The myth of human races

A Word to the Reader

A WORD TO THE READER You've got to be taught to hate and fear. You've got to be taught from year to year. It's got to be drummed in you dear little ear. You've got to be carefully taught. You've got to be taught before it's too late, Before you are six or seven or eight, To hate all the people your relatives hate. You've got to be carefully taught. Rodgers and Hammerstein South Pacific I am sitting in the living room of our cottage on the edge of Wiggins Lake, near Gladwin, Michigan. I am admiring one of those beautiful sunsets that generally soothe the mind, but in the background I am listening to a radio broadcast informing me that there is a resurgence of Nazism in Germany as skinheads are roaming the city streets and setting fire to houses of the people they hate, and that the German government is failing to nip this new Hitlerism in the bud, as it failed seventy years ago. As night falls, I become completely convinced of the necessity of writing this book which I hope will be a contribution to the fight against racism. I have been fighting racism since, as a teenager, I was under the Nazi boot in Southern France during World War II. However, it is only in the last twenty years that, as a professor of biology at Michigan State University, I have had some influence. I taught a course dealing with the concept of race, stressing what biologists had to say about the subject . From the response of numerous students, I knew that I was reaching them. Many of them told me that, though the course had not changed their minds, for they were not racists before they enrolled in my class, they appreciated the course because it reinforced their beliefs and gave them ammunition with which to fight racism. Since my retirement in 1991, I have thought of rewriting for the public at large the book I had written for my students in 1977. In this endeavor I was encouraged by my friends and colleagues. But after some thinking it became evident that a different work would be necessary, not so much because it would address another audience-after all, the public at large is not that much different from non-science-oriented students-but because during the past 15 years my thinking on that subject had evolved and I had come to the conclusion that there were no human races. The belief that there were created, on a scientific level, xiii xiv A Word to the Reader more confusion than clarity about human diversity. Of course I am not alone in having this view. It is widely shared today by many biologists and anthropologists, as well. l Now it is time for the public at large to abandon the belief in the existence of human races, a belief that has done great harm to human relations. I realize, of course, that writing a book about the myth of human races will do little to change the true nature of racism. Racists will always find a good reason to hate people who do not look like them, who do not share their religious or political views, or who do not speak or dress the way they do. However, I believe that my speaking out is at least one step in the right direction. Racism is based in great part on pseudoscience, half-truths, and untruths , and it is the scientist's task and duty to unmask and counter the irrationalities of racial prejudice with good science and honest interpretation . As a biologist, I am aware that it is difficult to dissociate one's responsibilities as a scientist from his or her duties as a private citizen, as well as from bias. I shall try to the best of my ability to present my arguments factually, the way I have learned about them. I believe that honest science and honest history are among freedom's most important weapons.2 I am also convinced that the only way racism can be transcended is by educating people, especially children who "have to be taught to hate." A Word to the Reader xv Notes for Word to the Reader 1. Alice Littlefield, Leonard Lieberman, and Larry T. Reynolds, "Redefining Race: The Potential Demise of a Concept in Physical Anthropology." Cur...