DNA proof of racial differences - more racial facts coming to light

John Philippe Rushton is a Canadian psychology professor widely known for his highly  controversial work on racial group differences.  In an Internet Essay in 2001: Is Race A Valid Taxonomic Construct? he argues that racial differences make sense in terms of human  evolution.  Talking of migration out of Africa  he says that the further north people went out of Africa, the harder it was to get food, shelter, make clothes, and raise children. So  the groups that evolved into today’s Whites and Orientals needed larger brains, more family stability, and a longer life.  The time and energy needed to build a bigger brain was a trade off with slower rates of growth, less aggression and less sexual activity.  He claims that this racial pattern is evident all around the world: “…on average, African-descended children are born with smaller brains than European- or East Asian-descended children…”, and concludes that “Black underachievement is not simply due to ‘White prejudice’” because they are born with smaller brains than White or East Asian children.  Rushton has provoked controversy for years and is criticised by many scientists and researchers for being poorly researched and promoting scientific racism.  Robert Sussman, an evolutionary anthropologist and editor in-chief of American Anthropologist, said of one of Rushton’s books in 1998: “This is an insidious attempt to legitimize Rushton’s racist propaganda and is tantamount to publishing ads for white supremacy…If you have any question about the validity of the ‘science’ of Rushton’s trash you should read any one of his articles and the many rebuttals by ashamed scientists“.

A whole new wave of genetic race debate came in May 2010 with the reporting of the initial results of the Neanderthal Genome Project.  These pointed to interbreeding between Neanderthals and modern humans which has left a genetic legacy of between 1-4% of Neanderthal autosomal DNA in non-African Eurasians.  Blogger Lee John Barnes on far right wing website 21^st Century British Nationalism seized on this to proclaim, “Yes Race exists” and outline The New Race Theory.  He states that the fact that Modern Europeans are part Neanderthal explains racial differences.  He translates the Neanderthal Genome Project Team’s ‘1-4% for all Eurasians’ into:  “Modern Europeans have a minimum of 4% DNA from Neanderthals = Whites who are the descendants of the Cro-Magnons.  East Asians have 2% DNA from Neanderthals = the Oriental racial groups.  Black Africans have no DNA from Neanderthals = African blacks.  It appears that Australian aborigines do not have any Neanderthal DNA either, so they are also archaic Homo Sapiens from Africa”.  This is despite project team member, geneticist David Reich, saying that all non-Africans – be they from France, China or Papua New Guinea – share the same amount of Neanderthal DNA, suggesting that interbreeding occurred before those populations split.  Genetic evidence also suggests that Australian Aborigines descend from the same lineage as the first modern humans to migrate from Africa.  The US journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reported on a study showing that the DNA of living indigenous Australians in Western Australia and people in New Guinea and around the Indian Ocean could be traced back to the first humans to leave Africa 50,000 – 70,000 years ago.  The study also revealed very little gene flow into Australia and New Guinea in the 50,000 or so years since the initial migration and that Australian Aborigines evolved in relative isolation compared to other parts of the Indian Ocean, which were subject to much more genetic mixing.  This doesn’t fit Lee John Barnes’ assertion that “the white skin of the Modern European people is inherited from our  Neanderthal ancestors and is also shown by the pale skin tone of the East Asians as compared to modern Africans. The more Neanderthal DNA a racial group possesses, the lighter their skin tone.”  He also makes a remarkable  assertion that “The DNA difference between human beings and chimps is around 4 %. The percentage difference in DNA between Modern Europeans and Modern Africans is around 4 % as well in relation to the percentage of Neanderthal DNA.  Therefore racial differences are as distinct between Modern Europeans and Modern Africans as between human beings and chimpanzees”.

Is this true?  Richard McCulloch is an American author and also a noted white supremacist who has written several books advocating racial segregation.  In an article called The Races of Humanity in 2010 he wrote about the percentages of genetic differences between various human populations and quoted the work of respected biologists Masatoshi Nei and Arun K. Roychoudhury, Evolutionary Relationships of Human Populations on a Global Scale (1993) as “perhaps the best study to date (2010) on this subject”.  In presenting their original work Nei and Roychoudhury pointed out that their analysis was “an attempt to obtain a rough picture of the history of the evolution of various human populations”. Nevertheless McCulloch reformatted their data into “an easier to read and understand format”, adding the genetic difference of a chimpanzee “for context and comparison”, to produce the following table: 

From his reinterpreted data of genetic distance, he said that one could, with an Englishman as a starting point, spatially visualise the “very significant genetic differences” between various populations by imagining them standing a corresponding number of feet away from each other.