You can't deny DNA--it shapes who we are today

Lorraine

"It's easier to embrace a thief than a phantom." That's sentence that stopped me cold today as I read yesterday's New York Times review of a new book, The Invisible History of the Human Race: How DNA and History Shape our Identities and Our Futures.

Biology and culture, nature versus nurture. We know both are important, we really do, but with the adoption-is-the-cure-for-so-damn-much culture that we are in today, that sentence: It's easier to embrace a thief than a phantom stopped me cold. Americans like to pretend that DNA and ancestry do not matter; we can make ourselves up new here in America. But. Biology matters. DNA is the raw material out of which we came.