TV Features

A new book by American author Alon Ziv claims that couples from different ethnic groups produce children who are genetically stronger.   He argues breaking the taboo of inter-racial marriage could be the best thing for humankind.  A controversial idea, but as Kurt Barling asks is it scientifically accurate?

In 2000 I made a documentary for the BBC called “The Faster Race”, there were plenty of people who criticised our observations about the fallacy of using science to explain “Black” sprinting prowess at the Olympics.   Some people thought we were undermining “Black” achievement. 

Others thought we hadn’t stressed enough how this was compensation for the so-called intellectual inadequacies of “Black” people.    Science proved neither, but plenty of people are happy to recruit science to their political cause.

Many people are willing to believe “scientific proof” if it tells them what they want to hear.   After generations of being isolated and ignored it would be easy to understand why mixed-race Americans are lapping up the “evidence” that Alon Ziv has marshalled in his new book, “Breeding Between the Lines”.

The controversial title is about as close to the knuckle as they come.   The vexed question of whether the races should mix is still one many people would prefer not to face.   There are plenty of Britons whose hearts would still skip a beat or two if their child brought a potential suitor home that wasn’t part of their ethnic group. 

Within the last few decades so-called learned individuals have continued to claim that inter-racial marriage was potentially genetically undesirable for the children of such unions.

There have never been such laws in Britain of course, but there has still been plenty of taboo about mixed-race relationships.   The most recent statistics from the Office for National Statistics show that 1 in 30 Londoners are mixed-race.  This is the largest growing group and suggests more couples are prepared to challenge this taboo dating from the days of slavery.  

More interestingly in London it is not just an obsession about the African and European mix which dominates discourse as in America.   European-Asian, Jew-Gentile, African-Asian and just about any other combination you can possible think of will be found in the capital.

All this mixing of-course does mean that the categories that have so neatly defined us since the statisticians started counting these things have increasingly become problematic.  For example the category known until relatively recently as “Other” on official forms had become little more than an insult to people’s intelligence.   

A recognition that cultural difference offers a better understanding of people’s sense of identity has placed a stronger emphasis on the need for us British to understand identity outside of a “race paradigm”.  What I mean by this is that increasingly our sense of what is a British identity must not be confined within the framework of colour.

This is not a naïve or utopian outlook but a realistic one.   Those best able to define this need are those who cannot be conveniently forced into a category box named “Black” or “White” or even “European” or “African”.   Are Kurds “white”; are Kosovans more or less similar than Jamaicans; how “black” are Algerians?

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These categories are limiting and self-defeating if they do not described the sense-of-self that people of mixed backgrounds have of themselves.   Just because you do not fit into a convenient category does not mean you cannot define yourself.    

What does Alon Ziv have to add to this discourse scientifically?   The reality is precious little according to world renowned scientists like Professor Steve Jones who is Professor of Genetics at University College London.  

According to Steve Jones there is no credible evidence to support Ziv’s theory that mixing across the ethnic divide creates a “Human Hybrid Vigour”.   Whilst you may apply this concept to the life of plants or selective breeding of cattle, there is no such evidence that there is any such impact on Humans or likely to be.

Jones would go further and say that Race itself is not a very scientific construct.   What he means by this is that there is little to distinguish genetically between groups of humans around the world which could categorise humankind into “races”.  We are all the same species whether some people like the idea or not.

The human family he says is scientifically speaking all part of one African race, it’s just that some are now, after many generations, less African than others.  Race as it’s used in popular discourse, is in fact a social construct used by our ancestors to justify the social and economic divisions that arose as a result of slavery.  We’re in fact being duped into using inappropriate language to describe ourselves.

Jones describes Ziv’s approach as “Arts faculty science”; in other words using science to support a social argument.    The truth is it doesn’t matter how much you agree with the validity of the social argument, science can be used to prove and disprove it depending on the science you use.  

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Science is about observation and testing those observations for falsehood.   It doesn’t therefore take a rocket scientist to see that Alon Ziv is barking up the wrong scientific tree.

On the other hand people like Sharon Hall at the group called Intermix run from her flat in Camden town is much closer to experiencing the realities of being mixed race and being part of a mixed race relationship.   

When her youngest daughter who is light-skinned enough to be mistaken as “White” asked her what she was (and she couldn’t give a proper answer) she set out to help people in a similar situation to form a sense of identity out of their own individual experience.

She says we must start thinking beyond the history associated with the categories used to define us for so long, but also begin reassessing the influence of mixed-race people on life in Britain.  She believes mixed-race people think about themselves and others around them in a different way precisely because that mix has improved their ability to empathise with different cultural experiences and not improve their genes.

Sharon Hall believes that as a community having ignored the issues surrounding mixed-raced children we have ignored valuable insights into living with difference and accommodating change.

Mixed-race, half-caste, mulatto, have often been used as ways to denigrate those who do not appear to belong to one group or another.   Mixed-race children were for a long time an embarrassment to the racial clichés that had been allowed to dominate British mainstream life.  It has made it more of a struggle for those individuals to break down other peoples assumptions.

I can recall a television experiment some years back where a mixed-race reporter (African and European mix) asked members of the public which race they would associate him with.   Most suggested the reporter was “black”, a few ventured they might be mixed-race, none suggested the reporter might be “white”, despite the fact that one parent obviously was.

In times past there may have been a political rationale for that, even here in Britain.   Now there is no excuse.    We may be stuck with the word “race”, which is politically understandable but scientifically incorrect, but our national debate about identity should now step beyond the race paradigm.