[This is the full post I wrote the list initially on this matter. I
postponed it and cut most of it out--actually, I cut all of it out except
my pithy statement regarding round earthers--because I did not think it
was necessary to go through the motions of refuting the concept of
biological race. I have decided to send it to the list in light of recent
posts. This post makes some general comments and points to some resources
that Richard and others may find useful. I apologize for the
disorganization of the contents, but I don't have time to edit the post.
I have little doubt that my statements on this matter will draw fire from
"conservative ideologues who rail against the largely bogus ogre of
suffocating political correctness" (to quote Gould).]
Richard,
There is no scientific evidence that there are "races" among Homo sapiens.
"Race" is a social construct with no objective biological (genetic, or
otherwise) basis. It is a reification left over from the early daze of
"science," and there is clear evidence that its purpose was ultimately in
the service of legitimating colonialism abroad and discrimination at home.
What is more, scientific racism has been rekindled recently for the same
reasons. For succinct histories of scientific racism and the current
state-of-the-art see William H. Tucker's 1994 *The Science and Politics
of Racial Research*; collected articles and essays in *The Bell Curve
Debate*, edited by Jacoby and Glauberman (1995) and *The Bell Curve Wars*
(1995), edited by Fraser; and, above all, Stephen Jay Gould's 1981 *The
Mismeasure of Man* and his 1994 article "Curveball" in the *New Yorker*.
I have spent considerable time looking at this issue, but I don't have
considerable time to hammer out a lengthy post on the matter. I want to
suggest a couple more books to read, and then I have just a few short
comments to make.
Around the same time as the *Bell Curve*, the massive *The History and
Geography of Human Genes* (Princeton University Press), by Luigi Luca
Cavalli-Sforza, Paolo Menozzi and Alberto Piazza, was published.
Predictably, the book received little attention. The book concludes
something like 16 years of genetic population studies. The research was
both primary data analysis (DNA testing) and secondary data analysis (they
pulled together 50 years of blood-sampling studies--a metaanalysis, if
your will) to produce a genetic map of the world. I am not going to review
the book, but of note, since Richard brings up the notion of bell curves,
is Cavalli-Sforza's comments regarding the *Bell Curve*. He noted that the
authors excluded evidence that empirically emptied their concepts (and,
although he didn't say it, that includes their measure of intelligence--
Gould fairly devastates this matter). Cavalli-Sforza called it "very bad
science."
Interestingly, I think, is that Cavalli-Sforza heads up the controversial
Human Genome Diversity Project. For those of you who are not familiar with
this work, it seeks to document migration patterns with a side goal of
finding, more or less, isolated genetic pools. As they are finding, and
this is significant for world systems research, is that human and prehuman
hominid populations have been migrating since the dawn of their respective
genus and species. One important conclusion found by Cavalli-Sforza's
book is strong confimration that agriculture began independently in three
places in the world, in the Middle East, in Asia, and in Central America.
What must be stressed in this mention of Cavalli-Sforza et al.'s book is
that these genetic lineages are not groupable into racial differences. For
example, the range in genetic variation between African blacks and
European whites is much slighter than the range of genetic variation
between African blacks and Australian blacks. This is because the range of
diversity in gene pools reflects genetic spatiotemporal distancing (what
might be called adaptive radiation if the differences were great, but
they're not), whereas superficial physical features likely to be defined
as racial features by Westerners represent climatic adaptations. It is a
major problem for scientific racism to account for how their racial
categories, whether they claim only three or 200 (according to
anthropologist Michael Alan Park in 1986 there were 4.8 billion different
racial types--now of course this number needs to be increase to over 5
billion!): how it is that blacks in two parts of the world can be more
genetically distant than blacks and whites who live next door to each
other? (Of course, the answer is obvious once you lose the concept of
biological race--"race" actually obfuscates matters of variation among
populations.)
Cavalli-Sforza et al.'s research, along with a wealth of research by
others, has led physical anthropologists and geneticists all around the
world to abandon the concept of biological race. A representative case can
be found in the *Chronicle of Higher Education* (February 17, 1995), "Penn
Anthropologists Declare No Biological Basis to Race." The piece follows
Solomon Katz's talk at a meeting of the American Association for the
Advancement of Science (AAAS). "With a better understanding of genetics,
he explained that visual distinctions have no correspondence to distinct
human gene pools. Humans have migrated so widely and continuously that
trying to classify them and draw a correlation to behavioral traits proves
futile." His conclusion is that "scientific study of race should be
abandoned; it isn't the key to human variations." Katz did acknowledge
that the construct of race has cultural significance (obviously) but that
"as a biological concept, race is no longer useful. In a sense, we've
outgrown it."
I single out this example because at this meeting, Katz delivered the
American Association of Physical Anthropologists (AAPA) declaration on race.
Let me quote the article: "It stated all human beings belong to one
species, Homo sapiens, with a common descent; pure races (i.e.,
genetically homogeneous populations) do not exist and there is no evidence
that they ever did exist; hereditary potentials for intelligence and
cultural development do not differ among human populations and there is no
hereditary justification for considering any population superior." Again,
because constant and widespread migration is a common feature to hominids,
particularly the genus Homo, hominid populations cannot be classified
according to to race. As Park notes, race is a "folk taxonomy."
To give you a feel for the general mood of anthropologists out there, in a
very good textbook on Human evolution by Weiss and Mann (*Human Biology
and Behavior*) the authors write that the "typologist's definition of race
has now been rendered obsolete in biological anthropology, but lingers on
in the way most people think of human variation. We tend to think of an
American white, black, Arab, or Jew as looking or behaving a certain way.
When doing so, we are creating stereotypes." "Stereotypes are created for
a purpose. By classifying all members of a group as being greedy, or
brilliant, we generally are supporting some economic or sociopolitical
ideology, though we may try to support the stereotype with 'science'." The
text goes on to note examples where is "it is apparent that the concept of
race fails to fit biological reality."
Thus, the concept of race as a biological ontology has been rendered
generally obsolete by population research and generally rejected by
biological anthropologists for both lack of evidence and clear evidence
against its existence (such as intragroup genetic variation outstripping
intergroup genetic variation, range of variation among climatically and
geographically differentiated, or otherwise segregated and/or adaptive
populations only determining superficial characteristics, such as skin,
hair, eye color, etc.)
Furthermore, it is racist to believe that superficial traits in human
populations are the cause of differential behavioral modalities. We call
this *stereotyping*. The purpose of race, as I mentioned above (i.e., race
as an social organizing principle), is to lend scientific legitimacy to
prejudice and discrimination. Thus the ideology of racism is, in the age
of scientific-rationality, intimately linked to the concept of biological
race (in other words, religious arguments, such as the Tower of Babel
story, simply don't cut it anymore). In my view, the only science involved
vis-a-vis race is the refutation of race by the scientific community
(although you may rightly reject my appeal to the scientific community).
Now, I should note that there are some "scientists" who still use the
concept; I don't want to seem one-sided. Richard Lynn, Philippe Rushton,
Arthur Jenson, and other Pioneer Fundees (as well as Nazis, white
supremacists, etc.) will happily tell you about the civilization builders
(caucasoids), civilization maintainers (the mongoloids), and the
civilization destroyers (negroids). Rushton, for example, with tell you
all about how the big genitalia of black men can be explained by their
small cranium size: blacks have to breed like rabbits to make up for the
greater likelihood that they will walk over a cliff due to their
stupidity. This is typical of the "measurers of man" (to paraphrase
Gould). They have their own journals in which to publish this stuff (*The
Mankind Quarterly*, for example), but they also publish in some mainstream
psych journals (psychology is rather unconscious about the racists in
their midst). They also have their own press, the Scott-something press (I
can't remember it exactly--both the MQ and the press are run by neoNazi
Roger Pearson, who used to be on the editorial board for the Heritage
Foundation and is still associated with rightwing think tanks. Another of
Pearson journals was one of Reagan's favorites, can't remember the title
now, for which Reagan personally thanks Pearson for the good work Pearson
was doing--oh, Pearson headed up the WACL for awhile--for an expose of all
of this mess see Bellant's *Old Nazis, the New Right, and the Republican
Party*). Incidentally, the *Bell Curve* is in large measure based on the
"groundbreaking" research presented by such individuals (check the
bibliography).
It is, in my view, and I think this is quite a moderate position,
reactionary to continue to hold to the concept of biological race when
there is (a) no evidence for it, (b) clear evidence against it, and (c)
the use of the construct harms human beings (remember, the fourth spoke on
the wheel of science is ETHICS). I am, quite frankly, surprised that
anybody in this day and age even remotely familiar with genetics and
physiological anthropology would cling to such a myth. But then I assume
too much.
Richard, your assertion of the necessity of race to the understanding
human evolution and human potential seems to suggest that you lay some
sort of knowledge of the literature. I don't think you do. So I hope my
post helps you find other points of view on the matter.
To put it bluntly, your assertion that those of us who have looked over
the data and recognize the falsity of biological "races" is "overreaction"
is the equivalent of claiming that those of us who understand the world to
be round have jumped the gun. The construct of biological race belongs to
the realm of flat earth. Let's leave it there once and for all.
What concerns me is your staunch defense of human nature, which you have
argued in the past plays a determinative role in social production. If you
hold that there are different racial types of human beings, then it
follows that they have different natures. And if human nature plays a role
in determining society, then different natures determine different types
of societies. So we have on our hands, at least by logical extension of
the basic premises, a racial explanation for cultural variation. This is
very troubling indeed.
Respectfully,
Andrew Austin