The Daily Mail and The Telegraph have been running stories about the slave-owning past of Richard Dawkin’s ancestors. The family tree is to the right.
From the Daily Mail: “Equality groups are now calling on him to apologise for his family’s past.”
But I especially like this recounting by Dawkins of a telephone call from the journalist who wrote the story:
“I’d scarcely had time to re-open my lecture notes when he rang back: ‘Darwinian natural selection has a lot to do with genes, do you agree?’ Of course I agreed. ‘Well, some people might suggest that you could have inherited a gene for supporting slavery from Henry Dawkins.'”
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I like the “some people might suggest” part.
I think I could be a good journalist – I can imagine lots of things people might suggest.