Re: Race: real or imagined? (fwd)

Since this discussion is the same old thing as last fall, I'm reposting my
comments from that round.

I have nothing new to add so far.

RH

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 9 Dec 1999 16:44:45 -0700 (MST)
From: Richard N Hutchinson <rhutchin@U.Arizona.EDU>
To: WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK <wsn@csf.colorado.edu>
Cc: WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK <wsn@csf.colorado.edu>
Subject: Re: Race: real or imagined?

It is one thing to say that "race" has no biological basis, only
sociological.  That's what the evidence shows.  It is another thing to say
that the human species has no biological basis.  Such a statement is
patently absurd, and that is exactly what it is to dismiss all
sociobiological/evolutionary psychological research.  Such a position is
nothing but an ideological knee-jerk reaction.  It is the left-wing
equivalent of scientific creationism, opposing evolutionary theory because
it challenges an ideological dogma.

Not everyone on this list follows lockstep an anti-sociobiological
orthodoxy.  That human behavior is caused partly by biological factors and
partly by sociological factors is the sensible starting point.  It leaves
open all the particulars for empirical research to determine.  To reject
biological causation in toto is to remain willfully ignorant.

RH