Biological determinism lets privileged subjects dismiss the social causes of inequality

Evidence

As Perowne, “the professional reductionist,” thinks of his family, he reflects: “So much divides them from the various broken figures that haunt the benches.… It can’t just be class or opportunities.… [I]t’s down to invisible folds and kinks of character, written in code at the level of molecules.… No amount of social justice will cure or disperse this enfeebled army haunting the public spaces of every town.… You have to recognise bad luck when you see it, you have to look out for these people” (272). The social drivers of class and race, then, purportedly have a negligible role to play in producing Perowne’s own advantages and the disadvantages of others. Superior breeding, in all senses, wins out. — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 118

Categorization

• XREF: This is the mechanism by which fiction quietly reinforces rather than contests Islamophobia — the exact analytical distinction the reader needs. Compare with Naqvi’s class-conscious rendering of vulnerability. — connects to: Horney’s cultural determinism slid into ignoring social distortion of instinctive structure; Darwinian thought shifted charity views of poverty from moral failing to heredity — John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of…, 256; Biologizing mental illness conveniently depoliticizes its social causes — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No…, 82 (+3 more)
• DEFINE: Illustrates what ‘quiet reinforcement’ looks like: a liberal text that attributes disadvantage to biology rather than to social structure.