Race

This article is about race as a concept of intraspecies classification. For the many types of competitive sport, see racing.

In biology, some use race to mean a division within a species. Thus, in certain fields it is used as a synonym for subspecies or, in botany, variety. In the case of honeybees, for instance, it stands as a synonym for subspecies. In this usage, race serves to group members of a species that have, for a period of time, become geographically or genetically isolated from other members of that species, and as a result have diverged genetically and developed certain shared characteristics that differentiate them from the others. Although these characteristics rarely appear in all members of the group, they are more marked in or appear more frequently than in the others.

Many biologists feel that in this usage we may justifiably speak of dividing Homo sapiens into races. Many others, however, assert that in humans there is in fact insufficient categorical variation to justify the classification of humans into multiple races in a strictly biological sense. Many social scientists therefore view race as a social construct, and have sought to understand it as such, as explained later in this article. Thus, race is increasingly regarded as a non-biological term that often could be exchanged by population.

The remainder of this article reviews debates over the scientific validity of the concept of race in human beings; the historical construction, social functions, and cultural meanings of racial schemata; and the ethics and politics of the term.

Table of contents

1 Overview 2 History of the term 3 Issues relevant to the philosophy of science 4 Politics of race 5 Anthropological and genetic studies of race 5.1 Example: United States 5.2 Example: Brazil 5.3 Race and intelligence 5.4 Phylogenetic representations 6 Related concepts 7 See also 8 Footnote 9 References 10 External links

Overview

Some people believe that certain characteristics of the species Homo sapiens justify classification of humans into various races. Such characteristics include physical characteristics, culture, geography, religion, language, nationality, etc., but do not include contingent factors such as a common history of disease. The practice of dividing humans into races emerged during the Enlightenment as a way of justification for the slavery and oppression forced on humans, of what was called another race, from non-European nations. A justification which was otherwise impossible, from a humane Christian aspect. The practice was at that time generally accepted by both the scientific and lay communities.

In the early-to-mid 20th century, many scientists began questioning previously accepted causal relationships between biological and cultural attributes. Some scientists also began questioning the taxonomic validity of race attribution. In the decades immediately after the Second World War (during which time racial theories served to justify enormous genocidal crimes; see eugenics), with particular momentum in the 1960s in the context of the U.S. civil-rights struggle and the global anti-colonial struggle, some came to reject the concept of race as a biological fact altogether, at least as it applies to humans. Nevertheless, the belief that human races exist remains unquestionably real and, like any belief held by a large number of people, is significant in itself regardless of its scientific validity. The race concept continues to impact people through its effects on social behaviour (see communal reinforcement).

In biology, a race was defined as a recognisable group forming all or part of a monotypic or polytypic species. A monotypic species has no races (this can also be expressed: "a monotypic species has only one race"). Monotypic species can occur in several ways:

• All members of the species are very similar and cannot be sensibly divided into biologically significant subcategories.
• The individuals vary considerably but the variation is essentially random and largely meaningless so far as genetic transmission of these variations is concerned (many plant species fit into this category, which is why horticulturists interested in preserving, say, a particular flower color avoid propagation from seed but instead use vegetative methods like propagation from cuttings).
• The variation between individuals is noticeable and does follow a pattern, but there are no clear dividing lines between separate groups: they fade imperceptibly into one another. This is called clinal variation, and always indicates substantial gene flow between the apparently separate groups that make up the population(s). Populations that have a steady, substantial gene flow between them are likely to comprise a monotypic species even when a fair degree of genetic variation is obvious.

Humans clearly vary considerably – enough to make early scientists accept the view of Carolus Linnaeus that humans should be divided into several sub-species. By far the greater part of human genetic variation, however, occurs within "racial" groups and the variation between racial groups accounts for less than 10% of the total.² Nevertheless, although the difference between "races" is less than 10% of the difference within any particular "race", this does not in itself invalidate the suggestion that there might be different races of Homo sapiens sapiens. The rules of biological classification do not set any 'smallest allowable difference' between taxa: any distinct difference is sufficient.

However, a distinct difference is only one of the two conditions that must be satisfied before a different form can be classified as a sub-species or even a race; the second is the lack of significant gene flow between populations. In the case of human "races", there historically has been little or no gene flow between, for example, aboriginal Australians and black Africans, between Asians and Caucasian Europeans, or between native American Indians and Hispanics. As such, interbreeding, although theoretically possible, was rare.

In recent centuries there has been a significant change in this situation. People from one continent began to travel to others on a regular basis; today such travel is widespread. As such, interbreeding is not only possible but widespread. Give this change, the lines between races are fading, and perhaps totally removed, in some regions.

Given the way that different human "races" fade gradually from one to another in many parts of the world, the overwhelming majority of the current generation of cultural anthropologists draw the conclusion that human "racial" variation is in fact clinal, and that the human species is monotypic. However, this is also true for differences between sub-species, and even species, in other animal populations. Generally, an amount of change sufficient to label two different animal populations as different sub-species is often no longer considered enough to label two different human populations as being of different races.

Of course, the delicacy of this definition has left the issue much in debate, especially among physical anthropologists, for if "clines" lead to large areas of separate near-homogeneity, as they seem to do in places like Kenya, Sweden and China, then the people in these areas seem marked off by delimeters resembling nothing so much as the traditional physiological touchstones of "race".

Scientists who maintain race as an important biological concept point out that in determining overall relatedness the entire genetic cohorts of groups must be compared. When this is done, a grouping pattern emerges that closely follows traditional race groupings. For example, it is true that the so-called "Negroid" race contains more in-group variation than the other major races. Great differences in height, for instance, can be found within a small geographical area (the "pygmies" are the shortest people in the world on average, while their neighbors, formerly known as "the Watusi", are the tallest). These two "negroid" subgroups vary more from each other in height than either does with the averages for height in the other two major races. However, if total genetic cohorts are used rather than limited sets of traits like height and blood type in an effort to find true overall relatedness, it is seen that any two "negroids" will share a much higher net genetic affinity with one another than either will with any individual of the other two major races. The same is true for any two caucasoids and any two sinoids (see conclusions of the Human Population Genetics Laboratory headed by L. Luca Cavalli-Sforza at [1]).

A growing number of biologists believe that the tendency to view races as a social construct, or as not biologically significant, is incorrect, and influenced not by science but by racial politics and political correctness. They point out that researchers on race are often attacked as racists, even if said researchers hold liberal political and social views, and themselves are against racism. A number of books and articles in recent years attempt to rebut what the authors see as biased science.

Vincent Sarich and Frank Miele, in Race: The Reality of Human Differences, note that "racial differences in humans exceed the differences that separate subspecies or even species in such other primates as gorillas and chimpanzees" and hold that "race is a biologically real phenomenon with important consequences". A number of scientists have supported this view, including Ralph L. Holloway, Professor of Anthropology, Columbia University; Arthur Jensen, University of California-Berkeley; Joseph Carroll, University of Missouri-St. Louis; and Thomas J. Bouchard, Jr., Prof. of Psychology, University of Minnesota.

Historians,  anthropologists and  social scientists today are apt to describe the notion of race as it applies to human beings as a "social construct", preferring instead to use the concept of "population," which can be given a clear operational definition. The concept of biological race, however, has proved resilient and is still used in day-to-day speech even among those who, when questioned, reject the formal existence of race. This may be a matter of semantics, in that such scientists and laypeople use the word "race" to mean "population", or it may be an effect of the underlying cultural power of the concept of "race" in racist societies.  Whether it be "race", "population" or some other appellation, a working concept of sub-specific clustering is crucial because a number of group differences, such as gene mutation profiles strongly linked to certain human subgroups (see Cystic fibrosis, Lactose intolerance, Tay-Sachs Disease and Sickle cell anemia), are difficult to address without recourse to a category higher than "individual" and lower than "species".

The historical definition of race, before the development of evolutionary biology, was that of common lineage, a vague concept interchangeable with species, breed, cultural origin, or national character ("The whole race of mankind." – Shakespeare; "From whence the race of Alban fathers come" – Dryden).

The word race, interpreted to mean common descent, was introduced into English in about 1580, from the Old French "rasse" (1512), from Italian razza, which may have been derived from the Latin word generatio (a begetting).

This late origin for the English and French terms is consistent with the thesis that the concept of "race" as defining a very small number of groups of human beings based on lineage dates from the time of Columbus. Older concepts that were also at least partly based on common descent, such as nation and tribe, entail a much larger number of groupings.

The first published classification of humans into distinct "races" seems to have been François Bernier;'s Nouvelle division de la terre par les différents espèces ou races qui l'habitent ("New division of Earth by the different species or races which inhabit it"), published in 1684. Bernier (1625-1688) distinguished four "races":

• Europeans, including South Asians, North Africans and Native Americans, but excluding Lapps
• Far Easterners
• Sub-Saharan Africans
• Lapps

Because people of different races can interbreed, this method of classification is "weak" in the sense that it can be difficult to determine to which categories some borderline individuals belong. (Contrast the difficulty of determining to which group a child of mixed parentage belongs with the much more clear-cut decisions involved in determining membership in species). In other words, racial purity does not have a clear biological meaning. On the other hand, it is clear that for an extended period of time after Homo sapiens' first migrations from Africa (probably around 80,000 BC) and before the rise of wheeled and seagoing transportation (around 3000 BC), geographically isolated groups of people underwent some degree of divergent evolution. Whether that degree was high enough to merit strict taxa beneath the species level is the primary question that has roiled the generations of human biologists since the 1800s. It is a complicated issue full of semantic and emotional pitfalls, with much at stake on the consensus, for educators, physicians, political officeholders, judges, law enforcement officers and many others look upon scientific findings as the bedrock authority for their curricula, diagnostic methods, budget expenditures, case law and criminal suspect profiling.

Among the 19th-century naturalists who defined the field were Georges Cuvier, James Cowles Pritchard, Louis Agassiz, Charles Pickering (Races of Man and Their Geographical Distribution, 1848), and Johann Friedrich Blumenbach. Cuvier enumerated three races, Pritchard seven, Agassiz eight, and Pickering eleven. Blumenbach's classification was widely adopted:

1. the Caucasian, or white race, to which belong the greater part of the European nations and those of Western Asia
2. the Mongolian, or yellow race, occupying Tartary, China, Japan, etc.
3. the Ethiopian, or black race, occupying most of Africa (except the north), Australia, New Guinea and other Pacific Islands
4. the American, or red race, comprising the Indians of North and South America
5. the Malayanan, or brown race, which occupies the islands of the Indian Archipelago

In Blumenbach's day, physical characteristics like skin color, cranial profile, etc., went hand in hand with declarations of group moral character, intellectual capacity, and other aptitudes. The "fairness" and relatively high brows of "caucasians" were held to be apt physical expressions of a loftier mentality and a more generous spirit. The epicanthic folds around the eyes of "mongolians" and their slightly sallow outer epidermal layer bespoke their supposedly crafty, literal-minded nature. The dark skin and relatively sloping craniums of "ethiopians" were taken as wholesale proof of a closer genetic proximity to the primates, despite the fact that the skin of chimpanzees and gorillas beneath the hair is whiter than the average "caucasian" skin and that orangutans and some monkey species have foreheads fully as vertical as the typical Englishman or German. By Coon's day, group physical characteristics were, for the most part, unhitched from assessments of group character and aptitude. Since Coon, those who merely maintain the reality of moderately distinct group physical traits are closely watched as likely carriers of the old malign racism.

Modern criticism of the biological significance of "race" can be dated to the publication in 1935 of a book by Julian Huxley and A.C. Haddon: We Europeans: a survey of "racial" problems (London: Jonathan Cape, 1935).

Issues relevant to the philosophy of science

Individual human beings, even individual twins, have some traits that are held in common with all other human beings, some traits that are held in common with some other human beings, and some traits that characterize them as individuals. Races are defined by selecting a number of the sets of traits that pertain neither to all human being nor to only one human being. Individual human beings would theoretically be assigned to a race by the application of an operational definition that would involve checking all pertinent characteristics of each individual against the list of characteristics that define each race, but, in practice, humans are frequently classified into races on grounds of much less stringent requirements. For instance, rather than checking all characteristics one might check an individual for some characteristics – especially easily apparent “marker” characteristics, or one might simply ask individuals to declare their races. There is a clear danger in this procedure that on the basis of a few characteristics such as skin color, nose shape, hair texture, etc., one might falsely be assumed to possess characteristics that are socially, medically, or otherwise significant. A common flawed process of reasoning is to argue from the color of someone’s skin to the IQ range within which that individual must fall.

Politics of race

The concept of race was applied at the time of Blumenbach by political theorists such as Johann Gottfried von Herder to nationalist theory in order to develop a militant ethnic nationalism. They posited the historical existence of "races" such as the German and French race, branching from basal races supposed to have existed for millennia, such as the "Aryan" race, and believed political boundaries should mirror these racial boundaries. Later, one of Hitler's favorite sayings was "Politics is applied biology". Hitler's ideas of racial purity led to atrocities on an unprecedented scale, and "racial cleansing" or "ethnic cleansing" as a sociopolitical motivation or justification has reared its head several times since Hitler (particularly in Cambodia, the Balkans and East Africa). In one sense, such "cleansing" is merely another name for the tribal warfare and mass murder that has afflicted human society from time out of mind. But these crimes seem to gain an extra intensity and thoroughness when the perpetrators believe their acts are sanctioned on scientific grounds.

Inequalities based on presumed racial differences have been a concern of United States politicians and legislators since the country's founding. In the 19th century most "white" Americans (including abolitionists) explained racial inequality as an inevitable consequence of biological differences. In the second half of the 20th century, political and civic leaders as well as scientists debated whether racial inequality is biological or cultural in origin. On one end of the political spectrum, some argued that current inequalities between blacks and whites are primarily cultural and historical, the result of such historical wrongs as slavery and segregation, and could be redressed through such programs as "affirmative action" and "Head Start." On the other end of the spectrum, a movement to redirect tax money away from remedial programs for minority phenotypes was based on interpretations of aptitude test data which, according to advocates, showed that race-linked differences in basic ability are biological in origin and cannot be leveled even by intensive educational efforts. In electoral politics, many more members of racial and ethnic minorities have won important offices in western nations compared to earlier times, although the very highest offices tend to remain in the hands of racial/ethnic majorities.

Religious leaders active in the United States began to decry segregation and discrimination based on race in the latter half of the 20th century. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King famously requested people to form a society where people were judged "on the content of their character, not the color of their skin." The Rev. Sun Myung Moon said, "With respect to races, inferiority or superiority doesn't exist. Color counts for nothing."

Anthropological and genetic studies of race

In the 19th century many natural scientists made three claims about race: first, that races are objective, naturally occurring things; second, that there is a strong relationship between biological races and other human phenomena (such as social behavior and culture, and by extension the relative material success of cultures); third, that race is therefore a valid scientific category that can be used to explain and predict individual and group behavior. In the 20th century,
Source | Copyright