When scientists first decoded the human genome in 2000, they were quick to portray it as proof of humankind’s remarkable similarity. The DNA of any two people, they emphasized, is at least 99 percent identical.
But new research is exploring the remaining fraction to explain differences between people of different continental origins.
Scientists, for instance, have recently identified small changes in DNA that account for the pale skin of Europeans, the tendency of Asians to sweat less and West Africans’ resistance to certain diseases.
Science is discovering important racial differences.
History records no indigenous Negro civilizations comparable to those of the American Indians, much less of those founded by Caucasians in the Near East, or Orientals in the Far East. It does record that after two centuries of black majority rule Haiti has a lower per capita gross domestic product than any Latin American country.
No Negro author compares with Homer, the Greek tragic dramatists, Dante, or Shakespeare, not to mention the giants of Russian literature.