Review: “The Genetic Lottery: Why DNA Matters for Social Equality”

“Now, given that genetics matters for these things, which, in turn, drive inequality, we should take genetics seriously if we are truly committed to egalitarianism.”

Books published by university presses do not, in general, generate significant discussion or media attention. Much like their shorter counterparts, peer-reviewed journal articles, books such as these put forward a set of ideas to be considered and discussed by other academics as opposed to being aimed at the public at large. This is why scientists also tend to write popular science books designed to make their ideas more accessible, books that often prove quite successful.

The Genetic Lottery: Why DNA Matters for Social Equality is one of those less common cases of an academic book generating considerable discussion. Written by Kathryn Paige Harden, a behavioral geneticist and professor of psychology at the University of Texas at Austin, and published by Princeton University Press, the book has already generated considerable media buzz. In the short period leading up to and after the book’s publication, Harden has been profiled by The New Yorker, appeared on the MSNBC show Morning Joe, and produced many conversations on social media and in other publications.

Much of this discussion has been, for better or worse, very polarized. For this reason, this is not intended as a regular book review but, instead, as a discussion of both the book’s contents and the reactions to it.

As Harden readily admits, genetics—and behavioral genetics in particular—is a controversial topic due to its historical entanglements with the eugenics movement of the early twentieth century, which aimed to use genetic inheritance to naturalize and justify material inequalities between people and races and, in the most extreme cases, to advocate policies like mass forced sterilization and genocide. It should go without saying that these are not things that she advocates, so let us look instead at the basic arguments of the book.