Building a New Biocultural Synthesis: Political-Economic Perspectives on Human Biology

15. Race, Racism, and Anthropology

Chapter 15 Race, Racism, and Anthropology George 1. Armelagos and Alan H. Goodman Race, a core concept in anthropology since its inception, has managed to resist any agreed-upon and repeatable definition (Brace 1982a; Molnar 1975). Rather, this most chameleon-like concept manages to blend into changing social and intellectual environments. With remarkable resilience, race, which originated as a typological and nonevolutionary folk taxonomy , became a scientifically recognized unit of evolutionary change. Yet, questions about race remain. Despite efforts to fit race into evolutionary thinking, is race still no more than a pre-Darwinian typological concept? Whatever we think of race, is it an effective pedagogic tool for teaching human variation? Is it the best unit of analysis for sampling and explaining variation in human populations? Does the scientific use of race reinforce its pseudoscientific misuse, fostering racism? What alternatives exist for describing and analyzing human variation? These are some of the questions we wish to explore in the following chapter. We first examine the history of the race concept, and challenges that have emerged, both political and scientific, against the continuity of this chameleon-like concept. This simple task raises fundamental questions about the biological utility of race and the social, political, and economic factors that influence conceptions of human difference and similarity . We next outline how the concept of race is currently used in teaching and research. Race, we conclude, has failed to work as a core anthropological concept; it fails to describe and explain variation. What race does do, and does well, is type individuals, and this typing supports the existing structures of power. The last goal is to consider the history of abandoning the race concept, and, as a consequence, the avoidance of concern for the biological and social cost of racism. This chapter is part of a book on political-economic perspectives in biological anthropology because the history of race so clearly and cen359 360 Building a New Biocultural Synthesis trally illustrates the role of sociopolitical forces in the origin, adoption, and persistence of ideas. We suggest that a new biocultural anthropology should include sophisticated understanding of the history of concepts. Furthermore, a new area of biocultural collaboration involves the determination of the social and biological costs of racism. Race: A Brief History of the Idea Two basic assumptions limited how human variation was viewed before Darwinism. The biological world was assumed to be the result of special creation, and all life was static and immutable. Since race was divinely ordained, human variability was easily explained. Furthermore, races, as with all animate and inanimate objects, were ranked. Since the time of Aristotle, the scala naturae was a generally accepted concept in which all natural objects were arranged in an upward progression, and the scala naturae became temporalized in the concept of the "Great Chain of Being" (Lovejoy 1936). The distinctness ofracial types was self-evident, as was the fact that races varied in organic complexity and their position relative to God (Eiseley 1968). Carolus Linnaeus was one ofthe first scientists to develop a systematic classification of all living things. His racial classification reflected contemporary European folk ideas ofthe time, as seen in his inclusion offeral and monstrous races, which were then widely believed to exist, and his combining of social and biological characteristics to classify races. While Linnaeus felt that his classification reflected divine creation, in retrospect it reified and lent scientific weight to popular and politically useful ideas about human differences.1 In 1749 George Buffon began the process of formalizing the race concept and placing it on a more objective basis (Greene 1959, 181). Writing in a period during which the central question was whether the races had a monogenic or polygenic origin (Greene 1959; Harris 1968), Buffon was more concerned with racial origins than mere classification. Polygenists, who included the French intellectual F. M. A. de Voltaire, and American physical anthropologists, such as S. G. Morton, J. C. Nott, and G. R. Gliddon, believed in the multiple origins of races, thus supporting the notion that the races were actually separate species and providing a justification for slavery. Monogenists derived all races from a single origin (Adam and Eve). Not unexpectedly, the inequality of the races was accepted by both groups, but for different reasons. Polygenists explained Race, Racism, and Anthropology 361 racial difference by divine intent, while the monogenists claimed it resulted from degeneration from the original creation. Later in...