On March 8, 2023, Nicholas Wade was called to testify before a congressional subcommittee regarding the possible origins of COVID-19. Wade was a science and health editor at The New York Times for over 20 years prior to his departure in 2011. He published a controversial book in 2014 called An Inconvenient Inheritance in which he discusses the genetic basis of race and its role in the evolution of civilizations.
Wade was an interesting choice as a witness as he is not, himself, a scientist, even though he’s very knowledgable about scientific topics and trends. He was invited by the Republican members because he was an early supporter of the concept that the virus was developed in and leaked from a lab. That theory was dismissed by Dr. Fauci and Democrats as a conspiracy theory of the lunatic right-wing fringe. At least for a while. However, as more evidence has been released, studied, and reported, it appears the lab-leak theory was not so far-fetched at all.
The video clip from the hearing that caught my attention was Kweisi Mfume (D-Maryland) berating Wade. Not over his opinion related to the origins of COVID-19, but how his views were not valid because Mfume considered Wade’s unrelated book to be racist. Mfume said that David Duke (the infamous former Grand Wizard of the KKK in Louisiana) had endorsed the book, somehow provides proof. Three things happened after I saw the clip. First, I bought Wade’s book to see if it really was racist or if this was just theater. Secondly, I asked myself, “If someone I don’t like endorses a position that I favor, does that mean I am required to now be opposed?” And finally, “If a person is wrong about one thing, does that mean they’re wrong about everything?”
I’ve heard that rationale from MSNBC commentators before – “I can’t vote for Republicans because the KKK endorses Republican candidates.” I’ve heard some Viet Nam vets say they were in favor of nuclear power because Jane Fonda was against it. The pros and cons of nuclear energy as part of our national energy strategy are independent of who protests it or who stands to benefit from it. It either makes sense or it doesn’t. It’s no more logical to say, “I can’t vote for Democrats because the Sierra Club endorses Democrats.”
An Inconvenient Inheritance was an interesting read. I’ll admit that some of his discussion about genes, alleles and the like were over my head. But it was interesting none-the-less. Basically he asks the question, “is it possible that there is a genetic component in addition to the cultural and geographic forces that contributed to the way humans migrated out of Africa (North, East and West), and how different societies evolved and behaved?”
I didn’t finish the book with a strong feeling either way, but I didn’t find his questions or his implications to be intentionally racially provocative. These are legitimate questions that he correctly points out are not being researched because they might lead to politically incorrect conclusions and career suicide for any academic who wants to continue to work in higher education. I recently wrote a blog that mentioned Galileo’s conflicts with the orthodoxy of his time. I’m not comparing Wade or the scientists whose research he quotes to Galileo. They may ultimately be proved wrong – but their fear of modern orthodoxy is the same as his was in the 1600’s. Current orthodoxy states that any underrepresentation of a historically marginalized group must be rooted in systemic racism and cannot be linked to that group’s genes or culture, therefore any desire or attempt to study these potential links is steeped in racism from the outset. Mfume is an adherent to this construct, and this motivated his questioning of Wade.
But is statistical representation the best measure? Let’s use sports as an example. It’s one of the easiest fields in which to make objective personnel decisions. Yes, there are stories of draft day misjudgments and can’t miss prospects who did, but it’s rare for someone with the requisite talent and competitive drive to not become successful in athletics. Coaches and GMs are always going to choose the player that they believe will give them the best chance to win.
Cornerback is the football position that requires the most speed and quickness. Wide receivers are fast but they know where they are going. Cornerbacks have to be faster because they’re running stride for stride with these speedsters and must have recovery quickness and closing speed if they miscalculate which direction the receiver might cut.
Most of the data I could find was from 2017+/- but I doubt much has changed: 100% of cornerbacks in the NFL are African American. Zero are of European descent. 91% of NFL wide receivers are black with 9% being white. The fastest white players in the league are fast enough to play wide receiver, but not fast enough to play cornerback. Quarterback and center are the two positions that require the highest levels of cognitive ability – reasoning and problem solving ability. 83% of quarterbacks are white. Even though the players on the offensive line are fairly evenly split, 82% of centers are white.
This underrepresentation of black quarterbacks and even centers is often criticized as being rooted in race, but this doesn’t explain the dearth of white running backs, linebackers and defensive backs. Are white players being denied opportunities based on their race? Or are teams doing the best they can at selecting the best available players to help their team succeed and the racial divide has other roots? If the NFL continues for another 100 years, will the teams start looking more like America? Will it reduce from having 70% black players to only 13%.
The argument that kids in the 60s, 70s and 80s were moved into positions that were more stereotypical has merit. Black kids were moved from quarterback to running back and white kids were moved from defense to offense as they aged from youth leagues to high school to college. There was a belief in that period that black athletes simply weren’t smart enough to play quarterback at the highest levels, but Doug Williams, Warren Moon, Russell Wilson, Donovan McNabb, Cam Newton, Patrick Mahomes and many others have pretty much eliminated that bias at the NFL franchise level. By the start of the new millennia, those stereotypes were already breaking down. In the 2000 NFL draft, for example, two black quarterbacks, Tee Martin from Tennessee and Spergon Wynn from Southwest Texas State, were chosen before Tom Brady. In the 2023 draft, the top three quarterbacks selected were Bryce Young from Alabama, C.J. Stroud of Ohio St. and Anthony Richardson of Florida, all African Americans. But whites who have NFL talent statistically end up at quarterback and offensive line, particularly center, more often than any of the other positions.
Is it possible that 100 years from now the racial breakdown of NFL positions (and NBA) will remain about the same because while there will always be outliers like Mahomes and Christian McCaffrey, the talent level in the pool of prospects won’t change very much.
Black activists don’t like to discuss their over-representation in fields like sports because they rightly fear that admitting they may have a genetic advantage in fast-twitch muscle development might mean they may have to consider that Europeans might have a genetic advantage in cognitive ability (at the highest levels). The 1994 book, The Bell Curve by Herrnstein and Murray was pilloried for suggesting this and if you read the Wikipedia entry on the book, you’ll see that many consider their research discredited.
There are 32 teams in the NFL, which means there are 64 starting cornerbacks plus perhaps another 64 reserve cornerbacks, bringing the total to 128. So, out of a U.S. population of 22 million young men aged 20-30, the 128 with the highest skill level for playing the cornerback position are all black. When you move down into the college ranks, you’ll start to find a sprinkling of white cornerbacks in the elite conferences, a few more in the mid-majors and even more in Divisions II and III. These white cornerbacks are faster and quicker than the majority of the population but the fastest and quickest white cornerback is not as fast and quick as the top 128 elite cornerbacks. Using six sigma methodology, the top 5,126 cornerbacks would be five standard deviations (5σ) from the mean for a sample size of 22 million and the top 75 would all fall in the six sigma range. So while many white cornerbacks are elite in terms of their skill, 4 and 5σ above the mean, the elite of the elite (6σ) are currently all black.
Wade applies a similar analysis to Nobel Prize winners in math and science. While there are 14 black Nobel laureates (1.4%), no black academic has won a Nobel Prize for science or math. There are certainly cultural explanations for this – blacks are underrepresented at the university faculty level in STEM degree programs (they are over-represented in many liberal arts fields of study, however). There is no question that there are and have been lots of elite black scientists and mathematicians from Neill deGrasse Tyson, Mae Jemison (astronaut), Katherine Johnson (Hidden Figures) and many others going all the way back to George Washington Carver. The question becomes, if blacks were better represented in STEM faculty and research roles, would they eventually become better statistically represented among science and math Nobel laureates? Time will tell, but it is possible that the elite black scientists will track in the 4 and 5σ range while the elite of the elite (6σ) might continue to come from European and Asian roots.
When I say that activists rightly fear… what I mean is that the implications of admitting that genetics can play a role in the elite of the elite, this acknowledgment can be bad for white kids, asian kids, and black kids. The social problem is not that one group or another is over or under-represented at extreme elite levels, but that decisions are made at the high school, college, career entry and corporate levels based on these anomalies that only occur at the furthest extremes. 68% of all people fall into the first standard deviation range. 95% of us fall within two standard deviations of the mean (2σ).
The real world miscalculations resulting from misunderstanding these statistics might look like this: Employer A has an asian candidate and a black candidate for an entry level job as a financial analyst. It’s tempting, but absurd for that employer to assume that the asian candidate is the better choice simply because there are examples of 6σ asian mathematicians but no 6σ black mathematicians. Likewise, it’s tempting for the youth football coach to play the black kid at cornerback and the white kid at quarterback, because he assumes the black kid will be quicker and the white kid smarter. Since most of us are not elite and fall within 1σ of average no matter which type of intelligence or ability we are measuring, both the manager and the coach will be wrong as often as they are right using that logic.
In conclusion, society should not create orthodoxy out of fear of ramifications of the truth. Scientists should be allowed to study the genetic influences on performance and behavior without fear of political reprisal. And the rest of us shouldn’t use those results as underlying assumptions when assessing talent for any reason. Individuals should be assessed as individuals, not as part of a group. Society will truly advance when it doesn’t bother us that one group might be over- or under-represented at the very elite levels in different fields, but we don’t use that fact to make judgements at the individual level.
As much as i despise tucker carlsons veiwpoints, i hope he was not fired for stating those veiwpoints and rediculous comments. We need to be more tolerant of differing opinions and not let one statement we make define what everyone thinks we are.
Were jimmy the greek’s or ben wright’s comments along this same path? Maybe valid but not politically acceptable? Or is it also not correct to ask that question?
If Tucker Carlson commented on a possible genetic component to over or under representation, I didn’t hear about it. My point is not so much that we allow different viewpoints (we should), but that we should allow the research to occur so we understand the science.