On Christopher Columbus and Genetic Nationalism
Bowler Hat Science from Matthew R Francis
Before getting into the topic of today’s newsletter, I wanted to thank everyone who donated after my last message! A few people unsubscribed, because apparently even saying I won’t ask for money is a bridge too far, but more of you actually sent money, and I appreciate that a lot! That means I will try to keep writing newsletters, and hopefully you all will keep reading.
Now for something less pleasant, but a lot more important:
Eugenics by any name
Last weekend, multiple news outlets — most notably the BBC — covered an upcoming documentary claiming that Christopher Columbus was “Spanish and Jewish”, based on DNA evidence. A few days before that, the New York Times published a story with the headline “Trump’s Remarks on Migrants Illustrate His Obsession With Genes” and subhead “discussing migrants and genes, the former president used language that reflected his decades-long belief that bloodlines determine a person’s capacity for success or violence”.
As historians David Perry and Matt Gabriele point out, the Columbus claim isn’t published in any scientific journal yet, so it’s not clear what evidence (if any) exists. Furthermore, they note that DNA doesn’t make one Jewish because of course Jewishness is a matter of culture and heritage, and Columbus himself violently pushed Christianity on the Indigenous Taíno peoples of the Caribbean. Multiple dubious sources have pushed the narrative of his supposed Jewish ancestry over the past 100 years or so, along with others like Leonardo da Vinci and (most horrifyingly) Adolf Hitler.
I don’t want to ascribe motivations to this particular researcher, whom I haven’t heard of. However, given the historical record of quantifying Jewishness (largely in Europe) or Blackness (in the US) by the amount of “blood” for the sake of persecution, even naivety about this sort of thing is dangerous. And that’s where this Columbus story links to the NYT piece about former US President/current candidate Trump.
To be clear, I’m not a geneticist, but I am an experienced observer of the interactions of science with culture. Population genetics can play important roles in identifying things like susceptibility to sickle cell disease or lactose tolerance. However, when you start saying things like the genetics of certain ethnic groups predispose them to violence or criminality (which is culturally defined anyway!), you quickly land in the cesspit of eugenics. Nationality and ethnicity are not genes; genes are part of what makes us us, but I do not carry “American genes” or “physicist genes” any more than the groups Trump demonizes carry “criminal genes”.
Saying Columbus was Jewish contains dangerous statements about values, particularly since many of us belatedly acknowledge he was a genocidal monster. I fully expect the Nazis and other Nordic supremacists to run with the Columbus-was-Jewish thing to say his purported Jewishness was why he was bad, and why Vikings deserve the credit for “discovering America”. Frankly even saying his DNA shows he was Italian or Spanish has nationalist overtones, since nations are not genetically defined. (Not to mention that “Spain” hadn’t existed very long in Columbus’ time, and “Italy” was still several centuries from becoming a nation.)
Donald Trump isn’t making a profound statement about genetics or “bloodlines” when he blames immigrants for crime. Worse, the NYT is giving a scientific gloss to virulent racism and xenophobia. Similarly, genetic “proofs” that Columbus was some ethnicity or other are entirely statements about the scientists’ biases, and often carry extreme nationalist sentiments.
So, this is why as a scientist and journalist I care deeply about these misrepresentations of science to demonstrate things about identity and culture. I’ve already used this Stephen Jay Gould quote in a newsletter, but it still bears repeating, perhaps as often as I write in these fraught times:
Science can supply information as input to a moral decision, but the ethical realm of “oughts” cannot be logically specified by the factual “is” of the natural world—the only aspect of reality that science can adjudicate. As a scientist, I can refute the stated rationale for Nazi evil and nonsense. But when I stand against Nazi policy, I must do so as everyman—as a human being. For I win my right to engage moral issues by my membership in Homo sapiens—a right vested in absolutely every human being who has ever graced this earth, and a responsibility for all who are able.
[reprinted in "Dinosaur in a Haystack", 1995]
Bowlerhattishly thine,
Matthew
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