Race And Racism: Folklore, Fallacies and Facts

PART 1

During the past few thousand years of human history, the misconceptions about, and the conflicts between, human groupings – notably after the introduction of the term race – have been an ongoing source of discrimination, prejudice, misery and murder. Two of the most infamous 20^th Century examples have been the Ku Klux Klan in the U.S.A. (The Clansman by Thomas Dixon, 1905) and Nazism in Germany (Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler, 1925 – 27). Recently, there has been violent conflict between the Serbs and Croats in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and at present, there is ongoing, bitter battle between the Sunnis and the Shi’ites in the Muslim world.

What are the biological and cultural bases of human grouping, and what have been the outcomes and implications of their application in humankind?

Looking back first at humankind’s biological history, one finds that in many animal groups today, there are species which are genetically programmed to live in groups, and these include most monkeys and great apes, such as the chimpanzees, our closest living relatives. It is probably from a shared ancestral group with the chimpanzees, that humans inherited their group-forming behavior.

The initial human grouping was most likely the basic family of a male and one or more females. However, for protecting feeding grounds and a source of water, it was soon widened – as in chimpanzees – to include close relatives, to form what in humans is termed a kinship group. Over time, such groupings were progressively extended into tribal, next regional and then national groups. Within such groups, a great variety of sub-groupings were created, such as: religious, social, trade or profession; and relatively recently, down to even football team supporter groups.

Initially, groups were physically isolated or behaviorally separated by features such as: competition for territory, great distance, physical barriers, unfamiliarity with local adaptations in behavior and culture. In more recent times group identification and inter-group competition, became based on differences in political, social and belief systems, and a few physical features – population variations. In addition, group conflict might also result, as earlier, from the desire for more territory or resources, differences in views and opinions – and even just plain envy! The various human groupings came to involve strong group loyalties through common interests, beliefs and other concepts, and these led to binding co-operation within groups, but also to various levels of competition between groups.

Many groups in the earlier years of human history, and others culturally isolated from the more developed societies until relatively recently, developed mythologies to account for their group’s origin. The Australian Aboriginal people believe that it was in their mythological Dreamtime, that they came into existence from Ancestral Beings, and the Khoi-Khoi (‘Hottentots’) in southern Africa say that their ancestral father was the deity, Tsui - // goab [the ‘-’ and the ‘//’ are two of the click sounds that are basic parts of their language]. The ancient Maya of South America believed that the creation of humankind occurred with the opening of the Maize (Sustenance) Mountain. According to the Old Testament, some 5771 years ago (following the Jewish calendar) man and then woman were created by God.

PART 2

There is a vast collection of literature on ‘race’ considering the definitions of the postulated groups, and specifying their characteristics. I briefly describe below just a few salutary examples, mainly from books such as: The Races of Europe (1899) by WZ Ripley; ‘The Races in Europe’ (in: On Living in a Revolution) by Julian Huxley (1946); The Mismeasure of Man (1981) by Stephen Jay Gould; and The Race Gallery (1995) by Marek Kohn.

It was in Europe after the Renaissance, that for some of the geographically separated, or the physical, cultural or political differences between groups, that the term race was introduced (Julian Huxley, 1946, On Living in a Revolution, p. 163). What, then, is the meaning (biologically and culturally) of the term race and what are the implications for human groupings of those different interpretations and applications?

Other than ‘races’ being defined by language or religion, many anthropologists have used a diverse number of parameters to define populations in humankind. As people from Europe explored the then unknown world of Africa and the East, skin pigmentation was one of the first commonly used features. The subdivisions of skin color defined were: white, yellow, brown, red or black. Other features, early introduced for human population subdivisions, included: skull (cranium and face) measurements, nose shape, eye color and shape, hair texture, body size and proportions, and even behavioral and cultural features.

As a point of historic interest in defining humankind as ‘species and their subgroups’, behavioral and cultural features were included in the classification of Carolus Linnaeus (1707 – 1778), whose hierarchical system of group naming (taxonomy: species, genus, family, class, phylum) is basically still used today. Linnaeus classified humankind as including two species: the first, H. sapiens, varied by education (culture) and situation (geography); the second species, H. monstrosus, varied by climate or art, the latter term meaning manner or behavior. Further, within Homo sapiens he included 5 varieties: Europeans – sanguine, gentle, acute, inventive – governed by laws; Africans – phlegmatic, relaxed, crafty, indolent, negligent – governed by caprice (whims). The second species H. monstrosus included six varieties, e.g. Patagonians – large indolent, and Hottentots – one testis, less fertile (pp. 283 – 4). [Linnaeus’ source for ‘Hottentots’ having one testis is not known, but it is quite incorrect!]

In 1853, Friedrich Max Müller, an eminent philologist and philosopher, introduced the term ‘Aryan’ as a linguistic group, and also a ‘race’. The idea of its being a ‘race’ was criticized at the time quite severely by some – and later, more widely, including by Müller himself! (in: Huxley, p. 173). Also, with regard to ‘behavioral and cultural’ being included in biological race classifications, in 1899, Ripley clearly stated (on page 1 of his book) that: “Race, properly speaking, is responsible only for those peculiarities, mental or bodily, which are transmitted with constancy along the lines of direct physical descent from father to son.”.

Despite the wide rejection of the concept of a ‘race’ called ‘Aryans’, some Germans – notably the Nazis – later claimed those mythical people to have existed, and been: tall, fair and long-headed, and the ancestors of another hypothetical race, the ‘Teutons’. These proposals were just two of the many, similar, invalid ‘racial’ groups, such as ‘Caucasoid’, ‘Mongoloid’ and ‘Negroid’, postulated during a very complex period (1850–1950) of so-called ‘racial history’. One prominent contributor who expanded and compounded these ideas during that time was the French, Count Joseph de Gobineau (1816 – 1882); he added to the list by introducing ‘races’, such as a ‘Nordic race’.

Huxley (p. 171) provides a clever parody on these 19^th – 20^th Century false ideas of ‘races and lineages’, as exemplified by the 1939 – 1945, German, Nazi hierarchy. Huxley writes: “Thus our German neighbors have ascribed to themselves a Teutonic type that is fair, long-headed, tall, slender, unemotional, brave straightforward, gentle, and virile. Let us make a composite picture of a typical Teuton from the most prominent of the exponents of this view. Let him be physically as blond and mentally as unemotional as Hitler, physically as long-headed and mentally as direct as Rosenberg, as tall and truthful as Goebbels, as slender and gentle as Goering, and as manly and straightforward as Streicher.” Those familiar with the Nazi period in Germany will appreciate the sarcasm of the directly opposite features to those listed, as characterizing the leading figures in the Nazi hierarchy.

A. Hitler (natural blond?)

PART 3

With regard to the postulate of a ‘Jewish race’, what is the evidence? The Jews originated as the Hebrews, a small, nomadic lineage or group of lineages (tribe) in Ur in Chaldea (Babylon; in the south of present day Iran), according to their calendar, 5771 years ago. They moved under the leadership of their patriarch, Abraham, into Canaan (variously defined as present day Israel and some parts of the surrounding countries). Thereafter, mostly by enforced migrations, they spread westward across north Africa and north into Asia and Europe. During the Roman period they followed the path of the Roman legions through Europe and later, mainly from large settlements in eastern Europe and western Asia, they moved into many of the other populated parts of the world.

During the course of their dispersion (the Diaspora), the Jews intermarried with, and had numerous converts from, the many populations amongst which they had settled. To quote Huxley again (p. 175), today, “Jews are no more a distinctly sharply marked ‘race’ than are Germans or English.” and, “The Jews of the Bible were of mixed descent and the Jewish communities have come to resemble the local populations in many respects.”. Similar histories can be described for many other so-called ‘races’, notably the Roma (the gypsies), who ‘originated’ in India; and it is salutary to recall that it was the Jews and the gypsies that were the primary targets of the Nazi policy of ‘ethnic cleansing’ in Germany during the 1930s and 1940s.

Returning to the biological concept of race, of some of the more commonly used features for defining human populations, John Relethford writes: “..craniometric variation is found to be geographically structured..[but the differences]..are not abrupt and do not fit a strict view of the race concept..”. “Skin color shows a high degree of variation among geographic regions and is not well described by discrete categories.” (American Journal of Physical Anthropology (vol. 139, no. 1, 16 – 22; 2009).

In more recent years the list of defining features used for ‘race’ definition has been extended to include: blood groups, the genetic functions and features of the DNA molecule – and even I.Q. (Intelligence Quotient)!

Blood groups, of which there are a considerable number, have been extensively studied in many populations because of their importance in aspects such as: the immune system – resistance to disease, for their significance in blood transfusions. Related to these groups, is the hemoglobin of blood cells which, similar to some types of the blood cells, has been demonstrated to be associated with resistance to two types of malaria. The frequencies of the different blood groups vary in people from different populations, and the ABO, MN and Rh groups, in particular have been studied in many human populations. One extensive, tentative classification into six groups was proposed in 1950 by WC Boyd (Genetics and the Races of Man, 1950, p. 268). The postulated groups were: Early European, European (Caucasoid), African (Negroid), Asiatic (Mongoloid), American Indian and Australoid. As with the earlier featured studied, these again mainly follow geographic, continental boundaries, and with similar limitations and exceptions.

With regard to DNA (deoxyribonucleaic acid), the structure and functions of this chemical molecule is the basis for understanding biological (genetic) inheritance in all living forms. Some details of these are briefly outlined later below; here, just note that the frequencies of genes are another feature utilized for defining populations. Using these, however, already in the 1970’s an important geneticist, Richard Lewontin: “...disposed of most serious scientific racism by showing how genetic differences between individuals swamp those between races.” (in: Nature via Nurture, by Matt Ridley, 2003, p. 264

Further, as in metrical features of the skull and body, new statistical methods (multivariate statistics) enable the combination of numbers of separate dimensions (or other observations) into a single figure to more accurately compare groups of people and get insights into their relationships (shared genes) and biological history (migrations). For genetic features, the figure called genetic distance is the average measurement of the relatedness between pairs of populations based on a number of genetic traits. JC Long, Li Jie and ME Healy, using 32 population samples, and 63 loci (genes), found that the DNA sequences reveal that: “...populations differ in the amount of diversity that they harbor...(:)...they show nested subsets...(,)...some populations belong to more than one race...[and]...some do not belong to any race at all.” (Am. J. Phys. Anthrop., 139:23 – 34, 2009).

PART 4

After World War II, when extensive IQ testing became common in the U.S.A., a new feature presented itself for use in ‘race’ definition. Some tests, for example, showed that the African-American people in the U.S.A., on average, scored 10 points less than those of European (Caucasian) descent, whereas the average score of individuals of Asian (Mongoloid) ancestry scored several points more than the ’Europeans’. This sort of result has led some writers to use such findings to support a belief in ‘race’ differences (the fallacy of ‘biological determinism’) – quite recently, for example, RJ Herrnstein and C. Murray, in The Bell Curve (1994).

The IQ test was originally devised by Alfred Binet in France in 1904, to identify children with educational difficulties who might require special education. His test involved a series of tasks (written, visual, manual), from which to assess an individual’s ‘mental age’. The IQ score is determined from the result by dividing the mental age by the chronological age, so that the average score for a reference population is 100. The test now in use is the much modified version, known as the Stanford-Binet IQ test.

Over the years various proposals have been advanced about the inheritance of intelligence and abilities in humans. So, for example, a ‘general intelligence’ trait (Spearman’s ‘g’) was suggested, and also ‘multiple intelligences’, for which Howard Gardiner (Frames of Mind, 1983) lists the following ‘intelligences’: linguistic, logical, musical, mathematical, spatial, body-kinetic, and two forms of personal – looking into one’s own mind and outwards towards others. What, however, is now well known is that mental abilities have both a genetic and an environmental basis, as they may be influenced by factors such as: education, diet, health, and social and economic positions. So, IQ scores may be significantly influenced by such environmental factors and consequently are not valid features for attempting to classify ‘races’ in humankind (The Mismeasure of Man, SJ Gould, 1981).
[Note: The cultures of ethnic (‘racial’) groups of people, as such, have no genetic basis although, if a group remains ‘relatively intact’ for hundreds of generations, they may facilitate the selection of one or more associated, genetic traits.]

In his book: The Human Species (8th. Ed., 2010), John Relethford summarizes current views on human races: “Studies of genetic variation in the human species do not produce results consistent with the race concept. Instead we find evidence of geographic differences..(–)..distances between human groups, but with no clear boundaries between them. Genetic variation is greatest within local human populations..[and]..is strongly related to geography and gene flow.” (p. 377). Migration and distance separation by physical barriers; ‘bottle necks’ – such as crossing between Africa and Europe – and allowing only very slow or periodic interchange; intermarriage at adjacent borders (gene flow); and rapid changes in new, small, well-separated groups (the founder effect).
Regrettably, however, many aspects of the early subdivisions of humankind remained in vogue until quite recently (M. Kohn, The Race Gallery, 1995). None, however, of those – nor even those of the more recent classifications of humans – conform to the most common biological definition of subspecies or races, the ‘75% rule’. The ‘rule’ states that: 75% of the individuals in each subspecies [often synonymous with ‘race’] designated must be able to be separated from all of those in each of the other subspecies (p. 308).

PART 5

The importance of being different.

The DNA of each individual is located in 22 pairs of homologous (similar; ‘autosomes’), and one pair of non-homologous (dissimilar; ‘sex determining’) chromosomes, which are identically located in the nuclei of each cell of the human body. At the time of conception, each individual inherits a particular set (the genome) of pairs of constituent parts of the DNA molecule (genes) – one of each pair has been randomly chosen from one or other of their two parents. The genes are each found at a position (a locus) on a chromosome. Each gene pair predisposes (that is, has the potential) for the development – or an aspect of the development – of a particular trait, feature, process or behavior.

However, before the final expression of a gene (that is, its manifestation in an individual), it is subject to interaction with any of the long, complex series of features to which it is exposed in the course of its conception-to-death environments. These include: internal – other genes, chemicals; and external – personal, social, cultural, or any of the other, vast diversity of other life experience to which individuals are exposed. From these interactions the end result of a gene pair may be modifications to its predisposed trait – or even to its being completely turned on or off. Of special note are the early years’ imprinting of individual backgrounds with regard to: parents, society, environment and culture, even economic status.

The importance of comprehending this complex process, starting from random gene selection from each of their parents – and the many events, which can later influence that potential, is that:

Each human being is unique in their particular combination of physical, physiological and behavioral features.

As a result, between the millions of living individuals, there is the vast range of different attitudes, attributes and skills, essential for the multiple, diverse activities necessary in modern societies. But, in addition to creating those basic individual personalities, understanding genetic mechanisms provides the necessary background for appreciating the potential: for producing medicines, of stem cell research, genetic engineering, genetic fingerprinting, and much more (50Genetics Ideas you really need to know, Mark Henderson, 2008).

The modes of processes and actions of genes and gene pairs are subject to an essentially simple – but in practice quite complex – set of genetic, chemical and mathematical principles and rules. As one basic example of the system, the gene for a particular trait might be dominant or recessive, which means that if both genes in a pair are dominant, or even only one, the trait will be manifested, if both are recessive, the trait will not appear in the individual.

This aspect of biological inheritance is the significant starting point for appreciating in humans, the structures, functions and behaviors of living, breathing active individuals, and so, on averages, those attributed to populations of people.

However, before the final expression of a gene (that is, its manifestation in an individual), it is subject to interaction with the complex series of features to which it is exposed in the course of its conception-to-death environments: internal, other genes, chemicals, and external personal, cultural, social and other life experiences. These exposures of a gene or gene pair may result in modifications to its predisposed trait or even to its being turned on or off.

The environmental influences on different traits vary greatly. As a generalization, in physical (say, eye pigmentation) and physiological (such as, blood groups) traits the genetic basis is generally the determining factor, but in aspects of behaviors, aptitudes and intellect, the environmental encounters may be highly significant. The early imprinting of behaviors, including language, from early family, cultural, economic and physical environment is generally strong.

When viewing groups of people of all sizes and of the very many different types, the individual differences constitute the population variation. If the aspect is continuous, such as for stature or pigmentation, there is an average (mean value), with the range in the population to various degrees greater or less, forming what is called a normal curve, with progressively less individuals on the ‘greater’ and ‘lesser’ sides. For discontinuous (present or absent) characteristics, for example for blood groups, there is a range for each of the four types (O, A, B, AB).

It is the variations in the many diverse traits of individuals in populations, which enable populations to fill the many different, changing occupational, social and other niches present in modern human societies. And further, it is that variation which has enabled individuals – and hence, over time, populations and the human species – to be selected and adapted for new environmental or social changes.