It was one day in 2003, perhaps, when we used to have milk delivered to our door early enough for it not to become curdled by the sun, that something struck me as odd: there was no cream at the top.
I have no idea when my milk actually lost the cream at the top, but going by a New Scientist question, I guess it was a few years before that. The change had been slipped in quietly enough so that few people noticed; but the upshot was that milk buyers no longer had the choice whether to mix the cream with the milk, or use it separately. The milk supply had become homogenised – the same all the way through – and try as you might, homogenised milk cannot be separated again.
I mention this because when I thought up the title of this article, it seemed that one of the problems with Homogeneity was that hardly anyone would know what it meant! Such is the nature of homogeneity: it is subtle, pervasive and irreversible, just like the milk in my fridge. When James Watson made the public statement that he felt African development policies would fail because African intelligence was “not the same” as that of white Americans or Europeans, he stepped into a furnace of denial and anger. To make the suggestion that there is any difference in the intelligence of black and white people meant that Watson was deemed to have, “gone beyond the point of acceptable debate.”
But who says whether this kind of debate is acceptable or not? Surely all debate is acceptable, and disallowing it is denying people the freedom to speak openly and honestly about what they feel. What seems clear to me from a quick look at the various studies on standardised IQ tests and race, is not that the differences make any one race look inferior to another, but simply that standardised tests only work when they are applied to a standardised population. In some peoples’ eyes, though, merely saying that there are differences based on ethnic origin is enough to take you off their Christmas card list for life. That’s a risk I’ll have to take.
Instead of taking a blinkered view of this planet, its human inhabitants and the way in which we should merrily slip into a warm melting pot, pretending that everyone is just about the same, I want us to celebrate our differences. I want us to appreciate the natural, physical human differences that have evolved over tens of thousands of years; and in doing so help us to understand why homogeneity may not be something we should be striving for in the long term.
(Letter to Mr Farnish: ”I was disgusted to read that you thought it was acceptable to show the differences between people from different parts of the world. As you know, we are all the same…”)
Tolerable Differences
My milk may no longer have a layer of cream at the top, and for that I’m personally pleased because creamy milk makes me gag. This isn’t by choice; in fact it may be a natural instinct to protect me and those of my genetic line from the dangers of milk intolerance. As Richard Dawkins makes clear in "The Ancestor’s Tale", lactose tolerance is most definitely a function of our genes:
"...Lactose tolerance seems to have evolved in a minority of tribes including the Tutsi of Rwanda (and to a lesser extent their traditional enemies the Hutu), the pastoral Fulani of West Africa (though interestingly not the sedentary branch of the Fulani), the Sindhi of North India, the Tuareg of West Africa, the Beja of Eastern North Africa, and some European tribes from which I, and possibly you, are descended. Significantly, what these tribes have in common is a history of pastoralism.
"At the other end of the spectrum, peoples who have retained the normal human intolerance of lactose as adults include Chinese, Japanese, Inuit, most Native Americans, Javanese, Fijians...In general, these lactose-intolerant peoples do not have a history of pastoralism. The traditional diet of the Masai of East Africa consists of little else besides milk and blood, and you might think they'd be particularly tolerant of lactose. This is not the case...because they curdle their milk before consuming it. As with cheese, the lactose is largely removed by bacteria. That's one way of getting rid of its bad effects...the other way is to change your genes.”
What Dawkins is saying is that differences in our historical backgrounds have a great bearing on our ability to tolerate certain foods. Examples of ethnic variations in alcohol and wheat tolerance are also widely found, as are variations in the ability of people to absorb vitamins. The same seems to apply to a number of medical conditions. A report by the US Commission on Life Sciences states: “If the presence of a gene or genes can be demonstrated, the differentiation between genetic and environmental factors usually becomes clear. Thus, although we strongly suspect that genetic factors cause the difference between Pima Indians and Caucasians in the frequency of obesity, we cannot be absolutely sure since we have no gene marker. On the other hand, there is little question that the difference in frequency of hypolactasia in blacks and whites has a genetic cause, since tests for hypolactasia exist.”
Sickle Cell Anaemia can be a deadly condition, and there is no doubt that the genetic trait responsible for this condition is closely allied to the racial origin of the affected person. The US Department of Health provide enlightening statistics that show 1 in 500 African Americans being affected by the condition, and around 1 in 1000 Hispanic Americans similarly affected. Less easy to tie down is the distribution of blood types in different parts of the world. A very recent article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that protection against a particularly deadly strain of malaria was improved in people with blood group O. As the maps at
http://anthro.palomar.edu/vary/vary_3.htm show, type O blood is no more common in Africa than in Europe, which implies that the malarial resistance is not significant enough to affect blood group numbers, but I would be willing to bet that there is far more to blood group than just a chance distribution.
It is not just in microbiology that ethnic differences come to the fore, though.
You know the saying that Eskimos have more body fat so they can cope with cold temperatures; well, it seems to be true. According to a paper in the International Journal of Obesity, a detailed study carried out in 1994 found that there was a significant difference between the body fat distributions of Eskimo women in particular, and non-ethnic Canadians. This would make sense, in theory, but it is important to separate genetic traits from social ones – the higher body mass indexes of Alaskans versus Siberians could be down to the influence of American eating habits. This does not explain, though, the high body mass indexes found in Polynesian natives and, as far as I am concerned, it does not necessarily matter: the point is that there really are genetic body fat differences between people of different ethnic origin.
Here’s another saying that has basis in fact: “Africans are the best long distance runners.” In the 1980s, it was clear that Kenya and Ethiopia were starting to dominate the world of long distance athletics, but maybe this was just a first impression. I called up the International Olympic Committee’s medal database to see whether what I suspected was true, really was. The Seoul Olympics, in 1988 was the first games since 1972 that did not suffer from one major boycott or another, and it also came at a time when most countries were able to afford to send a decent sized team (albeit skewed towards men) to the Olympics, so I used the results for all summer Olympics for men since 1988 and found the following:
100m:
Kenya/Ethiopia = 0 medals
Rest of World = 15 medals
1500m:
Kenya/Ethiopia = 5 medals
Rest of World = 10 medals
5000m:
Kenya/Ethiopia = 7 medals
Rest of World = 8 medals
10000m:
Kenya/Ethiopia = 11 medals
Rest of World = 4 medals
Why do Kenyans and Ethiopians do so well at long distance running? Is this down to incredible training regimes, better diets, or maybe the genes of the footbound hunter-gatherer. John Entine, author of “Taboo: Why Black Athletes Dominate Sports and Why We Are Afraid to Talk About It" makes the point that the mountainous terrain of East Africa has provided Kenyans and Ethiopians with fantastically efficient muscles, making them able to run long distances with little effort. Again, there really are genetic differences between athletes of different ethnic origin.
The Irony Of Equality
Accepting that people are physically different depending on their genetic background does not take a great deal of faith when faced with so much evidence. What does take faith is the assumption that these differences will be fairly accounted for in the way that the world is run. It is not so much that there are differences between people of different ethnic origin as that these differences are being sifted out wholesale in favour of the status quo: white males of European origin have ruled the world since the industrial revolution, and they continue to rule the world, regardless of any obvious benefits that particular genes may endow people outside of this club with. The 2007 Fortune 1000 report shows that of the 1000 largest companies in the USA, 960 of them are led by white men, with only 19 led by non-whites. Of the Global Fortune 500, 162 of the companies are in the USA, 67 in Japan (all led by Japanese men), and over 100 in Britain, France and Germany combined. Looking down the European list, I see no names that suggest anything but white men in the hot seats.
Of the 10 most economically powerful countries in the world, not a single one of them has ever had a leader of Afro-Caribbean origin, and of the 6 Euro-American countries, none have ever had a leader of non-white origin. In fact, only the UK and, very recently, Germany, has ever had a female leader. In ethnic terms this could merely be a reflection of the population mix, but the power balance is very clear. Women and minorities last. Please form an orderly queue.
Real power reveals itself not in the CEOs or the world leaders, though. Such things are too arcane for true control to take place; what is needed are symbols, identities that we can all hold on to. The Golden Arches, the shining Wal*Mart star, the Coca Cola ripples and the Nike swoosh, are recognised worldwide. The brand logo at the top of this article is pertinent on two different levels. First, the product, Fair and Lovely, has been widely criticised for perpetuating the apparent myth that fair skin is more attractive, and thus encouraging a level of homogeneity amongst women users. As we have seen, white skin seems to be a prerequisite to true economic success, and money seems to be a source of attraction in our cash conscious culture – so perhaps the message is: “Make your skin fair, earn more money and then be attractive.”
Second, the global image of Fair and Lovely, is subtly altered by Unilever depending on the place the product is being marketed, but the brand stays the same. Fair and Lovely in Bangladesh has a slightly different logo to Fair and Lovely in Pakistan, which is slightly different to Fair and Lovely in Malaysia. The name stays the same – Unilever is again using the crutch of a brand being attractive because it is ‘Westernised’, in this case having an English name. You won’t find Fair and Lovely in any European shops, though; this is a brand for those who still respond to coarse promises that can never be fulfilled. After decades of unremitting advertising, the Western Industrial markets have started to see through the tricks.
The irony is that the systems that keep the culture of consumption rolling roughshod over anything that gets in its way thrive, as we have seen, on maintaining a strict hierarchy of haves and have nots. Yet every human on Earth is in the process of being brainwashed into thinking that there is only one way to live – the way of the Dollar, Euro, Yen and, increasingly the Yuan: no wonder western companies are clamouring for a piece of the Chinese corporate pie.
Mark Abley, in his wonderful book, “Spoken Here”, sees the rapid erosion of the world’s languages towards a rump of widely spoken super languages – English, Spanish, French, Russian, Mandarin to name five of the few – as symptomatic of “a wider war, perhaps the central one of our time: the fight to sustain diversity on a planet where globalizing, assimilating and eradicating occur on a massive scale.”
Humans may eventually fall – or be forced - into a single language, a single way of working, a single way of thinking, but that will not be through the natural order of things. The few people who, with their companies, have dominion over the Earth, and the governments who kow-tow to their activities, will not tolerate true equality. They want us to live in a homogenous world, but one that is designed according to their rules.
(Originally published at http://earth-blog.bravejournal.com/entry/23423)
I mention this because when I thought up the title of this article, it seemed that one of the problems with Homogeneity was that hardly anyone would know what it meant! Such is the nature of homogeneity: it is subtle, pervasive and irreversible, just like the milk in my fridge. When James Watson made the public statement that he felt African development policies would fail because African intelligence was “not the same” as that of white Americans or Europeans, he stepped into a furnace of denial and anger. To make the suggestion that there is any difference in the intelligence of black and white people meant that Watson was deemed to have, “gone beyond the point of acceptable debate.”
But who says whether this kind of debate is acceptable or not? Surely all debate is acceptable, and disallowing it is denying people the freedom to speak openly and honestly about what they feel. What seems clear to me from a quick look at the various studies on standardised IQ tests and race, is not that the differences make any one race look inferior to another, but simply that standardised tests only work when they are applied to a standardised population. In some peoples’ eyes, though, merely saying that there are differences based on ethnic origin is enough to take you off their Christmas card list for life. That’s a risk I’ll have to take.
Instead of taking a blinkered view of this planet, its human inhabitants and the way in which we should merrily slip into a warm melting pot, pretending that everyone is just about the same, I want us to celebrate our differences. I want us to appreciate the natural, physical human differences that have evolved over tens of thousands of years; and in doing so help us to understand why homogeneity may not be something we should be striving for in the long term.
(Letter to Mr Farnish: ”I was disgusted to read that you thought it was acceptable to show the differences between people from different parts of the world. As you know, we are all the same…”)
Tolerable Differences
My milk may no longer have a layer of cream at the top, and for that I’m personally pleased because creamy milk makes me gag. This isn’t by choice; in fact it may be a natural instinct to protect me and those of my genetic line from the dangers of milk intolerance. As Richard Dawkins makes clear in "The Ancestor’s Tale", lactose tolerance is most definitely a function of our genes:
"...Lactose tolerance seems to have evolved in a minority of tribes including the Tutsi of Rwanda (and to a lesser extent their traditional enemies the Hutu), the pastoral Fulani of West Africa (though interestingly not the sedentary branch of the Fulani), the Sindhi of North India, the Tuareg of West Africa, the Beja of Eastern North Africa, and some European tribes from which I, and possibly you, are descended. Significantly, what these tribes have in common is a history of pastoralism.
"At the other end of the spectrum, peoples who have retained the normal human intolerance of lactose as adults include Chinese, Japanese, Inuit, most Native Americans, Javanese, Fijians...In general, these lactose-intolerant peoples do not have a history of pastoralism. The traditional diet of the Masai of East Africa consists of little else besides milk and blood, and you might think they'd be particularly tolerant of lactose. This is not the case...because they curdle their milk before consuming it. As with cheese, the lactose is largely removed by bacteria. That's one way of getting rid of its bad effects...the other way is to change your genes.”
What Dawkins is saying is that differences in our historical backgrounds have a great bearing on our ability to tolerate certain foods. Examples of ethnic variations in alcohol and wheat tolerance are also widely found, as are variations in the ability of people to absorb vitamins. The same seems to apply to a number of medical conditions. A report by the US Commission on Life Sciences states: “If the presence of a gene or genes can be demonstrated, the differentiation between genetic and environmental factors usually becomes clear. Thus, although we strongly suspect that genetic factors cause the difference between Pima Indians and Caucasians in the frequency of obesity, we cannot be absolutely sure since we have no gene marker. On the other hand, there is little question that the difference in frequency of hypolactasia in blacks and whites has a genetic cause, since tests for hypolactasia exist.”
Sickle Cell Anaemia can be a deadly condition, and there is no doubt that the genetic trait responsible for this condition is closely allied to the racial origin of the affected person. The US Department of Health provide enlightening statistics that show 1 in 500 African Americans being affected by the condition, and around 1 in 1000 Hispanic Americans similarly affected. Less easy to tie down is the distribution of blood types in different parts of the world. A very recent article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that protection against a particularly deadly strain of malaria was improved in people with blood group O. As the maps at
http://anthro.palomar.edu/vary/vary_3.htm show, type O blood is no more common in Africa than in Europe, which implies that the malarial resistance is not significant enough to affect blood group numbers, but I would be willing to bet that there is far more to blood group than just a chance distribution. It is not just in microbiology that ethnic differences come to the fore, though.
You know the saying that Eskimos have more body fat so they can cope with cold temperatures; well, it seems to be true. According to a paper in the International Journal of Obesity, a detailed study carried out in 1994 found that there was a significant difference between the body fat distributions of Eskimo women in particular, and non-ethnic Canadians. This would make sense, in theory, but it is important to separate genetic traits from social ones – the higher body mass indexes of Alaskans versus Siberians could be down to the influence of American eating habits. This does not explain, though, the high body mass indexes found in Polynesian natives and, as far as I am concerned, it does not necessarily matter: the point is that there really are genetic body fat differences between people of different ethnic origin.
Here’s another saying that has basis in fact: “Africans are the best long distance runners.” In the 1980s, it was clear that Kenya and Ethiopia were starting to dominate the world of long distance athletics, but maybe this was just a first impression. I called up the International Olympic Committee’s medal database to see whether what I suspected was true, really was. The Seoul Olympics, in 1988 was the first games since 1972 that did not suffer from one major boycott or another, and it also came at a time when most countries were able to afford to send a decent sized team (albeit skewed towards men) to the Olympics, so I used the results for all summer Olympics for men since 1988 and found the following:
100m:
Kenya/Ethiopia = 0 medals
Rest of World = 15 medals
1500m:
Kenya/Ethiopia = 5 medals
Rest of World = 10 medals
5000m:
Kenya/Ethiopia = 7 medals
Rest of World = 8 medals
10000m:
Kenya/Ethiopia = 11 medals
Rest of World = 4 medals
Why do Kenyans and Ethiopians do so well at long distance running? Is this down to incredible training regimes, better diets, or maybe the genes of the footbound hunter-gatherer. John Entine, author of “Taboo: Why Black Athletes Dominate Sports and Why We Are Afraid to Talk About It" makes the point that the mountainous terrain of East Africa has provided Kenyans and Ethiopians with fantastically efficient muscles, making them able to run long distances with little effort. Again, there really are genetic differences between athletes of different ethnic origin.
The Irony Of Equality
Accepting that people are physically different depending on their genetic background does not take a great deal of faith when faced with so much evidence. What does take faith is the assumption that these differences will be fairly accounted for in the way that the world is run. It is not so much that there are differences between people of different ethnic origin as that these differences are being sifted out wholesale in favour of the status quo: white males of European origin have ruled the world since the industrial revolution, and they continue to rule the world, regardless of any obvious benefits that particular genes may endow people outside of this club with. The 2007 Fortune 1000 report shows that of the 1000 largest companies in the USA, 960 of them are led by white men, with only 19 led by non-whites. Of the Global Fortune 500, 162 of the companies are in the USA, 67 in Japan (all led by Japanese men), and over 100 in Britain, France and Germany combined. Looking down the European list, I see no names that suggest anything but white men in the hot seats.
Of the 10 most economically powerful countries in the world, not a single one of them has ever had a leader of Afro-Caribbean origin, and of the 6 Euro-American countries, none have ever had a leader of non-white origin. In fact, only the UK and, very recently, Germany, has ever had a female leader. In ethnic terms this could merely be a reflection of the population mix, but the power balance is very clear. Women and minorities last. Please form an orderly queue.
Real power reveals itself not in the CEOs or the world leaders, though. Such things are too arcane for true control to take place; what is needed are symbols, identities that we can all hold on to. The Golden Arches, the shining Wal*Mart star, the Coca Cola ripples and the Nike swoosh, are recognised worldwide. The brand logo at the top of this article is pertinent on two different levels. First, the product, Fair and Lovely, has been widely criticised for perpetuating the apparent myth that fair skin is more attractive, and thus encouraging a level of homogeneity amongst women users. As we have seen, white skin seems to be a prerequisite to true economic success, and money seems to be a source of attraction in our cash conscious culture – so perhaps the message is: “Make your skin fair, earn more money and then be attractive.”
Second, the global image of Fair and Lovely, is subtly altered by Unilever depending on the place the product is being marketed, but the brand stays the same. Fair and Lovely in Bangladesh has a slightly different logo to Fair and Lovely in Pakistan, which is slightly different to Fair and Lovely in Malaysia. The name stays the same – Unilever is again using the crutch of a brand being attractive because it is ‘Westernised’, in this case having an English name. You won’t find Fair and Lovely in any European shops, though; this is a brand for those who still respond to coarse promises that can never be fulfilled. After decades of unremitting advertising, the Western Industrial markets have started to see through the tricks.
The irony is that the systems that keep the culture of consumption rolling roughshod over anything that gets in its way thrive, as we have seen, on maintaining a strict hierarchy of haves and have nots. Yet every human on Earth is in the process of being brainwashed into thinking that there is only one way to live – the way of the Dollar, Euro, Yen and, increasingly the Yuan: no wonder western companies are clamouring for a piece of the Chinese corporate pie.
Mark Abley, in his wonderful book, “Spoken Here”, sees the rapid erosion of the world’s languages towards a rump of widely spoken super languages – English, Spanish, French, Russian, Mandarin to name five of the few – as symptomatic of “a wider war, perhaps the central one of our time: the fight to sustain diversity on a planet where globalizing, assimilating and eradicating occur on a massive scale.”
Humans may eventually fall – or be forced - into a single language, a single way of working, a single way of thinking, but that will not be through the natural order of things. The few people who, with their companies, have dominion over the Earth, and the governments who kow-tow to their activities, will not tolerate true equality. They want us to live in a homogenous world, but one that is designed according to their rules.
(Originally published at
http://earth-blog.bravejournal.com/entry/23423) 
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