Once every couple of weeks I play chess with John and Jeffrey. Jeffrey is a
long-time Nation subscriber and John, a lawyer by profession, is the kind
of New Yorker who voted for Giuliani. I usually let the two of them argue
politics since the gap between John and me is too wide to allow civil
debate. A couple of weeks ago, against my better judgement, I attempted to
explain to him why the Kennewick Man's bones should stay out of the hands
of "scientists". John has a tremendous ability to ferret out books that
answer his 'bete noires', Afrocentrists, left-liberals like Jeffrey and
anybody else who thinks that white society is responsible for black
peoples' woes. He snapped up Jim Sleeper's "Liberal Racism" while the ink
was still wet and has committed Mary Lefkowitz's screed against Martin
Bernal to memory. As soon as it came out, he began waving Jared Diamond's
book in our face. "See," he shouted, "we had nothing to do with black
people's suffering."
I do know that Jim Blaut makes a few dismissive comments in Diamond's
direction. Myself, I have yet to see anything in the reviews that would
make me want to delve into his book. I first stumbled across Diamond about
ten years ago, when reviews portrayed him as a sociobiologist in the Robert
Ardrey mold. Here's one to give you a flavor for how he was perceived in
the press. I am just not motivated to read these characters, who seem to be
a subspecies of social Darwinism.
Financial Times (London)
June 1, 1991, Saturday
Books; A 'Naked Ape' for grown-ups
By ANDREW CLEMENTS
THE RISE AND FALL OF THE THIRD CHIMPANZEE by Jared Diamond Radius Pounds
16.99, 360 pages
A NAKED Ape for grown-ups, Jared Diamond's fascinating examination of Homo
sapiens as large mammal delves into all those areas of human behaviour that
Desmond Morris exposed so titillatingly to public gaze 25 years ago. Human
socio-biology has come a long way since then and Diamond, a physiologist by
training and ornithologist by parallel career, has laced its disparate
strands into a fascinating portrait with more than enough uncomfortable
facts to stop any dinner-party conversation right in its tracks.
To a disinterested observer from another planet, he reminds us, humanity
would be classified as just another large ape, a very close cousin to the
chimpanzees. We share more than 98 per cent of our genes with the two chimp
species, giving a closer correlation than between birds like the Chiffchaff
and Willow Warbler that are indistinguishable to the casual observer. But
that extra two per cent has made all the difference, and has been
responsible for everything that stems from our upright posture, larger
brains and strange sex and social lives. Those behavioural differences,
Diamond argues, have been at least as important as sheer brain capacity in
lifting us above our congeners.
(clip)
Louis Proyect
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