The Colors of Genes: The Perversion of Genetics

This essay deals with an opinion propounded by some academics and satisfactorily or resignedly accepted by the silent majority, an opinion according to which Africans and their descendants are intellectually inferior to peoples of other descents, particularly to Europeans or Asians. This opinion derives from a biased interpretation of the situation of sub-Saharan Africa and its diaspora during the last four centuries, a situation of submission to peoples technologically more equipped. To cite descent is to say heredity and genes. Proponents of the innate inferiority of Africans have used biological arguments to support their thesis. This essay presents counter-arguments to the thesis, drawing on the lessons of modern genetics. It begins with a survey of the notion of heredity in African traditions and demonstrates that Africans empirically knew that biological traits are transmissible and how to avoid transmitting deleterious ones. The essay goes on to describe how, in the course of