The damage of Social Darwinism is in my DNA

Anybody remember the book The Bell Curve and the controversy over its argument of scientific proof of intellectual inferiority of Black people? I do. I also remember when my brother Ernest Jr. took the SATs in the mid-1960s.

Ernie (his preferred nickname in his youth) was one of a kind. His IQ was through the roof. I remember in my late 20s excitedly telling him I had just qualified for membership in Mensa with an IQ of 140. He looked kindly at me as if I told him I didn't pass my driver's test, and said "Hmm. Well I wouldn't be too worried about it. Maybe you can take it again." I hadn't realized there were OTHER, HIGHER IQ organizations. He belonged to all of them.

In high school, Ernie was the president of the French Club, the German Club, the Math Club, the Physics Club and the Senior student body. He was 1st in his class. So when, as a Junior, he scored 800 on the Math section of the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT), nobody was that surprised. Except for the creators of the test at Princeton University. They accused him of cheating. Seriously. They would only validate his results if he DROVE DOWN TO PRINCETON AND TOOK ANOTHER, DIFFERENT SAT WHILE THEY MONITORED HIM.

If you know how the SAT scoring system works, it is not a raw score, but a converted score based on percentiles. That's right: the Bell Curve. A score of 800 represents the single highest score among that day's cohort of exam takers. You don't have to get a perfect score on the exam to get an 800: you just have to do better than everyone else that day. Ernest did. Princeton called him a cheater. Why?

Based on the way the test works, one person among all of the high school Juniors in the United States gets an 800 every day it's administered (about half a dozen times a year), right? So what's the big deal? No one at Middletown was surprised. Ernest had displayed his academic brilliance throughout his secondary school education. It wasn't the Bell curve of the testing day that tripped him up; it was the one in the minds of the test's creators. In their minds, no lower middle class Black teen had that kind of intelligence. But one might have enough cunning to find a way to cheat. Ernest drove down to Princeton. He took their test. He got a perfect score this time. Every single problem. Nailed it. They released his previous scores, and he received a full-tuition academic scholarship to Stanford University to study Physics. Happy ending, right?

You have to understand that this was only the beginning of a steady chipping away at a young, not-well-off Black man's self esteem. Ernest was one of --if not THE only-- Black person in his program of study. He was also the only one who had no money. From being wildly popular and gaining four letters in Football, Track, Basketball, and Baseball, having a large, supportive family of brothers and a sister, cousins, uncles, aunts, and grandparents around him, he was now on his own with no local moral support. He had trouble securing, maintaining and balancing part-time work with studies. And there was discrimination. You bet there was.

He must have felt like a birth mark on a pale-skinned person; like the gatecrasher at private members-only high society club. His fellow students were from wealthy White families. Ernest struggled emotionally, mentally, financially, socially and academically. He had some kind of breakdown in his Junior year and came home for a couple of years. He returned twice to finally complete his Bachelor of Science degree in Physics after 10 years. He went on to get an MS in Systems Engineering. He went to USAF Officer Training School to become a commissioned officer, but didn't make it through the training (they call it "washing out,"). He did manage to recover, and was a defense contractor for 25 years before he passed away from an aggressive lung cancer at the age of 59.

From the outside, this might appear to have ended up a pretty good life (except for the cancer part), and in ways it was. Great high school career. full-tuition academic scholarship at one of the most prestigious universities in the world. Graduated from Stanford U. Successful engineer. But behind the view from the outside, Ernie was damaged goods. He never married, although he loved and was devoted to his extended family (God knows how may thousands he "loaned" to cousins and nieces to help them out). He did not function well at home. He had a hoarding issue with books, newspapers, and magazines. He longed to return to higher education for postgraduate school, but he never did, because he paid for the educations of several family members. He tutored high school kids preparing for SATs and college in math and engineering in a volunteer program. He felt obligated and wanted to help his family. He had personal unmet aspirations, but he was trapped by his self-imposed obligation to help protect others from experiencing what happened to him. He resented doing all of the brain work at the company where he worked and watching others get promoted over him. He was ANGRY but, like the good Christian he was, he suppressed it (mostly): an ideal mind-body recipe for cancer.

What happens to your DNA when you are traumatized? Recent discoveries in genetic science (a new subfield called epigenetics) reveal that a process called methylation/demethylation covers/uncovers portions of the genome, causing that part of the genetic code to activate/deactivate, triggering biochemical, cellular, organic, and system changes in the body. What causes methylation and demethylation? Introduction of certain chemicals or forces into the body from the environment (food, changes in light frequencies, temperature, pollution, etc), a change in some other process in the body that releases enzymes/proteins that influence methylation, or --that's right-- sufficiently impactful thoughts and emotions. Your genome is the 88 keys of the piano; your gene expression is the music that gets played on it (or not). Herein lies the mind-body connection.

This is in direct contradiction to Darwin's theory that biologically inherited traits (what much later was discovered to be genes) are unchanged by experience and not passed on biologically from mother and father to child. However, it turns out that not only do epigenetic changes alter expression and suppression of genomic potentials, it has been proven in recent research that many also get passed down from mother (and it is hypothesized also father) to infant. This is where trauma comes into the story.

Trauma alters your DNA expression. In other words, it can cause a person to develop PTSD or something less clinical but also harmful. If unresolved in a parent, it can get passed down to the next generation. Add whatever trauma that NextGen experiences, and it may alter other genetic expression in a detrimental way. Generations of slavery, terror, abuse, neglect, discrimination, implicit bias, and the mentality of The Bell Curve all get passed down. This is not fake news. This is not pseudoscience. It is verified scientific fact born out in what you see in our society. It is my brother. Add this to the psychosocial and sociological dynamics that get passed down, and you have the recipe for how we got here.

So the next time you hear or read about the Bell curve, think about the one implanted in your mind by Society. And think about Ernie and the rest of us.

The damage of Social Darwinism, of slavery; of racial terror, abuse, and discrimination; of the Holocaust and generations of antisemitism; of all forms of White Supremacy, and of all atrocities and trauma inflicted upon our human family by our human family; all of these are passed down to us from our ancestors.

The good news is that, through skillful means, they can also be healed so that the chain is broken. But they cannot/CANNOT be ignored, dismissed, or minimized without inflicting further harm to Humanity.