I keep seeing the "if trauma can be passed down genetically, maybe [insert Thing White People Do] can too"

and, that's not how epigenetics works? this is just rehashed Victorian Race Science? and reducing cultural influences to genetic destiny is... bad for literally everyone?

And like, sorry, I was already tetchy about people trying to make epigenetics explain human behavior because it was like "isn't this just evolutionary biology 2.0, and wasn't that just Phrenology 2.0?"

and then I got tetchier because this comes up a LOT in Jewish circles

Because one of the more famous epigenetics studies was done on the children of Holocaust survivors.

So, like, the overwhelming bulk of stuff that has been shown in studies about epigenetics is that trauma like being underfed can cause things like elevated risk of heart disease and diabetes in grandchildren. (That is, risk of *physical* disease.)

As far as mental/emotional/behavioral effects, the Holocaust survivor studies showed that their children were more susceptible to PTSD. And even *that* is super-shaky. https://www.chicagotribune.com/lifestyles/health/ct-holocaust-trauma-not-inherited-20170609-story.html

Is trauma passed down intergenerationally? *Absolutely.*

Whether it's *genetic,* however, is a lot more uncertain.

As that article points out, it's not clear that the actual genetic changes documented make people more susceptible to PTSD, and...

...if children of Holocaust survivors are more susceptible to PTSD, is that because of genetic changes? Or is it because they were raised by people who survived the Holocaust?

But that study made a splash among all kinds of New Age sorts, and also in a lot of Jewish communities because any study having to do with the effects of the Holocaust tends to do that.

What surprised me was the *reactions* to it.

Like, it's not exactly news that anxiety--like, actual *diagnosed* anxiety--is pretty prevalent in Jewish communities. And that there's a genetic basis for that. It's not clear that that's epigenetic, rather than more traditionally natural-selection-ish, though.

Or even, y'know, random.

But we have a lovely older gentleman in our Torah study group who keeps wanting "epigenetics" to explain high rates of Jewish literacy and success at being lawyers.

And, like, WHY

WHY do you want this to be about genetics?

All of that can be explained culturally. When a population regularly gets kicked out of countries and has its property taken, well, the one thing you can't take is what's in someone's head, and literacy is a highly portable skill.

If something we consider virtuous is some sort of genetic trait, it's not something we can be proud of, because we didn't choose it. We didn't build it. We didn't carry it forward.

Like, being proud of your genetic traits in that way gets into ugly territory *really* fast.

The flipside of it is that if you want to believe white people are genetically evil, that sure lets us off the hook, because in that case we can't help it, and there's not much anyone can do about it.

And no: this shit is stuff people *decided* on. These are cultural choices.