and white ancestry.12 Several tests were given at various ages, and small differences were found in the I. Q. performance between these groups, but these were not statistically significant. If nothing more was said about it, most of the readers would assume that the small differences showed whites were better than Blacks. But in fact the reverse was true. The differences were not statistically significant, but where there were any differences, they were in favor of Blacks. There is not an iota of evidence of any kind that the differences in status, wealth, and power between races in North America have anything to do with the genes, except, of course, for the socially mediated effects of the genes for skin color. Indeed, there is in general a great deal less difference genetically between races than one might suppose from the superficial cues we all use in distinguishing races. Skin color, hair form, and nose shape are certainly influenced by genes, but we do not know how many such genes there are, or how they work. On the other hand, when we look at genes we do know something about, genes that influence our blood type, for example, or genes for the various enzyme molecules essential to our physiology, we find that although there is a tremendous amount of variation from individual to individual, there is remarkably little variation on the average between major human groups. In fact, about 85 percent of all identified human genetic variation is between any two individuals from the same ethnic group. Another 8 percent of all the variation is between ethnic groups within a race-say, between Spaniards, Irish, Italians, and Britons-and only 7 percent of all human genetic variation lies on the average between major human races like those of Africa, Asia, Europe, and Oceania.13 So we have no reason a priori to think that there would be any genetic differentiation between racial groups in characteristics such as behavior, temperament, and intelligence. Nor is there an iota of evidence that social classes differ in any way in their genes except insofar as ethnic origin or race may be used as a form of economic discrimination. The nonsense propagated by ideologues of biological determinism that the lower classes are biologically inferior to the upper classes, that all the good things in European culture come from the Nordic groups, is precisely nonsense. It is meant to legitimate the structures of inequality in our society by putting a biological gloss on them and by propagating the continual confusion