Letters to and from the Editor

LETTERS TO AND FROM THE EDITOR Dear Sm: Num. i: What is your race? Num. 2: Black. Num. 1: That is only a color. Num. 1: And what is your race? Num. 3: White. Num. 1: That is only the absence ofcolor. [from "Notas y Apuntes" ofAndrée Burg, unpublished] The critique ofProfessor D.J. Ingle [Perspect. Biol. Med., 8:403, 1965] is very much to the point. Infact, thepurpose ofthe 1964 UNESCOmeetingwaspreciselyto draw up proposals to be openly submitted to the criticism and the consideredjudgment ofothers in order to arrive at a more general extra-biological statement in 1966 which would still be biologically accurate. To my knowledge, only three well-known scholars,J. Huxley, H. V. Vallois, and D. J. Ingle, have so far put forward their pondered criticism. Being one ofthose who worked on the 1964 UNESCO Proposal, I find that some of Ingle's concrete comments are not quite in agreement with what I think. I feel that the long quotation from Reverend Theodore M. Hesburgh—while it synthesizes in a more literarystyle whatIngle develops, pointbypoint, on biological grounds—is, nevertheless, rather inappropriate. Without implying that there is any importance attached to the proportions, I think it isworthpointing out thatHesburghis quoted at onlytwo lines' length inrespectto racism and in twenty lines concerning equalitarianism. To put it in Orwell's "equalitarian" words, "All are equal but some are more equal than others" in this wasteful, fruitless, and byzantine discussion ofracism versus equalitarianism. So I do not wish to ever enter into that sort ofdiscussion again. In other animal classes, including the mammals, the "aristocracy ofexcellence" could be a fairly clear concept based on successful survival and reproduction. But culture has put us outsidetheecologicalnicheinwhichwewereplacedbynature, andso ''excellence'' in our case has much wider implications. For many years man has been trying to understand his biological evolution apart from his behavioral and cultural evolution. Work in both fieldshas beenmarked by obsoleteness. Oncethiswasrealized, tremendous strides have been made—in the last ten or so years (Dobzhansky, Simpson, Washburn). Culture has set different patterns of excellence at diffèrent times (Romans, Greeks, Spartans)—which consideration is only to acknowledge the historical guidance recommended by Hesburgh. Thus, for man, without resort to "the meek shall inherit the earth"—which may ultimately be the only truth—patterns of humility, compliance, quietness, notverypublicized observation (Mendel),non-writtenthought (Socrates), and thousands ofothers, may be oflittleculturalexcellencebut ofhighbiologicalsignificance, or vice versa, according to the place and time. Real excellence—ifthis were possible to measure—should be evaluated only through the interplay ofboth culture and biology in our species. 187 Haidane [?] has forcefully explained the advantages that accrue to the betterment ofa primitive human society by counting amongst its members shortsighted, blind, or lame individuals. Ifrace is an evolutionary episode [2], its biological aspects cannot be explained in man in isolation from its cultural aspects. Man should never be biologically measured by the patterns that make a chicken excel because it lays more or better eggs. In this sense, the 1964 UNESCO Proposal, although intended to be a biological statement , was sound and did not grossly err, while Hesburgh's quotation stresses only, erring, one side ofa process which for humans has clearly at least two interplaying ones. references 1.J. B. S. Haldane. Acta Genetica, 6:321, 1956-57. 2.F. Hülse. Amer. Anthrop., 64:929, 1962. Santiago Genovés Instituto de Investigaciones Históricas Sección de Antropología Facultad de Ciencias/Planta Baja Ciudad Universitaria, México 20, D.F. Dear Readers: Although I do not seriously disagree with the comments ofProfessor Genovés, they do not answer my basic criticism of the 1964 UNESCO Proposals on the Biological Aspects of Race; i.e., that the statement, "The peoples of the world today appear to possess equal biological potentialities for attaining any civilizational level. Differences in the achievements ofdifferent peoples must be attributed solely to their cultural history" should not be represented as averity. There is a great deal ofevidence, faulty but plausible, that differences in the cultural achievements of some "racial" groups are determined in part by genetic differences. Professor Genovés states that "the purpose of the 1964 UNESCO meeting was precisely to...