On Human Race A Humanist's View
From the biological standpoint, the species Homo Sapiens is made up of a number of populations, each one of which differs from the others in the frequency of one or more genes. Such genes, responsible for the hereditary differences between men, are always few when compared to the whole genetic constitution of man and to the vast number of genes common to all human beings regardless of the population to which they belong. This means that the likenesses among men are far greater than their differences.
- Statement on Race: issued by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization.
The term 'race' is a misnomer of singular proportions, given the fact that the vast majority of people seem not to realize that there is only one true human race - that of the entire species. Anthropologists use the term 'race' knowledgeably, whereas in its popular usage the word with all its biological implications has become degraded. Among the general population, the terminology and recognition of race has a social, not a biological cast; with decidedly pernicious overtones.
Anthropologically speaking, there are three recognized sub-groupings which fall within the species of man; namely Caucasian, Negroid and Mongoloid. From these three major sub-groupings a plethora of minor groupings identify peoples who, by virtue of a matrix founded in geographical isolation have evolved with specific physical characteristics, culture and society. All other definitions of race are informed and utilized by gross ignorance of the condition of man upon this earth.
Our condition is that we are of one initial stock; that by reason of geographic isolation and gradual adaptation there has evolved a diversity of facades - formed as much by environment as by random genetic change or by direct hybridization as a result of interbreeding. There occur naturally spontaneous random variations in gene frequencies and even the extinction of some, unnecessary genes. Even so, genetic variations between the groupings of people are minor.
People can be differentiated by cultural environment where the effect of cultural isolation will imbue a large segment of a geographic population with readily identifiable traits, ethics and perceptions. It would be more correct to call this group an 'ethnic' one.
Other groups of people are significantly affected by religious teaching and training which in large part may make up the basis for their cultural identification. This is most certainly termed a common 'religion', yet members of that religion may cross ethnic boundaries as well as geographic boundaries. There are, for example, Muslims living in the near and far east as well as in Europe and North America.
Still other large population groupings may be identified strictly by geographic location and this group of people may be termed a 'nation'. Yet within that nation there exists people whose heritage is culturally diverse, whose religious adherence is multifarious. This type of mixture is most commonly seen in the mixture which makes up the Canadian mosaic.
As is readily seen, the above three classifications are not mutually exclusive; a large group may combine a 'nation', yet have within it a diversity of 'religious', leanings and numberless 'ethnic' culturally-induced groupings - none of which should be rightfully called a 'race'.
Character is shaped and informed by immediate environment and that environment is familial, shaped by societal values further shaped by the cultural imperatives current in any geographic area. One may take focus on the American blacks who are a part of the American nation; whom society has traditionally placed in a disadvantaged position; whose culture has been shaped by such societal strictures (originally formulated to justify slavery); whose family structure is much looser than that of the whites among whom they live. This 'looseness' is based upon insecurity, an insecurity which stems from the erroneous assumption that blacks constitute another, more inferior race, than do the whites.
Man's condition is not immutable. Man, the race, has been undergoing genetic changes since he was first recognized as a separate genus, Homo Sapiens (Man the Wise). Physical anthropologists mark the changes in millennia, and even then the changes have been so gradual as to be hardly noticed. But, we are in constant flux. Yet the changes affect all of us. Differences in individuals within the same ethnic groupings are more diverse and pronounced than those which exist between the various ethnic groups themselves.
Unless complete isolation is possible between sub-groupings and genetic material common to that group is never interfered with by outside sources as by another sub-group, then the genetic pool of that particular group remains fairly stabilized and an ethnic group is formed; a group with a common, yet still fluctuating genetic pool. However, even these ethnic groups are continually shifting and in terms of historical 'time' have a limited lifespan.
And even within that group, as for example, the American Indian population before 1500, there existed a population sharing a relatively stable genetic pool, but living in separate enclaves. The genetic pool reached a certain equilibrium and there was a diversity in cultural leanings and linguistics, yet the American Indian did not constitute a specific 'race'.
And there is no such thing as purity of race or sub-grouping, to use the more correct form, since interbreeding takes place constantly within any given society. And it helps to remember that any given society which constitutes a nation is comprised of a number of ethnic groupings, religiously-oriented groupings; minor-groupings of the major groupings of the race of man. For example, it is estimated that fully 70% of all American blacks have white blood, with attendant white genes.
Apart from the fact that traditionally it was seen as permissible for white males to couple with black females (where the reverse was socially taboo), even the blacks themselves are instrumental in changing their genetic pool, by acculturated preference. Black males tend to select lighter-skinned black females as sexual partners. In this way, sexual selection dilutes the darker-pigmented genes and the resulting pool over a great period of time will ultimately mean that the black group situated in America will share the white man's lighter skin tone.
Take, for example, Jews, who are stubbornly considered by an uninformed public to comprise a 'race'. While it is true that the background for many Jews is that of the Mediterranean sub-group, Jews are merely a 'people' or segment of a population having in common a cultural orientation (historical) and/or common religion. There are some Chinese and Blacks who have taken upon themselves to be Jews, adopting the Jewish religion. This does not make them part of a Jewish 'race'.
People often ascribe deplorable social tendencies to particular sub-groupings, which they erroneously term 'races'. It is well to remember that what is permissible, even desirable in some geographic communities is shunned in others. When a people has long become accustomed to viewing certain social practises as normal and quite acceptable, these practises become established as social currency, and when transported into another, alien culture, the practises set these people apart where the resident population have a tendency to disdain little-understood 'racial' attitudes which are in fact, social and/or cultural tendencies.
We are here talking about perceptions. What we perceive is not necessarily the same thing to everyone. Perceptions are informed by experience and background. In other words, if we have been culturally induced to regard taciturnity, public display, acute economy, or extreme gregariousness as undesirable, those exhibiting those traits or habits are distasteful to us, just as the wearers of turbans or saris are conspicuous by their differences and held apart by suspicion. Because in their original environment these habits were seen as natural or fitting, misunderstandings arise engendering a mutual hostility.
Let's have a look at shylocking as adduced to Jews, in another instance of social strictures creating fallacious determinations. For generations Jews were not permitted to own land in Europe, nor to have certain recognized professions. They could not farm, the most common means of livelihood at one point in human history. They were sometimes permitted to become itinerant tradesmen. And they were permitted to 'lend' money; a practise expressly forbidden by the early Christian church to its faithful - which church ironically had itself taken the injunction from Judaic precept.
Jews then, became money lenders, eventually transmuting the practise to banking. But as they were then dealing in a Christian world within an expressly forbidden,church-proscribed practise, they were held to be 'unclean', their livelihood despised and indecent. Hence shylocks, from the immortal Bard's pen, who reflected the temper of his times; hence the term 'jewing' and the Oxford Dictionary definition of Jew as 'money-lender'. An unfortunate misnomer, since the great majority of Jews have always been and will doubtless continue to be, as 'average' material wise, as any society which they inhabit. But all a matter of perceptions, of discrimination informed by ignorance where the apparent is more readily accepted than the actual.
There also exists among sub-groupings physical differences from their common genetic pool which further confuse matters. Where some sub-groupings can readily and genuinely be identified, as where their physical environment has gradually adapted them to their surroundings, i.e., the Pygmy of the African Congo, the Inuit of the far North, where one group has been reduced in size and colour and the second has acquired the genetic code for an 'abnormal' subcutaneous fat layer - so that they may better live in sound ecology with their environments - they are a distinctly characteristic group.
However, most 'racial' identifications are misconceived generalizations. We may think of those inhabiting the Indian continent as forming a distinctive race, yet they do not, for many confused sub-groupings have gone into the whole, and there is, moreover, an artificial sub-structure there of a social nature which will not permit interbreeding between groupings, thus causing an unnatural situation where the caste system has birthed further sub-groupings, with attendant fairly stable gene pools. The uninformed and ignorant outsider claims that 'all Indians look alike'; ergo they must be a single 'race'.
Jews are commonly perceived to be of the Mediterranean type, and some are. Yet so are the Greeks, the Italians, the Portuguese, the Spanish and certainly the Arab populations - and some of all these groups have often been mistaken for Jews. Yet among Jews there is a significantly smaller proportion of physical Mediterranean types than among, for example, Arabs.
In the same token we often conceive of Italians as being dark-skinned and hirsute, yet large groups of Italians are fair-haired and light-skinned and the same can be said for the Spanish - and among the fair-haired segment, there arises a social condition creating a hierarchy among that group. So we have the 'aristocrats' and the 'peasants'. Perceptual differences and their attribution to race have been encouraged for the express purpose of creating a hierarchy, a class of rulers and the ruled within a society, thus supporting the concept of racism.
Ethnic groups share a geographic boundary, often. They share a common culture within the geographic boundary. And most often they share a common religion. Yet the Italians, the Spanish, the French, the Greeks do not each comprise a race, but a nation. And within each nation are groups of people who do not share the same religion, nor the same dialect, nor exactly the same culture.
The human condition is constantly changing, albeit gradually and perhaps some day enough intermarriage within groups will occur to blend and weaken physical differences. Even so, cultural and geographic boundaries may remain. Yet even so, there is but one species.
The fondly-held belief of racists in 'racial' purity is a risible canard; the stronghold of culturally- and intellectually-insecure antediluvians, the substance of whose contention is as ephemeral as gossamer (without sharing any of that substance's beauty). For its purpose is to degrade other human beings.
Intelligence quotient is often used as a tool by which 'race' can be proven to point an individual toward highly-paid skilled employment or underpaid under-skilled employment. I.Q. tests are given across the board, to those from privileged and under-privileged social backgrounds alike. This, despite that we now know pre-natal as well as post-natal deprivation, both nutritional and environmental, leads to atrophying of the brain's potential.
In other words, an intelligence test specifically designed to measure the cerebral capacity of a middle-class group with background leading to middle-class aspirations is given to nutritionally-, emotionally- and socially-deprived groups of people. A tendentious practise; weighting the scale heavily in favour of racist theory of a sub-species of human.
Psychological traits and various endowments of physical and intellectual capacities exist within all groups of people whatever the ethnic background. There is no one group of people in any manner naturally superior to another, trait-wise, intellectually, or with regard to physical attributes.
Nomenclature and semantics become very important when misconceptions based on ignorance, breeding fear and prejudice, often lead the way to savage acts, one man against another. An example of how words, or loose and misunderstood terms can be so erroneous, is the example of the world 'savage'. Anthropologists commonly used that word to refer to primitive peoples. Yet now, the word 'savage' is no longer current; instead the words 'primitive' or 'illiterate' have replaced the 'savage'.
It can be readily understood why, when we recall that Alfred Wallace, an anthropologist-coeval of Charles Darwin (engaged in like studies of natural selection), in the course of his investigations into the source of man shot a black woman who had been sitting in a tree holding an infant (in Malaysia); thinking nothing much more of the incident than that he had mistakenly killed a 'savage' for an ape. The savage, apparently, then being thought nothing more than a more direct link to Homo Sapiens. She was a human being and he, the scientist, reflecting the unfortunate zeitgeist of the times, the true savage.
So let us understand that one cannot denote a group of people as a 'race'. The word itself with all its derogatory connotations has caused untold misery to millions of human beings. We divide 'races' into inferior and superior. We perceive some 'races' as being truly human, and others as merely sub-human. Subtly we do this. So we hardly notice it, but we do. We ascribe to certain 'races' distasteful practises and characteristics. The truth is that all human beings share like or at least comparable aspirations; to fulfill themselves as human beings in all dignity.
The means by which they fulfill their aspirations may differ, but the needs are the same.
We desperately need to understand that our biases regarding race are ill-founded. If some specific characteristics are found to be unappealing, it is well to remember that some which we ourselves share may be unappealing to other segments of a population; more commonly termed 'ethnic' groupings, and not 'races'. Yet, we must learn to accommodate ourselves to each other, to co-operate, to shift over and give some room. After all, this is not a very large planet, this mother Earth, and we are but one family; the human race.
As man advances in civilization, and small tribes are united into larger communities, the simplest reason would tell each individual that he ought to extend his social instincts and sympathies to all the members of the same nation, though personally unknown to him. This point being once reached, there is only an artificial barrier to prevent his sympathies extending to the men of all nations and races. - Charles Darwin, "The Descent of Man", 1874.
c. 1980 Rita Rosenfeld
published in Canadian Jewish Outlook, Vol.18, No.2
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