Guns, Germs and Steel is a Powerful Anti-Racist Book. So Why Doesn't the Left Love it?
To defeat racism requires a rejection of both right-wing and left-wing ideology
It has been 30 years since the publication of Jared Diamond’s first book, The Third Chimpanzee, and it has survived the test of time well. It examines the evolutionary foundations of human behaviours, and, in particular, looks at the differing behaviours of the sexes. In passing, while considering how our behaviours have been shaped by evolution, Diamond considers the controversial fact that genetically diverse groups of humans have fared so differently in their outcomes throughout human history—some have expanded across the globe and amassed wealth, while others have, until recently, lived in universal poverty. Still others have been pushed to the point of extinction. He concludes that these enormous disparities in outcome are not caused by biological differences between the various branches of humanity, but by variations in the geography and environment of different parts of the world.
Spurred perhaps by discussion and criticism of this conclusion, Diamond went on, six years later, to publish his best-known book, Guns, Germs, and Steel. It set out to explain in vivid detail, region by region, and era by era, how some branches of humanity came to dominate and even eradicate others. This was an ambitious undertaking, and one that would inevitably clash with established ideologies and political interests. Perhaps most significantly, it provided a scientific rebuttal of white supremacist beliefs—one that had previously been missing from the debate on race. In the introduction, Diamond writes of racist theories of history: “The objection to such explanations is not just that they are loathsome, but they are wrong.”
On this basis alone, one might have expected the Left to have embraced the book; but in making its case, GGS steps on too many ideological toes… (Click here to read the full article at Quillette…)