A decade ago, Alon Ziv sought to prove that not only would America’s interracial boom occur, it would produce a healthier population. Now, it’s happening.
The year was 1967 when the U.S. Supreme Court legalized interracial marriages. Since 1980 the number of intermarriages has more than doubled, according to the Pew Research Center.
Ziv, author of “Breeding Between the Lines: Why Interracial People are Healthier and More Attractive,” says that one in 10 babies born today is of mixed race, and people with a diverse set of parents reap various physical benefits of their genetic assortment.
The first thing that often pops to mind regarding mix-race children is skin color but Ziv says this is just one of many characteristics a blended gene pool affects.
“All of our bodies are supposed to be symmetrical,” Ziv says. “Some of us get closer to that perfect ideal than others, and it turns out that the better your genes are the more symmetrical you are, and so symmetry is really a great indicator of genetic quality.”
Ziv says benefits of symmetry include being more attractive, fertile, intelligent and athletic, among others.
“Symmetry is definitely something that you want, and genetic diversity is how you get that,” Ziv says.
Diversifying gene pools, Ziv says, is important not just in humans but in animals and plants as well.
“If you cross two different strains of wheat, two different strains of cows, anything like that, you see a lot of virility, a lot of health, a lot of fast growth in their offspring,” Ziv says. “If you talk about that with farm animals, nobody bats an eye. If you talk about that with humans, people get very nervous.”
Ziv says he has riled up various groups, particularly what he describes as the “far left and the far right.”
A few AirTalk callers also pushed back against some of Ziv’s ideas.
“I have a quibble with the blanket statement diversity is great,” Mori from Northridge tells AirTalk. “That’s not true.”
Another caller raised the question of whether race is real, a question Ziv said is often raised from the “far left.”
“Race is not a social construct but racism is, and the way we approach race, there’s a ton of social baggage there, but race is real,” Ziv says.
Guest:
Alon Ziv, author of “Breeding Between the Lines: Why Interracial People are Healthier and More Attractive” (Barricade Books Inc., 2016)
