Spectator letters: America as a genetic experiment, and a gypsy reply to Rod Liddle

The American experiment

Sir: One can test Nicholas Wade’s hypothesis that social and political life is genetically determined (‘The genome of history’, 17 May) by constituting a nation along European lines, admitting immigrants from all over the world, and measuring the extent to which these immigrants assimilate to the dominant culture. That experiment is called the USA, and the evidence from that country suggests that within a generation or two these immigrants hold social opinions more like those of other Americans than natives of their ancestral countries. Cultural inheritance therefore outweighs genetic inheritance in the political sphere, and historians may rest easy.
Dr James McEvoy
Centre for Biomedical Sciences, Royal Holloway University of London

Mind your language

Sir: I arrived at the Spectator offices on Wednesday as part of the protest against Rod Liddle’s article of October 2013 (‘What do we call the people who abducted Maria?’). Your editor was kind enough to share some of his birthday cake with us — but that was, I’m afraid, no substitute for the apology we are still due. Rod Liddle proposed that in the absence of a better word to describe people like me, the terms ‘pikey’ and ‘gyppo’ should be used. These are terms of hate, pure and simple. They leap out at me and hurt me. Only last week your columnist Taki referred to ‘the n-word’. Why didn’t he spell it out? Out of a basic sense of decency, I imagine. A decency seldom afforded to communities like mine.

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Julie Burchill

The march of the trans mob is over

So what is the correct term? Those gathered outside your office last week were Romany Gypsies and Irish Travellers. I consider myself an English Gypsy. I am also a police officer, and the truth is, I’m sometimes confused by the issue myself. ‘Gypsy’ is a word used to describe people of many ethnicities: maybe finding the right word is something we have to work on.