A pertinent, and eye-opening story regarding genetics. We are all truly connected to one another.
The below articles continue to remind me how important it is to stay vigilant and alert. The Mischlinge Exposé is a project that hopes to make a small difference in the world through shining a light on stories to inspire reflection and tolerance.
Hoping we take heed…
I am happy to see this New York Times article highlighting ways in which our long held beliefs about race are falling apart. Yet another opportunity for us to find similarities between people!
“For centuries, skin color has held powerful social meaning — a defining characteristic of race, and a starting point for racism.
“If you ask somebody on the street, ‘What are the main differences between races?,’ they’re going to say skin color,” said Sarah A. Tishkoff, a geneticist at the University of Pennsylvania.
On Thursday, Dr. Tishkoff and her colleagues showed this to be a profound error. In the journal Science, the researchers published the first large-scale study of the genetics of skin color in Africans.
The researchers pinpointed eight genetic variants in four narrow regions of the human genome that strongly influence pigmentation — some making skin darker, and others making it lighter.
These genes are shared across the globe, it turns out; one of them, for example, lightens skin in both Europeans and hunter-gatherers in Botswana. The gene variants were present in humanity’s distant ancestors, even before our species evolved in Africa 300,000 years ago.…”
Dr. Jason Stanley
I had the privilege of hearing Dr. Stanley speak at the JCC on the Palisades, Tenafly, NJ on September 14. He is a professor at Yale, and the son of survivors. Below is are some notes from his presentation:
Propaganda is a very old problem, Dr. Stanley said, and is inextricably tied to democracy, in which it can flourish and to which it is poison. He begins his book with a discussion of “Plato’s Republic,” which told the ancient world that democracy will never work, and with a quote from Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s propaganda minister, “This will always remain one of the best jokes of democracy – that it gave it’s definitely enemies the means by which it was destroyed,” Goebbels is reported to have said.
In other words, “democracy requires that you allow people to say what they want to say.” But they have the right to free speech. “But that means that a demagogue,” who like everyone else is free to say what he wants to say, “can get people to set people against each other,” Dr. Stanley said. “Plato spells it all out.” A demagogue will define an enemy, and set the majority against that enemy. “He will create fear and represent himself as a protector, and then seize power.” And then of course democracy ends.
It is built in, an inescapable paradox of democracy.
“To have a democracy, you need a well-formed state,” Dr. Stanley said. “You can’t have a groups that resent other groups. You can’t build a state on racism or sexism. If you do then democracy doesn’t work.”