The myth of human races

Part Two: Introduction

INTRODUCTION TO PART Two In Part One, I have demonstrated the false assumptions on which race thinking is based. Yet race thinking has inhibited and undermined social cooperation and harmony by assuming that some human groups, as defined by physical appearance, are intellectually inferior to others. Hence, so their reasoning goes, people in these groups have to be treated differently, to be segregated, to receive less education, and to be economically deprived. That race thinking has played a major and unfortunate role in our dealing with social issues is well known today. But what is not so well known is that race thinking also has delayed for years the development of scientific thought. In Part Two I will demonstrate this. Race thinking has been a hindrance to our understanding of two critical biological theories: evolution and natural selection. In spite of the fact that a massive amount of research and data existed to contradict notions that human races exist, biologists and anthropologists clung to the notion for many years. Some unconsciously, and others willfully misinterpreted the theories to fit their preconceived racist ideas. The theory of human races, in fact, led scientists to ask inappropriate questions, which led to intellectual and scientific dead ends that proved to be costly in both time and money. For example, those who supported the biological concept of race assumed that, within particular species, distinct populations existed that could be distinguished from one another by their possession of certain distinctive hereditary traits. Based on this assumption, scientists assumed they could classify people based on combinations of these traits. But as we have seen, they were unsuccessful. The absence of success should have led them to suspect the theory of race and assumption that racial traits exist. However , they persisted in their belief, all the time asking questions about racial traits as if they were real, and as if they existed naturally in groups. For instance, does a so-called racial trait give an advantage to those who possess it in the environment in which they live? In biological terms, does a racial trait have an adaptive value? Such a question was logical, since these scientists assumed that each race was adapted to the climatic conditions under which it lived: blacks in the tropics, whites in western Europe, Asians in cold parts of the world. However, the adaptiveness of skin color, the trait upon which most 61 62 Alain Corcos racial classification has been based, has been overemphasized. Other racial traits, such as eye color, hair color, size of skull, form of hair, or shape of eyes, have never been shown to be advantageous for the individuals who possess them. In hct, most suggestions of this nature have been purely speculative. When presented systematically, these suggestions often contradict one another. The assumption that human races exist led scientists to ask yet another inappropriate question, namely, when were human races formed? For many years the question has been disputed by anthropologists. Some believe races existed in the past before the emergence of modern human beings. Early in the evolution of that argument, some of its proponents even suggested that each of the "human races" descended from a different, distinct species of ape. Recently, others have suggested that each "race" evolved independently of the others, each from a separate strain of early man, Homo erectus. According to this hypothesis , the "yellow race" evolved from the Homo erectus of Asia, the "black" race from the Homo erectus of Africa, and the "white" race evolved from the Homo erectus of Europe. An opposing school of thought accepts the idea that Homo erectus is our common ancestor, but believes that only one population of Homo erectus evolved into Homo sapiens. It was later that the branching out and forming of distinct races occurred, according to this theory. The assumption that human races exist has played a trick on geneticists . Whereas they developed a specialized branch of scientific inquiry , population genetics, which has been a powerful force in explaining the process of race formation in plants and animals, they were not able to see that their own science led to the denial of the existence of human races. Simply stated, the conditions necessary for races to develop were not present and did not apply to human beings. The assumption that human races exist remains a hindrance to the ways in which scientists design experiments and interpret data. Having made the assumption that there are human races-more for political, economic, and social...