One of the important discoveries in biology, indeed one of the important discoveries in the entire history of science, is that the characteristics of parents are inherited by their children and that this information is encoded chemically in the embryo, and stored in a digital format.
Gregor Mendel, a christian monk, conducted some of the first experiments to study heridity in a scientific setting. He observed that some characteristics of individuals are dominant where as some are recessive. For example, in chick-peas, the tallness of the plant is dominant where as the shortness is recessive. That is, if a tall plant is crossed with a short plant, all the resultant children will be tall. Mendel did not have the means to study how exactly this information gets passed between the generations, but he invented a word “gene” to symbolize this idea. Thus, both the genes for tallness and shortness would be present in the hybrid offspring, even though the offspring appears tall due to the dominant action of tallness. Mendel was phenomenally clever in concluding so, because this is indeed right.
Genes are digital. The information does not get mixed up, like in an analog fashion.
Later in the next century, Watson and Crick discovered the means through which this information (genes) is transmitted. DNA contains a chain of four nucleotides whose ordering determines the structure of the gene. Thus, the information is encoded digitally through a language of 4 letters.
This is a fundamental principle of biology. But this is so counter-intuitive that it is often overlooked. Consider one of the most influential elements of race – the color of one’s skin. For the sake of an example, imagine that a fair skinned person and a dark skinned person sire a child together. We know that the child can take on the color of either of its parents, or can take on a wheatish complexion in the middleground. This happens because there does not exist one single gene to determine the color of the pigments of one’s skin. This color is the effect of several genes – both dominant and recessive ones amongst them. But the important thing is this – all these genes are preserved in tact when the information is transmitted (apart from the rare effects of mutation when it happens).
This principle of digital transmission of genes is important because it does not rule out the possibility that some individuals in the future generations would resemble their original ancestors in totality – that is being completely fair skinned or completely dark skinned. This happens because the genes that were responsible for the skin color of both the ancestors were preserved in the offspring – both of them, irrespective of which color the child took on.
Surprisingly, this basic principle is ignored when people talk about races. When people talk about creole races (due to the mixing up of two different races – usually black and white) they tend to say that these people have a wheatish complexion. This is true, but only on the average. It is not like mixing water and milk (a very popular metaphor, but very wrong)
This line of argument when extended into racism, says that the creole races, being hybrids, are only half-pure or half-good. This argument is highly demeaning to the creole population, but always overlooked. The truth is that the rich genetic diversity from all the ancestors is very much perfectly preserved in the offsprings. Each person is distinct from others and has a genetic individuality of his own.
The idea of race itself loses meaning now ! It cannot survive when the information is digital.
This is why I have said that India, the melting pot of all races, stands today as the antithesis of even the idea of race, not just racism.
good read. I guess I need to read some more writings on this to be in a position to comment.
Let me try to understand you here. You are saying that down to the genetic level, all race are the same. Which is effectively saying we are all human?
Yet the issue of race arise because the genetic or “digital” information manifest as physical attributes. Human are naturally pattern seeking and these attributes are “patterns” which lead to stereotyping.
I admit I was not very clear. What I was trying to refute was the idea of “damage to racial purity”. Quite a few people would actually be horrified by the idea of contamination of races. What I was trying to say is that nothing like that will happen because of digital encoding. And it does not make any sense to think of one particular race because each individual is different from everybody else.
[...] human evolution !!! Not to mention that the argument is extremely stupid by itself considering the digital format of genetic [...]
It is factually incorrect to say that humans have stopped evolving. This just goes on to show how even well-read people can mistake the concept of evolution to be some kind of magic. White people survive in the tropics thanks to airconditioning (not to speak of the physiological and metabolic changes that they do undergo in order to survive in the tropics). And genes are not faithfully transmitted just as they are over the generations. Sexual recombination does induce changes (thankfully so) which preclude evolution. Mutations are not “rare” events. Survivor mutants are rare. There is more to DNA (and subsequently to genetics) than genes. I am now losing patience I guess. In short, genes are not unchangable, they are not faithfully transmitted over ages (you do lose genes) and being a hybrid is nothing to be so ashamed of. I understand that you abhor the idea of racial superiority (and rightfully so) but I’d think twice about using genes in an argument unless I have all the facts right.
hi indira
I agree with you, but I am not sure you have understood my argument. It is not about how well genes are preserved over generations.
It is about the fact that the encoding of genes is done in a digital fashion (and this is the only way in which hereditary information is transmitted), and thus the notion of race would not make any sense.
>> It is factually incorrect to say that humans have stopped evolving.
Humans have stopped evolving in the traditional sense. Infact, most animal and plant life on earth have stopped evolving in the traditional sense. This is because humans have changed the ecosystem so much that the usual sticks and carrots of evolution have got transformed to completely different things.
With respect to humans, the medical technology is at such a high level of refinement that the detrimental effects of harmful genes would not cause immediate death of the individual. The person usually reaches sexual maturity and has offsprings, and thus passes down these genes to the future generations. It is not to say that evolution is not happening. But that, it needs to be completely reunderstood in the light of a radically new ecosystem.