When “Syndrome” Means You’re Not Racist

The New York Daily News brings our attention to a newly discovered aspect of a genetic disorder called Williams syndrome today. Those affected by the syndrome, it turns out, “don’t have any racial biases,” which most kids show by the time they’re three, the little jerks. Williams syndrome kids are also cool as cucumbers in social settings, possessing “a lack of social anxiety that produces exceedingly friendly human beings.”

A gene deletion that affects the brain and other organs is what causes Williams syndrome, and kids with the disorder are “hypersocial,” says researcher Andreas Meyer-Lindenberg of Germany’s University of Heidelberg.

So, essentially, they’re not racist, and they like to party? Sounds like a syndrome to us.

There is one little problem. Along with possible physical and developmental abnormalities,

Another hallmark of Williams syndrome is the inability to process social danger signals, which means those with the disorder are at a higher risk for physical attacks and rape.

And Williams syndrome kids do discriminate based on gender, which just goes to show that nobody’s perfect.