Our Genes , Ourselves ?

Is he right? We in the United States seem to be of two minds. Most of us have an intuition that, although our genes provide advantages and constraints, we retain great control over our lives. But we are developing a second, competing intuition that, like it or not, our genes determine our abilities, our preferences, and our emotions. Perhaps this second intuition is what induced Rutgers University President Francis Lawrence, a man who has spent years trying to increase opportunities for minorities, to say that blacks do not have "the genetic, hereditary background" to do as well as whites on college admissions tests, a statement which caused an uproar across the country (Olen 1995). We would like to think we are much more than the sum of our genes, but scientists have apparently demonstrated that our genes determine some of our most complex behavioral and cognitive characteristics.