Introduction

Disadvantaged children's characteristic ways of dealing with the world often appear inappropriate or, at least, ineffective, in social arenas where different values and behavior are found and encouraged. Could differences here imply real deficits? Could we say that some varieties of knowledge, skill and attitude are inherently better than others? With its assertion that the underpinnings of disadvantage are ones of difference, and not of either environmental or genetic deficiency, the previous overview has anticipated the answers to these questions. But meaningful assertions require evidence, which is why – in this chapter and the next – I shall go into some detail about deficit arguments and their flaws. (This discussion will also frame the subsequent and more specific treatment of the relationship between language and disadvantage.) I turn first to genetic matters.

An appropriate introduction here involves the realization that any meaningful argument about group variation – between black and white populations, for instance – must rest upon firm definitional footings. Over the last two or three generations, not only have political considerations made discussion of genetic differentiation disreputable, the scientific community has increasingly rejected the very idea of different human 'races' (see Aldhous, 2002; Ossorio & Duster, 2005). Schwartz's (2001) characterization of race as a 'biologically meaningless' concept may be taken as typical here. However, a recent special issue of Nature Genetics (2004) shows that the matter is hardly a settled one. Some contributors argue, like Schwartz, that human 'racial' categories are not discrete, and are essentially socially defined, but others claim that obvious markers (skin color, hair formation and so on) suggest a small number of basic classifications. Furthermore, developments in our knowledge of matters at the level of DNA – that is, at the level of the human genome – make the picture more interesting still; for some critical comments about what might be termed the sociology of this new genetic research, see Carter (2007) and Tutton (2007). On this most elemental dimension, human beings show very little genetic variation.