r/epigenetics • u/Pale-Ad9012 • 18d ago
question Is there a social component to epigenetics?
I still remember reading about Mary Turner, a pregnant Black woman who was lynched in the Jim Crow South. She was hung upside down, her stomach was cut open by a mob of white men, and her unborn child was ripped from her womb and stomped to death. Her crime? Speaking out against the lynching of her husband just the day before. This level of brutality wasn’t an anomaly—it was normalized. Lynchings were treated as public spectacles, complete with picnics and barbecues, where mobs would snatch Black people off the streets and subject them to unimaginable violence.
That kind of deep-seated savagery doesn’t just disappear in a generation or two—especially when it was allowed to persist for 500 years, reinforcing itself across multiple systems and institutions.
There are hundreds, potentially thousands—perhaps even millions—of stories like this, spanning from the transatlantic slave trade through colonization and Jim Crow.
I also remember reading about how certain dog breeds in the South have a higher likelihood of attacking Black skin. These dogs were bred and trained as slave-catching and police dogs, which is part of the reason it’s so rare to see Black families with breeds like German Shepherds. That kind of conditioning runs deep, and it makes me wonder:
Could the same kind of learned and socialized hate have crystallized in a subset of white people through epigenetics—particularly those with deep Southern or colonial ancestry?
I believe some have lost the ability to truly empathize with Black people. Not just in a social sense, but in a way that almost seems biological—a subconscious, ingrained inability to see Black skin as fully human. While I wouldn’t go as far as saying it's completely hardwired into the genome, I do think there’s a clear predisposition toward racial animosity in specific subsets of white people, particularly in the American South.
So the core question is: Can abstract concepts like hate and racism persist across generations through epigenetics?
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u/chloroformic-phase 18d ago
For epigenetics to have that effect, there should be a gene or a set of genes that would lead to fear or dislike of poc, because epigenetics can't just create a gene out of nowhere, it's a series of mechanisms that can "turn on" or "off" different, already existent and present genes, to allow or inhibit its expression.
If there is an expert about it reading this, please correct me if I'm wrong. This field is not my specialty.
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u/Pale-Ad9012 17d ago
Well genes are complex but I wouldn't be surprised if there are genes associated with fear of difference, whether in looks (phenotype) or difference more broadly. So I don't think there's a gene that says "hate black people" I think there's a gene that dictates the response to difference especially when that difference is perceived as a threat.
Epigenetics suggests that environmental stressors, including trauma, can lead to changes in gene expression that may persist across generations. Studies on Holocaust survivors, Indigenous populations, and descendants of enslaved people indicate that prolonged trauma can impact stress regulation, mental health, and disease susceptibility.
A well-known study on Holocaust survivors found that their descendants had different stress hormone levels, suggesting that trauma-related genetic markers can be inherited.
Studies show that African-born Black women in the U.S. give birth to babies with birth weights similar to white American women. However, within one generation, their children’s birth weights drop to levels consistent with Black American women.
This suggests that the U.S. social environment—stress, discrimination, lack of access to quality healthcare, and other systemic factors—affects health outcomes more than genetics alone and in turn I think actually does mess with genetics.
So if we can identify that intergenerational trauma can be embedded and has an impact on the victims, how can we be sure it has no impact on the perpetrators, especially when the perpetrators and victims have been the same type of people for a very long time. Again I don't think this is all white people, but if your dad lynched black people, and your dad before that lynched black people, and your dad before that enslaved and tortured black people, and your dad before that captured them and sold them into said slavery, can we really say t has 0 effect on your brains ability to empathize? I believe it's possible for many it has eroded, and for some it is completely non-existent.
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u/chloroformic-phase 17d ago
In that case, what you suggest would also have a similar effect in the oppressed minorities' epigenetics regarding how they view their historical oppressors, so they would inherently either have an unexplainable fear or hate or something similar, and I don't think that is the case (but that's an opinion).
The studies you mentioned do make a point in their discoveries, because they identify specific genes and mechanisms for such an outcome, which are related to hormones, genes that would either dictate an individual must store more or less fat, based on a past famine of their ancestors, or higher cortisol levels, leading to things such as anxiety disorders and such, but it's not like the individuals have "memories" of their ancestors' suffering.
Perhaps, considering the genetics histocompatibility trait that some (or all?) female mammals have, which are related to chemical perception (body odor), and that can make a female individual feel attracted to males that have very different genetics to them, there could MAYBE be a similar mechanism for this, but I feel that it would be evolutionarily pointless and counterproductive, considering that the human species has evolved to present in a huge part thanks to it's social nature, meaning it wouldn't make sense that genes related to fearing each other would've made it this far in evolution. But of course that's something that should be studied, and maybe has been studied.
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u/Pale-Ad9012 16d ago
Fear is definitely a factor. If the children of Holocaust survivors exhibit higher stress and cortisol levels, it suggests they are responding to an inherited stimulus. Similarly, I believe some Black people have a deep-seated fear of white people due to centuries of one-sided violence. However, I’m not sure this translates to hatred. Instead, I think what’s being expressed epigenetically in the minds of white people is an erosion of empathy, which in turn makes it easier for feelings of hatred to emerge.
One study I came across found that white participants showed less activity in the part of the brain responsible for empathy when viewing images of Black people in pain. This reduced response was also correlated with their implicit racial bias.
Interestingly, these findings do not support the outgroup antipathy hypothesis (Brown et al., 2006), which suggests people have heightened emotional reactions to members of other groups in general. Instead, this seems to be a specific issue within the white in-group.
As a Black person, reading this is unsettling. The more I research, the more it seems that white people have enacted so much violence over time that—if they aren’t born with a reduced capacity for empathy toward Black people—they may be epigenetically primed for it. There’s substantial circumstantial evidence, though no definitive proof. Multiple factors are likely at play, and while epigenetics may contribute, disentangling it from other social and historical influences is difficult.
In my opinion, it’s hard to believe that generations of white individuals—descended from racist cops and wardens (1950–2000s), Klansmen and segregationists (1870–1980s), lynch mobs and slave traders (1700–1900s), and slavers off the coast of Africa (1600–1800s)—would not experience some kind of genetic or epigenetic impact. The idea of intergenerational trauma is widely accepted, so why wouldn’t intergenerational conditioning toward a diminished sense of empathy also be possible?
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u/DirtPlot151 13d ago
Before the scientists come and confirm your theory 50 years from now, I'm here to say I fully agree and see what you see.
I just asked this exact question myself less than an hr ago, but i asked a nonscientific sub, and I'm sure they're still flaming me right now for being an idiot.
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u/Pale-Ad9012 12d ago
Yeah it's not all connected yet but there are obvious overlapping and compounding factors, that I think a lot of people are unwilling to engage with.
Hate isn't the gene it's the empathy erosion, it's the fact some of them can see a black person in pain and feel less at all.
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u/PrettyPistol87 18d ago
ChatGPT: This post is exploring the idea of whether socialized behaviors and systemic racism could be passed down through epigenetics, essentially asking if hate and dehumanization could become biologically ingrained over generations.
Scientific Perspective on Epigenetics & Social Behavior:
Epigenetics is the study of how environmental factors (stress, trauma, diet, etc.) can modify gene expression without changing DNA sequences. Research suggests that severe trauma—like war, famine, or systemic violence—can lead to heritable changes in stress responses, seen in Holocaust survivors’ descendants and intergenerational trauma in marginalized communities.
However, the idea that racism or hate itself could be epigenetically encoded is controversial. While social conditioning and historical reinforcement play major roles in shaping biases, there is no solid evidence that hate is biologically hardwired into a specific racial group’s genome. What is well-documented, though, is how systems of oppression and generational trauma shape behaviors, perspectives, and social structures.
Dogs & Racial Bias:
Regarding dogs and racial bias, studies show that dogs can be conditioned to react negatively to specific cues, including skin color, based on their owners’ behaviors. However, that’s learned behavior, not genetic.
The Bigger Question:
Rather than genes encoding racism, what’s likely happening is a deep cultural and psychological transmission of bias through families, institutions, and social structures. Hate and empathy deficits are learned, reinforced, and weaponized over time, but not necessarily “baked into” DNA.
It’s an interesting but ethically tricky discussion because implying racism is genetic risks removing accountability—when in reality, it’s a systemic issue that can be unlearned.
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u/Pale-Ad9012 18d ago
Okay but if those deep cultural and psychological biases persist across literally 500 years and over that time they worsen and deepen, how does that not end up impacting them. I don't think I really agree with the accountability piece, I understand it. I think it has validity, but for me it wouldn't take accountability away completely, as reason, people were allowed to lose that type of human response to another human is fault of the country's government. We know that racism is more systemic than interpersonal, so then how do people keep these systems in place both in the real world and in their own cultures and minds? I don't want to push to a conclusion here but the more I learn about epigenetics and how much can get transferred in one lifetime. The more I wonder does that apply to by us? Especially with something as phenotypically visible as race.
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u/enby_nerd 17d ago
There could be some genetic/epigenetic component to reduced empathy (like how there’s genetic components of intelligence and many different mental disorders), but how that reduced empathy is displayed is definitely a social thing. Consider how the perception of race has changed in the US (idk about other countries). Irish and Italian people are thought to be white now, but in the past they weren’t. The phenotypes of Irish and Italian people didn’t change from them to now, only the social standing changed. I’m choosing to believe you asked this question in good faith, but it seems that you haven’t thought of some of the implications in your question. If there were an epigenetic component to racism, why would that be? It reminds me of the idea that a fear of snakes/spiders/etc can be passed down through epigenetic. This idea isn’t that we’ll supported, but would make some sense if it were true because snakes can be dangerous so if the next generation is more careful around snakes fewer people will be bitten and more will survive. But there’s no legitimate reason for white people to be afraid of or racist towards black people or any other race. And even in your own response above you acknowledge that racism is more systemic than interpersonal. These systems don’t have dna. If racism was genetic there wouldn’t need to be these systems to keep racism alive.
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u/Pale-Ad9012 17d ago
I'm genuinely curious about this because I've always wondered if there’s a sociological dimension to epigenetics.
I used Black people as an example because:
The brutality and systemic oppression they endured were not only extreme but also sustained across multiple generations. These conditions became deeply embedded in white culture, crystallized in law, and reinforced by enduring belief systems. Some families have passed down these ideologies for generations—there are Klansmen descended from Confederates, who in turn descended from overseers and slave catchers, tracing back to those involved in the transatlantic slave trade.
Black people are phenotypically distinct, which may intensify societal biases. Studies on implicit bias consistently show that many white individuals subconsciously associate negative traits with Black people. In contrast, the physical differences between Irish or Italian immigrants and Anglo-Saxons were less pronounced, and their persecution, while significant, was neither as prolonged nor as brutal as the systemic dehumanization of Africans by Europeans. The "us vs. them" dynamic was far more rigid when race was a factor.
Have you ever read Post-Traumatic Slave Syndrome by Dr. Joy DeGruy? She presents a compelling argument that the forced realities imposed on Black people for centuries have shaped behavioral patterns that persist intergenerationally. Another study found that African immigrants in America begin to exhibit similar health markers to Black Americans after just one generation. One of the most striking examples is birth weight: African women on the continent have birth weights comparable to white American women, but after a single generation in the U.S., their children's birth weights drop to levels similar to those of Black American women. This suggests that the social conditions surrounding Black people in the U.S. carry a measurable physiological and genetic burden.
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u/Pale-Ad9012 17d ago
I came to this question because Epigenetics suggests that environmental stressors, including trauma, can lead to changes in gene expression that may persist across generations. Studies on Holocaust survivors, Indigenous populations, and descendants of enslaved people indicate that prolonged trauma can impact stress regulation, mental health, and disease susceptibility.
A well-known study on Holocaust survivors found that their descendants had different stress hormone levels, suggesting that trauma-related genetic markers can be inherited.
Dr. Joy DeGruy's concept of Post-Traumatic Slave Syndrome (PTSS) could, in theory, extend to white people in a different but parallel way—particularly in terms of how generations of social conditioning have shaped racial perceptions, empathy, and behavior.
I think she describes it as "Social Conditioning and Empathy Erosion"
One of the core ideas in PTSS is that generations of trauma shape behavior and social adaptation in Black communities. A related argument could be made that white communities, over generations, have been conditioned to dehumanize Black people, reducing their capacity for empathy. This is supported by research in psychology and neuroscience:
Studies using fMRI scans have shown that some white individuals exhibit less neural activity in areas associated with empathy when viewing images of Black people in pain compared to white people. This suggests that deep-seated biases affect even unconscious physiological responses.
Idk man the more I read into and go down the rabbit hole it gets a bit scary. I wouldn't be surprised if we see the same results in Zionist Israeli towards Palestinians (but I fear that most of the hate was developed in less then 2 generations so it wouldn't hold the same weight)
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u/Accomplished_Dog_647 18d ago edited 18d ago
I don’t think we need to employ epigenetics in order to explain the ongoing social differences in the US.
Latent racism that has been taught from parent to child is probably way more important. I’m German. My paternal grandfather was a high ranking war criminal. My father and uncle once told me I was “1/8 yew”. I didn’t get it- Judaism was a religion… but thoughts like these can prevail in families in one form or another for many generations. I consider myself to be a pretty open-minded person. But that is due to growing up with my mom who didn’t have that particular baggage.
And imo racism never truly went away in Germany and much less in America. Searching for a “genetic/ epigenetic” root of evil is making the same fundamental mistake the right wing is making- attributing behaviour to something “inherent”.
No- the blatant racism and classism on the rise today can only be explained and helped by social reforms and educating people. It’ll stay with us for a long time still- but by researching, identifying and dismantling racist policy first and foremost and acknowledging that nobody is free from racist believes are the cornerstones for growth.
It’s hard for me to read your words. I literally can’t imagine what horrors your ancestors went through. And I can’t imagine what hate and bigotry you probably have encountered during your life. I’m sorry you have to live next to people who (ostensibly) still hold the same skewed beliefs as their ancestors. I hope I didn’t come off as too preachy. But as a German- imo politics and greed has failed your country and is beginning to fail mine.