In July, Donald Trump announced J.D. Vance, freshman senator, venture capitalist, and author of Hillbilly Elegy as his Vice Presidential running-mate. Vance achieved national recognition (and plenty of controversy) for the aforementioned book, and rode that attention to a political career, being elected as a senator from Ohio just last year. Vance’s politics can, I think, be fairly (if vaguely) summarized as alt-right; he puts forward economically populist positions combined with socially conservative, even defiantly reactionary, ones. Obviously, his position as Trumps’ running-mate has only increased attention and scrutiny on his record and past statements. Multiple incendiary revelations have come forward in the past few weeks. I won’t go into them all here, but there’s plenty of salacious commentary online. Your search engine of choice can aid you if you so choose.¹

I do want to spend some time on the most recent revelation, though, for reasons I think will become clear pretty quickly. On August 14, WCPT820 Radio’s Heart Signal published an article on Vance’s appearance, in 2020, on The Portal, a podcast run by fellow venture capitalist Eric Weinstein. Now, what is getting the most attention is a statement that Weinstein made, and the Vance seems to have agreed with (multiple times) that caring for grandchildren “is the whole purpose of the post-m[e]nopausal female.” Obviously, this statement raises a vast number of questions, and Vance’s electoral opponents have been quick to jump on this as evidence of his misogyny and general weirdness.

I have no argument with such critiques, but you can find plenty of takes, both hot and substantial, on this one quote all over the web. But there is plenty of additional worrying material on the 2-hour recording—indeed, this odd and troubling view of older women is just the tip of the iceberg.

First things first—I did not listen to the full 2-hour podcast. Luckily for me, other intrepid souls have. I came across this story on Jonathan M. Katz’s The Racket newsletter; you can find his article here. It is well-worth reading in its entirety. I will be relying on Katz’s summary in my discussion below.²

Katz addresses the grandmother comment(s), but goes on to dig into the rest of the podcast. What caught my attention was Weinstein’s and Vance’s discourse on equality. Here is Katz’s summary:

…Vance and Weinstein complain about “political correctness,” which they seem to think is the scheme that is holding them (and by extension the human race) back from their ultimate destiny. It will surprise no one familiar with this style of self-congratulatory tech-bro “contrarianism” that what they are referring to is the denial of inherent genetic differences between different groups of people, including based on gender and nationality. To cut to the chase: This pseudo-biological determinism is the full context for the “post-menopausal females” lines. Or as Vance says, “I mean, obviously, like, I’m not uncomfortable with the idea of biological differences.”

Weinstein takes it further. He claims at one point to not “like the IQ in race or IQ in gender stuff.” (“Sure, neither do I,” Vance replies.”) Then he immediately continues on a rant, already in progress, about how women are inherently inferior in the game of chess . At another point, Weinstein says: “I love the idea of ‘all men are created equal.’ [But] I know from marathon running that Ethiopians and Kenyans are not quite created equal.” “Right,” Vance replies.

When Weinstein explains that his brother, the disgraced evolutionary theorist Bret Weinstein, thinks that maybe East Africans “radiate heat really efficiently,” Vance seems ready to believe it. “Is that true?” he asks.

“That’s what his belief is,” Weinstein says. (To which Vance replies simply: “Oh.”)

Weinstein rounds this out by calling the idea of inherent human equality one of “our founding fictions.” “Every smart person is supposed to know that our founding fictions are fictions,” he says. Vance offers no disagreement here either, offering his belief in “biological differences” — specifically that “that men and women are better at some things” in response as soon as he is given a chance to talk.

Here we see that the grandmother comment(s) signaled a deeper ideological position: Vance and Weinstein are annoyed that they have to pretend to believe in the “founding fiction” of human equality. Against this fiction, they point to a number of cases in which people are just not equal: women and men are, apparently, better or worse at various tasks; likewise, they point out that people from different countries tend to succeed at different sports more than others, also implying that those people must have inborn genetic differences that give them advantages.

There’s obviously a lot to dig into here, so let me begin by addressing one or two obvious issues with their reasoning that aren’t the main issue I want to address, but I think need to be commented on:

Vance argues that men are better than women at certain tasks, but apart from chess, he doesn’t go into detail about which activities men are superior at. Meanwhile, Weinstein argues that East Africans are the best distance runners in the world, and that this must be because of inherent, genetically-derived physical differences.

There are lots of biologists, anthropologists, and other specialists who can address these comments with much more erudition than I can, so I’m not going to get in the weeds of these comments—but let’s point out the obvious: while the absolute best chess players may indeed be men, there are obviously elite women chess players who are better than the vast majority of men in the general population. So if we are saying that men are just better at chess than women, we would need to be much clearer about precisely what we are saying: that the best men may be better than the best women, but that obviously the best women are much better than the average man.

It should also be obvious, too, that we don’t really know why the best players are men. Is this because of some innate genetic difference? Or is it rooted in the way young boys and girls are enculturated and socialized differently? Or perhaps some other reason? I don’t know! But simply assuming that a gap in chess performance is due to innate genetic difference isn’t science. It isn’t even an argument. It’s just a bare assertion, without, as far as I am aware, any actual evidence.

Likewise, when it comes to Kenyans and Ethiopians winning in distance running: is this due to some innate genetic advantage that they have? Again, let’s begin by pointing out the obvious: if we compare elite Kenyan runners to, say, elite Chinese or American runners, the Kenyan runners do seem to be more accomplished, statistically speaking. However, if we compare elite Chinese or American runners to the average Kenyan person, the Chinese and American runners would obviously win. It is not the case that every Kenyan is a better runner than every Chinese person.

Now, that point is pretty obvious, and I am sure that Weinstein (and Vance) would readily admit it. But it’s one of those obvious points that easily gets overlooked, despite the fact that it should sharpen our analysis of the issue: a few Kenyans are really good at distance running, but most are more-or-less average—just like every other ethnic group!³

Furthermore, when we see specific Kenyan individuals winning more marathons, for example, we are seeing people of other nationalities and ethnicity finishing  very soon after them. It is not the case that Kenyans are, say, 10% faster than people of other nations. They are something more like 0.01% faster. Now, in a marathon, such a small margin of victory matters! But if we are trying to understand why they are faster, the very small margin should give us pause. Such a small advantage will be very hard to actually tie to any given cause. Maybe it is genetic. Or maybe it has something to do with diet. Or maybe it has to do with the fact that distance running has become a very popular sport in East Africa in the last few decades. Or maybe it has to do with the fact that many parts of East Africa are mountainous, and so these runners are able to train at higher elevations than some others, which we know gives a real advantage to their cardiovascular performance. Indeed, perhaps there is some other reason we aren’t even aware of.⁴

Any of these explanations—and many more—are plausible. Indeed, it’s likely that the explanation is multi-faceted, with more than one cause contributing to this slim margin of victory. But we just don’t know! For Weinstein to reference Kenyan and Ethiopian dominance of this one sport as evidence that obviously there are innate genetic differences between different ethnic groups that determine outcomes in life is a bare assertion—again, it’s not just that it lacks evidence, it’s that it isn’t even a proper argument at all.

OK, but above I said I wasn’t going to focus on all of the above, so that I could talk about what I really wanted to address. Whoops! Well, the above conversation about supposed inequalities does lead into what bothered me most about the Vance/Weinstein conversation (which, considering how annoyed I got above, is saying something).

We need to step back and clarify our terms. Let’s make sure we understand what we mean by one of the main words in the discussion. Vance and Weinstein claim that belief in equality is nothing but a convenient fiction, something that insidious political correctness forces us to pretend to believe, but that it’s actually counterfactual nonsense. Now, as I pointed to above, I’m not sure they actually have an evidence-backed argument in favor of this position, but!, my main concern is that I don’t think they understand what we mean when we say people are equal.

When we talk about human equality, no one is claiming that all people are actually equally good at every task humans do. This is obviously, trivially untrue. Professional chess players are better than me at chess. Professional runners are better than me at running. People who speak Spanish are better than me at speaking Spanish (lo siento, no hablo Español). Meanwhile, I am probably better than most people at preaching sermons and writing theology (at least, I hope so!)

In this sense, of course, humans are not equal. But this is not news, nor is it relevant to discussions of human equality.

When we say we are all equal, we aren’t talking about equality of ability, but equality of moral value; that is to say: my life is equally valuable to other people’s lives. My desires are equally important to others’ and should be considered when making decisions that impact me, etc.

Needless to say, (although the very fact that I am writing this suggests that it is actually rather needful) our inequality of ability does no damage to our equality of value. I don’t know of anyone who argues that a 1-year old’s life is less valuable than a 20-year old’s, even though the 20-year old obviously can do just about everything better than the 1-year old. We believe that there is something about being a human being, in and of itself, that just makes us have innate and inalienable value.

Now, such a view can be (and has been! Looking at you, Nietzsche) contested. One could craft an argument against  the idea that all humans have equal moral value. Indeed, one of my major concerns is that although most of us indeed believe in the equal value of all human beings, I don’t know that we have a fully coherent theory to explain this (hence my intense interest in theological anthropology!) However, even in the absence of such a theory, we need to point out that what Vance and Weinstein are arguing against just isn’t what their supposed interlocutors actually are arguing for. (I am reminded of the many atheists who define God in such a way that the vast majority of theists would also not believe in). They have conflated one meaning of equality with another. This is, at best, intellectual sloppiness.

Of course, it might not be sloppiness at all. It might be an intentional elision. But I won’t hazard any speculation on that issue here. I would, however, like to remind Mr. Vance, who was baptized into the Roman Catholic Church in 2019, that scripture tells us that “ …God created humans in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” (Genesis 1:27). All humans are made in the image and likeness of God, and therefore all humans share in God’s infinite value.

It’s worth noting that scripture specifically says that both males and females are (equally!) made in God’s image. Women have value not only in their ability to care for children (or perform any number of other tasks) but because they share, completely and equally, the inherent dignity that we males also have in our being created and sustained by God (I should add here that scripture does not mention intersex people here; but let me say for the record that they share equally and completely in this dignity too. I think this is obvious, but…).

To believe in this fundamental value of all humans, and to believe that we necessarily share this value equally, has nothing to do with how skilled or capable we are at various tasks. I would hope that J.D. Vance, my brother in Christ, would defend this idea as essential to the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.⁵

We are unequal; we are equal. It depends on how we use that word. Let us use our words wisely; indeed: 

“Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only what is useful for building up, as there is need, so that your words may give grace to those who hear. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with which you were marked with a seal for the day of redemption. Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, and be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.” (Ephesians 4:29-32)

1. I have begun using DuckDuckGo, as Google’s quality has precipitously declined in the last few years. For this reason, I’m also trying to stop using “google” as a verb meaning “to use a search engine”. Hence my awkward wording above. ↩︎
2. A hearty thanks to Katz for his work on this; that said, of course, any errors in what appears in my post are my own. ↩︎
3. Perhaps the average Kenyan is better than the average American or Chinese person at running marathons. But I don’t think that question has been experimentally tested. And, as we will dig into below, even if such a difference exists, we would then need to do much more work to figure out the cause(s) of that difference. ↩︎
4. It’s also worth noting that East Africans don’t professionally excel at all endurance sports. For example, the vast majority of elite long-distance cyclists are European (Biniam Girmay of Eritrea did just win the green jersey (which is for sprinting, not endurance riding!) in the Tour de France—he is, I believe, the first African of color to do so). Belgians, in particular, have a strong record of victories. Does anyone believe that Belgians have some natural ethnic advantage over, say, the French or the Germans? It is worth noting that these discussions about innate ethnic differences almost always seem to focus on black people of African descent. It probably won’t take you long to realize, historically, why we white people are so interested in making these kinds of arguments about these particular folks. ↩︎
5. I have noticed lately that non-Christians seem to be using the phrase “my brother/sister in Christ” as an intensifier when wanting to correct someone online. Let me assure the reader that I mean the expression here in all sincerity. After all, we are one Body… ↩︎