DNA and Deferred Dreams
Our public discussions about what matters in our lives have become increasingly confused, funky and fatal, but we do have options. We can resist being swept into intellectual
oblivion. We can resist being arrested
and marched into partisan thought-control concentration camps. One of the tools we might use to defend
ourselves is
Nelson, Alondra . The Social Life of DNA: Race, Reparations,
and Reconciliation After the Genome. Boston: Beacon Press, 2016.
Nelson's book is well-researched, logical, nuanced, and very
serious about the good and the evil that can be achieved as we make use of genetic science and its array of data. Her focused discussion of how genetic data
influences social and cultural thought as well as political and legal decisions provides a new frame of reference
for measuring the importance of race in modern life, for remembering why we are
so enthralled by what that four-letter
word symbolizes. The issues of
scientific racism exposed by Stephen Jay Gould's The Mismeasure of Man (1981) may be more subtle in the 21st
century, but they are still powerful determinants in how we talk about our
everyday American lives.
Nelson is painstakingly exact in explaining the limits of
scientific research and reasoning; what non-scientists casually assume is pure
evidence may prove under scrutiny to be contaminated. However persuasive the findings of science
may seem, they are theoretical descriptions which contain grounds for
refutation. The portions of The Social Life of DNA which may appeal
greatly to some readers are those that deal with the biocultural knowledge we
have regarding the African Burial Ground in New York and our ongoing
fascination with tracing and documenting our ancestry, the riddles of our
genetic heritage. Much to her credit,
Nelson exercises due diligence in exploring her complex subject.
Weary of widely broadcast, hype-infused talks about race,
reparations, and reconciliation (which is a tragicomic dream deferred
everywhere on our planet), I am impressed with Nelson's integrity and refusal
to pander. Although she is obligated to
deal with concepts and vocabulary that some readers will complain are too
difficult, she does make a sincere effort to be conversational, to use lively
anecdotes to illustrate how her claims function. Nelson casts light on why STEM has assumed a
crucial role in contemporary life and on how what begins as pure science can be
corrupted by commercial desires. The
Social Life of DNA is a necessary expansion of the reasoning that informs
what Michelle Alexander, Ta'Nehisi Coates , Kevin Powell and others have
pondered about the human condition
American style. It gives us a modicum of hope that human beings can reclaim and
apply common sense as they deal with the inevitable facts of life.
Jerry W. Ward, Jr. February
6, 2016
