The Colors of Genes: The Perversion of Genetics

This essay deals with an opinion propounded by some academics and satisfactorily or resignedly accepted by the silent majority, an opinion according to which Africans and their descendants are intellectually inferior to peoples of other descents, particularly to Europeans or Asians. This opinion derives from a biased interpretation of the situation of sub-Saharan Africa and its diaspora during the last four centuries, a situation of submission to peoples technologically more equipped. To cite descent is to say heredity and genes. Proponents of the innate inferiority of Africans have used biological arguments to support their thesis. This essay presents counter-arguments to the thesis, drawing on the lessons of modern genetics. It begins with a survey of the notion of heredity in African traditions and demonstrates that Africans empirically knew that biological traits are transmissible and how to avoid transmitting deleterious ones. The essay goes on to describe how, in the course of the last two centuries, science has elucidated the laws of this transmission, has identified the germs that ensure it, has unraveled the molecule that embodies it: DNA which makes up genes. We are Homo sapiens and the products of our genes. We are surely newcomers in the long history of the Universe, the Earth, and Life. Our DNA, which delights in variations and diversity, carry the marks of our origins and our peregrinations throughout the planet. Molecular biology has unveiled these marks : they have revealed that we are all Afro-descendants; that our DNA variations are evenly distributed among us all, making us different between individuals, but not between ancestries; that, genetically speaking, 'races' do not exist, the traits that differentiate ancestries being mere superficial adaptations to the di-verse ecologies that housed them.It follows that our intelligence as Homo sapiens (a product of our genes) varies among individuals, but not among ancestries. Any contrary opinion is a denial of biology. It is an ideological choice born out of narcissistic view of oneself, a lust for power, or an attempt to justify the injustices and cruelties committed by one group against groups of peoples judged inferior. The choice also stems from naive or willful ignorance of History, of the rises and falls of civilizations occasioned by Men, the environment, and circumstances. Peoples of Africa have experienced such ups and downs. Despite their current technological lagging behind peoples of other continents, Africans should not lose sight of their glorious history, of centuries passed when they commanded and inspired the whole of humanity. This recollection is the sine qua non prelude to Africa's renaissance.