Genetics as political ideology

I just finished writing a brief essay  for the journal Sociology, for a retrospective on an important book, Dot Nelkin and Susan Lindee’s (1995) The DNA Mystique: The Gene as Cultural Icon.  It actually had a major intellectual impact on me, when I reviewed it for the American Journal of Physical Anthropology in 1995.

Susan  Lindee in 1999 with me and my Caipirinha 

Nelkin and Lindee’s book was a wonderful cultural analysis that showed how embedded scientific discourses about heredity are in cultural or folk discourses about heredity.  And those cultural discourses are invariably political.  After all, ancestry only came to be important in the first place because of the need to divide great-grandpa’s stuff among his heirs.  They show that these are political discourses about hierarchy, worth, and inequality, and scientific claims are easily framed to be hung in the gallery of pseudo-scientific justifications for hereditary aristocracies.

By implication, then, the only way to understand claims about human genetics is to understand that they are never value-neutral, and are invariably politically valent.  This means that scientists ought to be just as accountable to justify the deducible political implications of their work as they are to justify the data collection and statistics.  Nelkin and Lindee stop short of saying this, but I think it as the only way to make sense of the situation. 

It has seemed to me for a longtime that the most horrible question that geneticists can ask themselves is not ”Did I do the right statistical test?” but a far darker question, the question that goes “Gee, what is it about me that the Nazis like so much?”

In other words, at some point, since this science is so politicized, the scientist can’t afford to be naive about its bio-political nature.  You see science, and especially human biology, is particularly suitable to be used by people with, for the sake of argument, evil intentions – by which I mean increasing the amount of misery in the world, reinforcing social, political, and economic  inequalities, causing harm without benefit.  That science should not be done.  It violates the basic charter that we, the civilized people of the world, made with Francis Bacon in the earth 17^th century.  “Your project sounds good, for it promises to improve our lives.”  But science that makes people’s lives worse?  "Let’s pass on that."

For all intents and purposes, that charter was reinforced with the development of bioethics in the late 20^th century.  That is to say, we are all for the progress of science, but when science butts up against human rights, human rights wins, hands down.  We needed to codify that point, because for most of the 20^th century, the scientific question of “What can I do?” was often difficult to differentiate from the moral and practical question “What can I get away with?”

I think what often gets lost, and perhaps even deliberately obscured, is the political stakes involved in naturalizing human cultural history.  People have been asking about the sources of large scale social inequality for around 10,000 years; that is to say, since the beginning of large-scale social inequality.  The Bible isn’t very helpful here.  Is says God favors some kings, and curses other kings, but doesn’t actually say why there are kings at all.  Most of the time, it just takes kings for granted, except for one passage in First Samuel, Chapter 8,  in which the Tribe asks the judge for a king, and the judge tries to talk them out of it, by explaining why kings suck.  But otherwise, hereditary monarchies are taken to be part of the natural way of things.

By the 19^th century, as the long-standing hereditary aristocracies were being threatened by democracy and new wealth, there were two opposing theories  for the origin of those hereditary aristocracies.  Why aren’t you king?  Well, accident of birth; you’d be a good king, you just unluckily came from ancestors who had been historically victims of economic and political injustices.  Here you explain the observation of social inequality by the inference of historical injustice.  The solution is to work for social justice.  Science has no role; we haven’t even mentioned science.

Second theory: Civilization depends on the aristocratic classes.  They have founded every civilization everywhere, which eventually collapsed when their blood was diluted.  They are thus constitutionally better than the lower and upwardly-mobile classes, and to get rid of them would foretell the doom of civilization.  Here the same observation (social inequality) is not caused by injustice, but by the facts of natural difference.  All we need to do is to identify the nature of those gifts.  Here social justice is not desirable, for the very need for it is denied; and science may have a role, in convincing us that the secret to aristocratic success is in the shape of their head, or the number of answers they can get right on a standardized test, or their DNA sequence.

That’s the back story.  That’s why Nelkin and Lindee saw the gene as a bio-political element, a “cultural icon” back in 1995.   The point is that we now know about “genetic essentialism” – also Nelkin and Lindee’s phrase – as an outmoded ideology, and with a history of bad political baggage, to boot.  Can we not reject it on that basis, as one rejects creationism in science?

I think scientists ought to be expected to articulate and explain the politics in their research, and not be permitted to pretend that their work is value neutral, and that ethics, morals, values, and politics is somebody else’s problem.

Here are my guidelines for reviewers of papers in human behavioral genetics and evolutionary psychology:

Does the paper adequately assess its possible political implications?

What stand does the paper take on those political implications?

After all, in any inter-disciplinary research, you can't pay attention to only one of the relevant intellectual domains.  All you’d have to do is broaden the “Conflicts of Interest” statement to include political conflicts of interests, which, if you’re submitting a paper that has political implications, might be a reasonable expectation.  I can imagine that had they answered the questions, there would be far less uncritical derivative citations of Derek Freeman’s attack on Margaret Mead, Richard Jantz’s attack on Franz Boas, and Ralph Holloway’s scurrilous attack on Stephen Jay Gould.  Sure, the lunatics would still cite them, but they’d be self-identified, and uncredible in the community of scholars.

This is political and has always been.  The people who are the most political tend to be the ones claiming self-consciously to be the most scientific, and tend to be the ones whose science stands up the worst.  That's another reason to study history.  It’s time to stop allowing people to pretend that this science isn’t political, and claiming the higher scientific ground for their thinly cloaked politicized science; they are entitled only to the lower scholarly ground and the lower moral ground.  That’s is not where science belongs.

Tell us about Washington, son - Is it run by a bunch of crooks?

            It’s funny how political humor from 60 years ago could still stand up today.  Li’l Abner was a fairly subversive political satire when it started running in the 1930s, the “Doonesbury” of its day.  Like Lucy and Desi’s baby a few years later, the marriage of Abner Yokum and Daisy Mae Scragg was a huge media event in 1952.  In 1956 it was turned into a Broadway musical, with a fine score by Johnny Mercer and Gene DePaul, and a villainous plutocrat called General Bullmoose (“He makes the rules and he intends to keep it that-a way / What’s good for General Bullmoose is good for the USA”).

            The most famous song is about Jubilation T. Cornpone (unshaven and shorn-pone!), but the most amazing thing is the Foucaultian eugenics song, sung by the government’s scientists:

Fellow scientists!  What delicious conformity!  Imagine – all reactions completely, utterly, precisely alike!  Think of the unbounded horizons of science!  When we can make all mankind look, act, think, feel, hope, desire, dream, buy and sell, inhale and exhale, exactly alike!

Oh, happy day, when miracles take place

And scientists control the human race,

When we assume authority of human chromosomes,

And assembly-line women, conveyor-belt men, settle down in push-button homes.

Oh, happy day, when all the cells conform

And the exceptional becomes the norm,

When from a test-tube we produce gargantuas or gnomes,

And assembly-line babies, conveyor-belt storks, only come to push-button homes.

So much of this, so much of that for the ears and eyes,

So much of that, so much of this for the toes and thighs.

Pour in a pot, stir up the lot, that's the basic plan,

What have we got? I'll tell you what: We've got man-made man!

Oh, happy day, when we can choose their looks

From formulae in scientific books

And add their personalities from psychiatric tomes

And assembly-line women, conveyor-belt men, settle down in push-button homes.

But what is inspiring this blog entry is the song describing the government after Li’l Abner visits DC for the first time.  Here is a clip from the 1959 film version of the musical, which retained the male Broadway principals, but not the females (Leslie Parrish for Edie Adams as Daisy Mae, and Stella Stevens for Tina Louise as Appassionata von Climax, but notably retaining the immortal Julie Newmar as Stupefyin’ Jones).  The indented material was deleted from the movie, but it’s all still amazingly resonant.

Them city folks and we’uns
Are purdy much alike
Though they ain't used to living in the sticks.
We don't like stone or ce-ment
But we is in agree-ment
When we gets down to talking politics

The country's in the very best of hands, the best of hands, the best of hands

The treasury says the national debt is climbing to the sky,
And government expenditures have never been so high,
It makes a feller get a gleam of pride within his eye
To see how our economy expands.
The country's in the very best of hands

The country's in the very best of hands, the best of hands, the best of hands.

[You oughtta hear the senate when they’re drawing up a bill
Whereases and to-wits are crowded in each codicil
Such legal terminology would give your heart a thrill
There's phrases there that no one understands
The country's in the very best of hands

The building boom, they say, is getting bigger every day
And when I asked a feller “How could everybody pay?”
He come up with an answer that made everything okay:
“Supplies are getting greater than demands.”
The country's in the very best of hands

Don't you believe them congressmen and senators are dumb
When they run into problems that is tough to overcome
They just declares a thing they calls a “moratorium”:
The upper and the lower house disbands.
The country's in the very best of hands.]

The farm bill should be eight-nine percent of parity.
Another fellow recommends It should be ninety-three.
But eighty, ninety-five percent, who cares about degree,
It's parity that no one understands!
The country's in the very best of hands

Us voters is connected to the nominee,
The nominee's connected to the treasury,
When he ain't connected to the treasury,
He sets around on his thigh bone.

They sets around in this place they got,
This big congressional parking lot,
Just sets around on their you-know-what,
Up there, they calls it their thigh bone.

Them bones, them bones gonna rise again
Gonna exercise the franchise again
Gonna tax us up to our eyes again
When they gets ‘em off’n their thigh bone

The country's in the very best of hands, the best of hands, the best of hands

Them GOP's and democrats each hates the other one.
They's always criticizing how the country should be run.
But neither tells the public what the other’s gone and done.
As long as no one knows where no one stands,
The country's in the very best of hands

[They sits around in this place they’re at,

Where folks in Congress has always sat
Just sits around on their excess fat,
Up there they calls it their thigh bone

They sits around till they starts to snore
Jumps up and hollers “I has the floor!”
Then sits right down where they sat before.
Up there they calls it their thigh bone.

Them bones, them bones gonna rise again
So dignified and so wise again
While the budget doubles in size again
When it gets them off of their thigh bone

The country's in the very best of hands the best of hands, the best of hands]

The money that they taxes us, that's known as revenues.
They compounds the collaterals,  subtracts the residues.
Don't worry about the principal and interest that accrues,
They're shipping all that stuff to foreign lands
The country's in the very best of hands

So here’s the genetics question:  Which of the actors in that clip do I share 12.5% of my DNA with, by descent,  including my Y chromosome?  I’ll  give you a hint, it’s my father’s father’s brother.  No, it’s not Peter Palmer (Abner), and it’s not Stubby Kaye (Marryin’ Sam). 

            Watch carefully when Pappy Yokum says “Tell us about the government, all them crooks!” at 0:59.  See the resemblance? 

            All right, this is like Hamlet convincing Polonius to see camels and whales in the clouds.  I might as well be related to Julie Newmar.  But that’s Joe E. Marks.  He was in several things:  He played Smee in the Mary Martin – Cyril Ritchard  “Peter Pan” and he was the first person on camera in the Lesley Ann Warren  - Rodgers & Hammerstein “Cinderella”.  You can also hear him here, in the 1965 musical, “Flora, The Red Menace” which was Liza Minnelli’s first Broadway lead:

And I still have her autograph, from when we went backstage and met her.  I think it was just before 3M invented invisible tape.

Al Capp, the cartoonist who drew Li’l Abner, was quite a douchebag in real life, no matter what his politics.  Although his politics were progressive in first few decades of Li’l Abner, he swung to the right as the country moved to the left.  Here he chats with John and Yoko, and sounds almost like Eric Cartman.  At the time, he and John Lennon were about equally famous, and both were more famous than you-know-who.  

Oddly, although alkaptonuria was one of the first diseases shown to be inherited genetically, he didn’t have it.