Re: Race: real or imagined?

I just received the Rushton tract in the mail today.

At a glance, here is what his central claim seems to be:

1) Environmental conditions in sub-Saharan Africa, with malaria and other
rampant tropical diseases, were conducive to an "r strategy" of 
reproduction in humans:  bear lots of young, but don't care for them too
much because most of them will die.

2) When humans migrated out of Africa, they encountered different
environmental conditions which were conducive to a "K strategy" of
reproduction:  bear fewer young, but care after them more and ensure their
survival.

3) This resulted in 3 races (Negroids, Mongoloids, Caucasoids) or
subspecies with different traits that are adaptations to the environment
via reproductive strategy.  These traits include intelligence, aggression,
and so forth.  Basically, the Negroids are less intelligent and more
aggressive because these traits were selected for as part of a package of
traits that go along with the "r strategy" of reproduction.

4)  These racially/genetically different traits *partially* explain, along
with current environmental factors, differences in crime rates, family
structure, IQ, etc, etc, among the 3 "races."

** ** ** ** **

Rushton's racial theory is a particular subcategory of the larger whole,
which includes Murray, Hernstein (?), etc.  His theory, although clearly
ideologically motivated and not well supported, is logically a perfectly
reasonable application of Darwinian evolutionary principles.

To refute it requires only challenging each factual claim and causal
claim.

For instance, Rushton claims that the racial differences that are his
dependent variable are real.  This is obviously open to challenge.

Beyond that, his argument has several steps of causal logic, none of which
is more than speculative and can easily be challenged:

1) different environments cause differing reproductive strategies
        in human populations,

2) differing reproductive strategies cause differing clusters of
        biological traits,

3) clusters of traits persist (because they are genetic) under new
        environmental conditions (ie, blacks in the U.S. and Caribbean 
        have the same traits as blacks in Africa, Asians outside of Asia
        have the same traits, etc),

4) ipso facto, race causes crime, out of wedlock births, etc.


Since this is all presented scientifically, it needs to be refuted
scientifically.  That is unfortunate, but just as with the so-called
scientific creationists, if their "science" is not refuted with science,
then their opponents are made to look like the ones with only ideology,
and something to hide.

I recently covered this issue in my introductory sociology course, but I
admit that my treatment of it was superficial and unlikely to dislodge the
racist thinking endemic among "white" and even Other Americans.


Richard Hutchinson
Dept. of Sociology and Anthropology
Weber State University