The vast majority of genetic research has been done on people of european ancestry. Two people from africa can be as genetically different from each other as you are from someone from east asia. We collapse all that genetic diversity into this label that we've given to the descendants of slaves. Even just the idea of talking about black people in the us is monolithic entity.
The subject of genetic inheritance provokes passionate debate but behavioural geneticist Kathryn Paige Harden believes both sides are getting it wrong. It’s possible, she argues, to reclaim the science of genetics while avoiding the trap of categorising traits as superior or inferior. Drawing from her new book, The Genetic Lottery, Harden shares her research uncovered as head of the Developmental Behavior Genetics lab at University Texas with Helen Lewis, staff writer at The Atlantic.
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