Fantastic anti-racism part I: Magic as a genetic trait

 Note: This article is a transcription of a conversation I had with my friend Signe (@Kaijumara). That’s why it’s in English, why the tone is more informal (I say “shit” and “bullshit” a lot but, just to clarify, those are absolutely appropriate words I would even employ if I were going to give a talk at a conference), and that’s also why it doesn’t have the long list of references I usually attach. I wrote this by memory basing on the research I made for my previous articles about fantastic racism. You can take my words with a pinch of salt if you want, and I wholeheartedly recommend you to do the research on your own. I’ll eventually add the proper references (and a Spanish translation) when I have more time.

Ok, let's go to the hard topic. There's a little something people usually misunderstand when they talk about evolution and that is they think the reason why some traits are "chosen" by natural selection is because they are inherently better (they make you stronger, faster, more intelligent etc.) and that's just eugenics bullshit, but the key point of why it is bullshit is a little bit difficult to explain on a surface level. It has to do with the mechanism of natural selection and how is usually wrongly explained as "survival of the fittest" (by the way, that's also eugenics bullshit. It’s a literal quote from Herbert Spencer one of the guys who invented Social Darwinism, which is a racist pseudoscience). It boils down to one thing: the "fittest" is not the "best", because there is no objective "best". I can explain better with an example. Aggressiveness is a very important trait in wolves. It helps them survive in a natural hostile environment and it also plays a role in the pack's social dynamics. But when those wolves started marauding near human camps for easy food it became a problem. On the contrary, those wolves with less innate aggressiveness were more easily accepted by humans as companions, and with enough time and a bit of artificial selection they became the first dogs. The key point (and what people mostly misses) is that the trait itself is neither good or bad. Is the context or the environment in which that trait exist what makes it advantageous or disadvantageous. Nobody would say that a dog is superior to a wolf, or the opposite. It's just stupid.

Now, that happens with wolves and dogs, but what about humans and artificial selection? Ok, some people believe in the bullshit that artificial selection can create what natural selection can't: superior beings. That is, of course, also false (also pro-eugenics). Artificial selection is just natural selection but serving a purpose chosen by humans. The wild ancient version of corn was just fine 4000 years ago growing in the Andes before it was even edible. Artificial selection is just a way to choose traits based on what would be advantageous for our purposes. In the case of corn, that is being able to sow, harvest and eat as efficiently as we could. But, again, the traits we choose, that we consider advantageous, are those that the context (human needs) consider advantageous. It has nothing to do with the trait itself.

Taking this into consideration, we can consider possible that a group of humans evolves naturally or artificially in ways that would make them different. But this is the thing, these "mutants" would still be as human as any other because all humans are mutant. There are not "pure" human traits. Evolution is a process that never stops. Humans now are genetically different than those who lived 5000 years ago because mutation happens all the time in every single human body.

We can think of the appearance of an entirely new trait (f.e: green natural hair) and at some point, some thousand years later there would be a group of people with green hair, and it would be another human trait, like blue eyes or black hair (btw. did you know all people with blue and green eyes have a single common ancestor?) If that trait is favourably selected (for example some people consider it super cool and people with green hair has a lot of reproductive success), then more people will have it in the future in the places where it's consider cool. If it's considered a bad thing, then there would be less people with green hair. It could potentially disappear if the gene is dominant and the population with green hair is very small. If not, it will persist potentially indefinitely.

Ok, now, adaptative traits. Many traits (in humans but also in every other species) are adaptative. Meaning they posed an advantage and that's why they became super popular. Many traits which are considered "racial traits" are adaptative traits. Black skin? Offers sun protection in the place where humans first originated: Africa. White skin? Actually, an adaptation that happened when humans moved north, and sunburns became less of a concern than vitamin D deficiency. The epicanthic fold? An adaptation that appeared when humans moved to the Asian steppes and cold strong winds became a nuisance. Lactose tolerance? It allowed the ingest of dairy products meaning that you could obtain more food from animals during their lifetime, having a sustainable source of animal protein and, most importantly, the invention of cheese.

But that's the thing, none of these traits are superior to any other (except maybe lactose tolerance). They are advantageous in their context and neutral or even disadvantageous in others. A black person could potentially have more troubles with vitamin D deficiency if they live in Sweden. But if a white person moves to Congo they will also have problems with the sun. Everything has pros and cons, nothing is unambiguously superior.

Even if you consider something like "super strength", it will have some downsides. For example, Neanderthals were stronger than humans. Henry Cavill in comparison would be like a child. BUT that strength required them to have a high protein diet. It was fine, as long as they could hunt the megafauna, but when the climate changed and the megafauna disappeared, they fell next...almost. In fact, they survived in some way. Europeans and Asians have a significant amount of neanderthal DNA. It's funny when you think that what allowed them to survive extinction was mixing with a "weaker" species. They also lent sapiens some white skin genes, which was a cool thing because back then sapiens were black and they lived in an ice age with low insolation.

The problem with fantasy and sci-fi is that they usually treat fictional traits (like magic or mutations) like "gifts" more than actual traits. They make them so cool that regular humans feel inferior, and usually use the eugenicist argument to justify why they exist (although, that comes more as a consequence of how those traits are built rather than an actual conscious justification of eugenics). A poor understanding of real genetics and evolution (let’s be honest, usually not even sci-fi authors bother to research properly the “sci” part), plus a long history of hard hammered racism in the genre, and you have the perfect recipe for disaster. So, how could we avoid all this shit, but still treat magic as a genetical trait?

Ok, let’s, for once make it a REAL TRAIT.

First: the basics (I’m not going to extend much here, I’ll link some articles in both English and Spanish that explain all this in more detail). Genes come in pairs of two alleles, one from each parent, that can be dominant or recessive. Phenotypes corresponding to dominant genes are more common than those corresponding to recessive genes. That’s why there’s more people with black hair than blonde hair. BUT recessive genes don’t disappear. They persist in our genome and can come up again (@Schrodidragon’s Twitter thread makes some really good examples applied to fantastic species). So, if the gene that makes people have magic is dominant, there will be more mages across the world. If it’s recessive, there will be less mages. There could also be more than one “magic gene”, so people can practice different types of magic, but both would be inherited independently, meaning that some people could have both; some, one; and some none of these genes. One could dominate over other, meaning that if you inherit both, you’d only express the dominant, or they could be completely independent. There are more complications linked to inheritance, but for now I’ll keep it simple. You can research the exceptions (eng/es) to Mendel’s laws and dive in more complicated genetics’ theory if you want. In either case, those genes can be inherited by anyone belonging to the same species or to close interbreedable species. So if, in theory, only elves can have magic, but those elves can breed with dwarves and humans, then dwarves and humans will inevitably have the same magic as well. The theory is wrong.

Second: traits are INDEPENDENT. Even if genes are linked (meaning they’re situated very close to each other in the chromosome and tend to be inherited together), there would still be a small proportion of people that would escape the general rule. For example, we want to create a world in which people with green hair are more likely to be mages. Then, we could think that both genes “green hair” and “magic ability” are linked. BUT there will be a proportion of not-green-haired people that will have magical ability despite not having the “green hair gene” and, a proportion of green haired people with no magical ability. Also, we must consider how this gene dominates over other hair genes. If it’s completely dominant against all other colours, it will mean that every child of a homozygous (with two copies of the gene) green-haired person will have green hair. If it’s not, then fun things happen, because some people could have the “green hair gene” but not express it, and still have magical ability. We could, for example, imagine a world in which green haired bigots think they’re superior because they have magic, but shut their mouths in a second because our protagonist is a person with brown hair and magic, and also there’re people in the world outside the country in which these green-haired bigots rule that can do magic as well, and this drives them mad because it breaks their theory of green hair superiority to pieces.

Third: There is one and only exception to this rule, but it exemplifies perfectly why it’s a really bad idea to link two traits. Sexual chromosomes are different in chromosomic males (XY) than in females (XX) (again, I’ll oversimplify and will not take into consideration all the possible variations of chromosomic sex; please just note that intersex people exist). Genes linked to the X chromosome can be expressed in both males and females. Recessive genes are more likely to be expressed in males because they only have one copy of them. The same happens with genes linked to the Y chromosome, because only males will inherit it (although due to complications in the meiosis process some genes can be transferred from the X to the Y chromosome and vice versa, but it’s not very common). So, yes, you could potentially put the “magic gene” in the Y chromosome and use that argument to explain why only men can be mages. Even if we consider that some few women around the world would escape this rule because genetics are complicated, making that only men could do something due to genetics it’s not a good idea, or argument, despite being potentially “scientifically correct” in lore. If your magic system supports bigotry where reality does not, then you’re not doing anyone a favour. Even if you focus the story in how evil are men who abuse their superior power doesn’t change the fact that you’re making men objectively superior (that’s why, to me, books like Dune are a bad joke).

Now, do that with any other two traits coded in any other chromosome (like, magic and green hair, or magic and blue eyes, or magic and white skin). And you would not only make the poor Gregor Mendel cry, you would also be making real and legitimize the racist theory that believes that superior races, coded by the hair, eye and/or skin colour, have better traits (magic). And you will be particularly offensive if you link your magical trait to any typically Arian trait (blonde-haired, white-skinned and/or blue-eyed people). Just because Holocaust happened and we can’t escape from our history, and because traditionally those traits are linked to fairness and attractiveness and white writers would usually give racialized people “white traits” to make them more appealing (think of Sayuri of Memoirs of a Geisha, or Katara and Korra from Avatar).

Fourth: Ok, but what if I just want green-haired people to be the one and only people capable of doing magic? Then, two options: or it’s a case of pleitropy (one gene affects several traits, like albinism) and, if that’s the case it will follow the general rules of inheritance (see point 1), even in the case of interbreedable species; or THAT’S NOT GENETICS. Plain and simple. You’re not creating a genetical trait, but an acquired trait in response to the environment. A real example of this? Perfect pitch. Perfect pitch is the ability to identify correctly musical notes without a reference. Since people with perfect pitch can express this ability (which really looks like a superpower) from a young age it could look that it’s genetic. But it’s not. You can only get perfect pitch if you are introduced to western music (if you are introduced to any other musical system, I guess you would develop perfect pitch for that system, but I haven’t checked) at a very young age. That’s why families of musicians can have prodigy children with perfect pitch (think of Mozart). So, we can imagine that green hair is not a genetical trait, but a bodily response to magic. People will be born with any other hair colour, but as they use magic, it will turn to green. Since they could express their magical abilities from a young age, it would look like they have had green hair their entire life. Families of mages will have green hair not because any genetical superiority, but because they are the only ones who educate their children in the use of magic. This can also apply to magic with other sources, like spiritual energy or a pact with a deity.

And this leads us to:

Fifth: Please, do not mix point three and four. If you have both natural green-haired people that are more prone to have magic and people that change their hair colour to green in response to magic, the result is far worse than you would expect. Change green hair for white skin. White people are more likely to use magic, and if you are non-white, you would change your skin colour and become one. It’s not good at all. I can’t possibly express how problematic this is. Let’s just remember that honorary whites were a thing under colonialism.

Sixth: GENES DO NOT DILUTE THEIR PROPERTIES. That’s eugenics bullshit again. The “contamination” of the “pure blood” has been one of the cornerstones of racism since the Middle Ages, and specially under colonial imperialism (thank you, Blood- Purity Status, and colonial Spanish’s cast system, you’ve been not helpful at all). It was based on the observation that children will inherit a mixture of the characteristics of their parents and if a white person and a black person have children, they will have generally a darker skin tone. And that was bad. The science behind that observation is that, on the one hand, in most cases physical traits are coded by more than one gene. People usually inherit genes that code different skin tones and each one of the genes contribute partially to the final phenotype. That’s why there is a huge diversity of skin colours in the world. On the other hand, sometimes one allele does not dominate completely over the other and then you have a case of partial dominance. It can be observed, for example, in the colour of some flowers. You crossbreed a red (dominant) one with a white (recessive) one and the result can be a pink flower. However, as I said before, genes do not dilute. When you crossbreed two pink flowers, you can get all the three colours: red, white and pink depending on which alleles are inherited by the descendants. So, if we translate this to magic. Even in the case you decide that when a mage crossbreeds with a non-mage the descendants will be less powerful mages (which in my opinion is not a good idea; I’d rather not give racist bigots a point), that doesn’t mean that they will get weaker and weaker over time and all their magic will disappear. On the contrary, “lesser” mages could have very powerful mages as descendants. Also, note that this case requires the “magic gene” to be dominant, which, according to the very basics of genetics, will make magic ability a really common trait. 

Seventh: OUR TRAITS ARE ALMOST NEVER ENTIRELY GENETIC. The environment influences phenotype so deeply that sometimes separating its effect from genetics is really complicated. Factors like nutrition, upbringing and learning, average insolation, habits etc. have a huge effect on how people are and how genes will be expressed. If we want to correctly tackle our reality when worldbuilding our genetic-based magic system, we cannot look away from this. A person could have Rachmaninov’s hands but unless they play piano daily for hours, they will never become the next Rachmaninov. On the other hand, there’re a lot of people who don’t have his extremely flexible hands but are able to play his pieces just because they’ve trained enough. A person is never exclusively what their genetics says they will be. Biological essentialism is also part of racism and eugenics and deserves to be discredited like the bullshit it is.

And this is all. Breaking up with the deeply engraved racism in fantasy will be hard. But science is here to help, it has been kicking bigot’s arses for decades now. I hope this serves as an introduction. And I can’t express properly how much I encourage an appropriate and deeper research on this topic.