Indelicate Questions

[Resha Caner]

I'm curious if there is any discussion of certain "indelicate" questions within the peer-reviewed biological literature?

I'm thinking largely of questions relating to people. I'm not talking about Social Darwinism, but about the effects of selection pressure on people. I would think it a difficult subject to breach - especially in the U.S. with the prevalence of individualism and the way school children are indoctrinated with "you can be anything you want to be." In fact, I've been debating this in my own mind for months due to certain things that came up in my history classes, but have refrained from asking because of the way it might be received.

But, here it goes. When slavery was legal in the U.S., some slave owners viewed their slaves as no different than livestock, and undertook efforts to "breed" them. Specifically they were looking for 2 traits. They wanted slaves to be "sturdy" (able to undertake back-breaking work in hot, mosquito infested conditions), and they wanted them to be "docile" (unquestioning, no thoughts of revolt or escape). At the same time, during that era the ideal model for a slave owner's wife was the "refined, delicate" woman.

Is it possible these "selection pressures" affected African-American and Anglo-American women to create real differences between them along these lines? Or were such things just Victorian, patriarchal, wishful thinking by racists?

Has the biological literature ever considered rather indelicate questions like these? It may seem there is no point in studying such a question, but if such effects are indeed possible I would think it could have ramifications for medicine ... or maybe such things can be studied without considering the sordid origin?

 

[Squeegee Beckenheim]

How many generations are you talking about?

 

[mmksparbud]

Well--as for the delicate, southern belle---met them. Esp this one that butter wouldn't melt in her mouth. Never raised her voice. Never used profanity. Always the most gentle, loving, kind woman. Made everything from scratch. Was the most unflappable woman I've ever met. I asked her if she took tranquilizers, but she did not believe in things of that nature. If I didn't know any better, one of those who couldn't possibly have bodily functions. Didn't even seem to sweat in the summer heat.
She was married to an alcoholic. He'd come home drunk as a skiunk and pass out on the kitchen floor. She wasn't strong enough to pick him up, so she'd place a pillow under him and put a blanket over him. One day, I guess she'd had enough. Instead of a pillow, she got her caste iron skillet and worked him over from head to foot. When he came to the next morning, he called the bar wanting to know who beat him up---no one knew, off course. He stayed away from the bar for a while, but eventually, it called him back---so, she grabbed her skillet again---stayed away from the bar a little longer--it took just one more session before he quite drinking altogether----permanently. She would smile ever so sweetly when he would describe why he quite drinking---for her closest friends, we could hardly contain ourselves when he told about this mysterious person who kept beating him up, who must have been one heck of a big, huge man as he himself was over 6 feet, and very muscular.

If anyone was genetically programmed to be a southern belle, she was---still, her inner beast came out under the right circumstances.

 

[Willtor]

Researchers do, indeed, test for lots of traits and genetic causes. That said, there are a number of reasons it doesn't make sense to hypothesize slavery acting as a selective pressure:

* Although slavery went on for far too long, in a social sense, it didn't actually go on that long in terms of generations.
* Trying to breed humans for specific traits is much harder than breeding other (more instinctual) animals for traits.
* There was constant sharing of genetic information between slaves and non-slaves.
* There has been constant sharing of genetic information between descendants of slaves and descendants of non-slaves since the 1860's.

I'd be skeptical that any of their efforts ever met with the least bit of success. And, certainly today, even their crude attempts at selective pressure have been gone for generations.

As a side note: My guess is that their attempts at "breeding" a stronger, more docile human were more words than anything else. Even one slave owner being serious about it couldn't get more than 2 or 3 generations of people before he died of old age. You'd need many generations of slavers who were dedicated to the cause and were able to prevent outside influences, altogether (or they'd have to start over). No such people existed. Any attempts were half-hearted at best -- a slave owner working with the slaves he already had... for one generation.

Why the words? I think it was an attempt at justifying what they were doing -- "Look, you can breed slaves like you breed horses or dogs; why shouldn't they be down there and us up here?" But there was no systematic attempt at breeding people. It would have been an absurdly expensive, long-term endeavor with little chance of success (from their perspective; virtually no chance of success from ours, knowing what we do, today).

 

[mmksparbud]

Not to mention the fact that slave owners kept adding their own gene pool into the mix--slave owners not being exactly docile to begin with.

 

[[serious]]

Modern human evolutionary pressures are studied, but active breeding is, of course, not done. It's difficult if not impossible to actually accomplish deliberate, meaningful changes in a human population, and historical attempts have a very bad track record.

 

[ecco]

You'd need many generations of slavers who were dedicated to the cause and were able to prevent outside influences, altogether (or they'd have to start over). No such people existed. Any attempts were half-hearted at best -- a slave owner working with the slaves he already had... for one generation.
​

You hit the nail on the head.

 

[Goonie]

Interesting I do believe the op has been addressed, is this a rare event?

 

[Willtor]

Interesting I do believe the op has been addressed, is this a rare event?

Quick! Submit it to Guinness!

 

[Resha Caner]

Modern human evolutionary pressures are studied, but active breeding is, of course, not done. It's difficult if not impossible to actually accomplish deliberate, meaningful changes in a human population, and historical attempts have a very bad track record.

Thanks. I wasn't so much interested in whether slave owners accomplished their specific goals, but whether it is thought slavery might have had an impact ... or if it's even been considered as a selective pressure. After further digging, it appears it has been considered - though nothing seems to be conclusive:

The Slavery Hypertension Hypothesis

Racial Differences in Life Expectancy: The Impact of Salt, Slavery, and Selection

Genome-Wide Detection of Natural Selection in African Americans Pre-and Post-Admixture

 

[Loudmouth]

A very interesting and well thought out thread, Resha!!

Bioethics is certainly something scientists consider. That includes the social and emotional impact that your research will have on the population at large. A bit off topic, but some other considerations that scientists take is to not do work that others could use to ill effects, like increasing the virulence of dangerous pathogens or even something as simple as publishing the DNA sequence of a dangerous virus. Scientists are always balancing the questions of what is true and what is right. Science can tell us what we can do. Ethics tells us what we should do.

For your study specifically, scientists have to ask themselves if their published research would do more harm than good. Scientists have an unwritten agreement with society at large that their research will improve our lives, not make it worse.

 

[[serious]]

Thanks. I wasn't so much interested in whether slave owners accomplished their specific goals, but whether it is thought slavery might have had an impact ... or if it's even been considered as a selective pressure. After further digging, it appears it has been considered - though nothing seems to be conclusive:

The Slavery Hypertension Hypothesis

Racial Differences in Life Expectancy: The Impact of Salt, Slavery, and Selection

Genome-Wide Detection of Natural Selection in African Americans Pre-and Post-Admixture

If slaves were actually kept as an isolated population, you would have some differences due to founder effects (not selective breeding), but there has been enough mixing that I'm highly skeptical of any actual meaningful genetic differences at this point. Africans, as a whole, are actually more genetically diverse than people across europe and asia. Trying to look for overarching group trends there seems like a fool's errand.

 

[DogmaHunter]

I'm curious if there is any discussion of certain "indelicate" questions within the peer-reviewed biological literature?

I'm thinking largely of questions relating to people. I'm not talking about Social Darwinism, but about the effects of selection pressure on people. I would think it a difficult subject to breach - especially in the U.S. with the prevalence of individualism and the way school children are indoctrinated with "you can be anything you want to be." In fact, I've been debating this in my own mind for months due to certain things that came up in my history classes, but have refrained from asking because of the way it might be received.

But, here it goes. When slavery was legal in the U.S., some slave owners viewed their slaves as no different than livestock, and undertook efforts to "breed" them. Specifically they were looking for 2 traits. They wanted slaves to be "sturdy" (able to undertake back-breaking work in hot, mosquito infested conditions), and they wanted them to be "docile" (unquestioning, no thoughts of revolt or escape). At the same time, during that era the ideal model for a slave owner's wife was the "refined, delicate" woman.

Is it possible these "selection pressures" affected African-American and Anglo-American women to create real differences between them along these lines? Or were such things just Victorian, patriarchal, wishful thinking by racists?

Has the biological literature ever considered rather indelicate questions like these? It may seem there is no point in studying such a question, but if such effects are indeed possible I would think it could have ramifications for medicine ... or maybe such things can be studied without considering the sordid origin?

Assuming one has indeed complete control over breeding pairs, then I would guess yes: these "controlled" selection pressures would eventually have impact on new generations.

However, we are talking about a period of only a few generations (and that is already being generous in terms of timespan), which would be far to short to see any real effect.