Brazil might be the most racially diverse nation in the world. Most people are surprised to learn that it has the largest population of Japanese outside of Japan, for instance. The great Brazilian novelist Jorge Amado has a scene in one novel in which characters are discussing race issues and the blacksmith, who is quietly listening, finally volunteers, “I think the solution is to just have everyone inter-breed until even God can’t tell them apart.”
It's a curious thing to be racist in the age of CRISPR and yet our president - having learned that it is what Republicans want - was standing in Minnesota telling the folks at his rally yesterday, “You have good genes, you know that, right? You have good genes. A lot of it is about the genes, isn’t it, don't you believe? The racehorse theory. You think we’re so different? You have good genes in Minnesota.”
Trump is confused about genes. The most extreme version of racial purity is, of course, in-breeding. That leads to the opposite of racial superiority, leading to deformities and offspring susceptible to illness. The opposite of inbreeding, or racial purity, is finding mates from further away. In 1870 Britain, the mean distance between the birthplace of marriage partners was 10 km; by 2019, it was 250 km. And what studies have shown is that as the distance between the birthplace of parents increases, so does the height and IQ of their child. If there is such a thing as racial superiority, it comes from taking the advice of Amado’s blacksmith and mingling genes from distant lands.
There is something deeper, though. At the heart of racism lies incredible ignorance about how we make progress. Between 1900 and 2000, incomes in the US rose 6 to 8X. Not only that but people in 2000 were able to buy things that simply didn't exist in 1900, from polio vaccines to plane tickets. Did people work harder? Not even close. The average workweek dropped from 60 hours to less than 40 hours.
None of that remarkable progress can be traced back to genetic evolution or more effort. Humans did not become 8X stronger or faster or smarter because of rapid evolution. Their machines and systems, though, improved by even more than 8X. If you want to make progress you don't go for racial purity. You go for innovation and market expansion. Innovation in products and social institutions. It's not enough to invent planes and computers. You should also invent venture capital and public universities. And just as computers are initially available to only 6 huge institutions at first and then become something most people carry in their pocket, venture capital and universities are first accessible to just a tiny fraction and then a growing portion of Americans. (Expanding accessibility and use for more Americans is market expansion, like growing the market for computers from 100 units a year to 100 million.) That is the stuff of progress.
It is true that genes can make you faster, stronger, smarter. If you have millions of years. Or you can do all that with inventions in the space of decades.
A lot of people are appalled at Trump's racism because they find it offensive. That's appropriate but it somehow misses an even larger point: racists are notoriously bad at understanding the importance of focusing on innovation - of both products and institutions - and market expansion. The point is not to create an us vs. them but instead to make our great inventions - from trains and cars to research labs and voting booths - more widely used and accessible. That’s how your community becomes more prosperous.
All of us do better as all of us do better. Add one more smart person to the room and you've just sparked a half dozen new ideas. And if that person was born far away, we've just raised the odds that a spark of romance or desire between that new person and someone already present will result in a baby who is some new genetic blend, perhaps a tad taller or smarter. If it is racial superiority that captures your imagination, you ought to think like Amado’s blacksmith. In any case, a focus on genes is proof that you don’t even know where to look to explain or accelerate progress.
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