subject.

Race and Genetics.

Hoo-boy. Where to start and more important how to limit a discussion about race? Something must be said about race, because the supremacy in white supremacy has an adjective in front of it. I'll keep it short, because, although the internet is free and you may think this is all I do, my time is not infinite.

Perhaps this sums up genetic research into race the best: ". . .racial classification is now seen to be of virtually no genetic or taxonomic significance. . ." Richard Lewontin as quoted in Race Finished. What does this really mean? As described in the link, the overwhelming amount of differences between people are differences within individuals and not between what are called racial groups (about a 10-fold difference in favor of individuals). By lumping people together as groups, we miss out on 80-90% of who that person is. By analogy, race is noise; individual people are the signals. To rely on noise to get the message, we lose the message.

Wait a minute. Not much is defined by race? That's not nothing. And skin color, eye color, hair color, well several things at least, if not absolutely proscribed, do tend to strongly cluster in what are commonly called races. Why not intelligence?

I'll continue this in the next installment.

In summary:

• Genetics is complicated.
• Intelligence is complicated.
• Intelligence is many things and polygenic.
• It is difficult to reliably inherit intelligence.
• In terms of genetics, race does not mean a lot.

In my upcoming post I will look at how several diverse topics apply to this discourse: God, Democracy, Evolution, The Migration of Humans and Prehistory.

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Martin Hill Ortiz is the author of Never Kill A Friend, Ransom Note Press.

Never Kill A Friend, Ransom Note Press

Never Kill A Friend is available for purchase in hard cover format and as an ebook.
The story follows Shelley Krieg, an African-American detective for the Washington DC Metro PD as she tries to undo a wrong which sent an innocent teenager to prison.

Hard cover: Amazon US
Kindle: Amazon US
Hard cover: Amazon UK
Kindle: Amazon UK
Barnes and Noble 

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