Michael Medved: American DNA is best ... except for those pesky slaves and their bad genes

Michael Medved's commentary on the supremacy of American DNA is one of the most laughably transparent, self-contradictory and offensive smatterings of words it has ever been my displeasure to read. In his world, racial tension is the fault of slaves' undesirable DNA, which he claims is less given to positive traits like risk-taking.

All of this is based on one specious premise:

Nevertheless, two respected professors of psychiatry have recently come out with challenging books that contend that those who chose to settle this country in every generation possessed crucial common traits that they passed on to their descendents. In “American Mania,” Peter C. Whybrow of U.C.L.A. argues that even in grim epochs of starvation and persecution, only a small minority ever chooses to abandon its native land and to venture across forbidding oceans to pursue the elusive dream of a better life. The tiny percentage making that choice (perhaps only 2%, even in most periods of mass immigration) represents the very essence of a self-selecting group. Compared to the Irish or Germans or Italians or Chinese or Mexicans who remained behind in the “Old Country,” the newcomers to America would naturally display a propensity for risk-taking, for restlessness, for exuberance and self-confidence ...

The fact that this argument is largely untrue is the least of its concerns. Forget the fact that two professors of psychiatry -- whose work, to be fair, Medved may be mischaracterizing -- are offered as experts in evolutionary biology. Forget that Medved is saying that the American melting pot has fused people into a common DNA phenotype in, oh, 200 years, which is about as scientific as phrenology without a sense of touch.

It's the rank hypocrisy that puts this one over the top. The people that Medved credits with building the greatest nation in the world through the most choice genetic material are the self-same people he wants to keep out of the country today.

For the past couple of centuries, people of a "self-selecting group" that demonstrated a "propensity for risk-taking, for restlessness, for exuberance and self-confidence" were desirable additions to the genetic fabric of the country -- but now we ought to build a high wall to prevent their entry? Coming for the promise of land in the 18th and 19th centuries represents more "risk-taking" than chancing starvation, dehydration and violence in the 20th and 21st?

If you're going to make the argument that these traits are desirable for your nation's gene pool, the chain of dominoes leads away from the border restrictions that conservatives vehemently endorse.

If you thought immigration was a controversial topic, though ... read this:

The idea of a distinctive, unifying, risk-taking American DNA might also help to explain our most persistent and painful racial divide – between the progeny of every immigrant nationality that chose to come here, and the one significant group that exercised no choice in making their journey to the U.S. Nothing in the horrific ordeal of African slaves, seized from their homes against their will, reflected a genetic predisposition to risk-taking, or any sort of self-selection based on personality traits.

In short: Michael Medved thinks slaves passed on bad genes, or at least less desirable genes than European immigrants.

That's offensive on its face, of course, and reflects the pseudo-scientific racism that postures as intellectual. But if you're flabbergasted over that claim, don't miss two important words. This DNA difference, in Medved's perverse world, is the source of our "racial divide."

If only this guy's DNA had allowed him to take more risks!

That's right, today's racial tensions aren't the fault of, say, centuries of racism. Nor of segregation both forced and de facto. Not lack of voting rights, or housing discrimination, or interracial marriage being illegal for nearly two centuries, or Emmitt Till, or siccing dogs on nonviolent protesters, or any number of quiet indignities. African slaves did not have risk-taking DNA, and that's why a gap between black and white Americans still exists in this country.

Spot this risk-takers in this photo!

Damning with faint praise time. Medved's has defended American slavery before, but -- and how sad is that this disclaimer applies -- his apologism for slavery is not as horrifying as other conservatives' defense of human bondage.

I can't believe that it is the year 2008, and I just typed that last paragraph. But then, I can't believe Medved wrote this article, either.

On the other hand, let's be open-minded. Maybe there's something too this. Maybe Americans not descended from slaves are more likely to take bold, daring risks! As their banner-bearer, it seems only fair that Medved act to convince skeptics.

Hey Michael: I hear jumping head-first into a wood chipper is pretty risky. Why don't you go do all of us that share your DNA proud?