This article accompanies the fable
Letters from Africa



The DNA wars begin

The past is indeed an unknown country. A strange frenzy is developing in the current vogue for DNA analysis in ancestry-tracing. It reached a low point with DNA testing of the Beta Israel. But consider the following developments this year:

Jon Entine writes a book called Abraham's Children: Race, Identity, and the DNA of the Chosen People, in which he argues that Jews have a higher IQ than everybody else - genetic superiority, in other words, with its echoes of the Nazis.

Henry Louis Gates Jr. starts a new company, African DNA LLC, to explore how genetic traits may point to specific countries in Africa where people's ancestors came from, feeding into ethnic purity myths. One irony: Gates' own DNA pointed to Europe.

James D. Watson, double helix co-discoverer, declares to the Times of London: "all our social policies are based on the fact that (Africans') intelligence is the same as ours – whereas all the testing says not really." The ironic twist: an analysis of his genome showed that 16% of his genes were likely to have come from a Black ancestor of African descent (most people of European descent would have no more than 1%).

DNA analysis: the new eugenics, the new racism. Apparently a higher IQ doesn't make you more intelligent.