The myth of human races

Concluding Thoughts

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS "Yesterday's science is today's common sense and tomorrow's nonsense." For the concept of race ... tomorrow is here. Frank B. Livingstonel . Most people believe that human races exist and that their belief has been supported by scientific evidence. Nothing could be further from the truth. In spite of efforts, scientists have failed to demonstrate that humanity can be divided into races, i.e., groups of human beings that can be distinguished biologically. The reason for this failure is that humanity is so highly diverse that whatever trait is used to classify people into groups, there are always members of one group sharing this particular characteristic with members of several groups, rendering the classification system unworkable. The biological reason for this is clear. If homogeneous groups or races, are to occur within any species, populations of that organism must have been sexually separated from one another for many, many generations. In this case, any difference that may have occurred within one group cannot spread to another. This sexual isolation has occurred within plant and animal species, but has never occurred with human beings. Geographical and social barriers have never been great enough to prevent members of one population from breeding with members of another. Therefore, any characteristic which may have arisen in one population at one time will be transferred later to other populations through mating. Scientists have been unable to classify humanity into races using physical characteristics such as skin color, shape of nose or hair, eye color, brain size, etc. They also have been unable to use characteristics such as blood type or other genetic markers. Yet, many continue to believe in the existence of races, looking again and again for methods that would help them to find the elusive identifiers of "race." Why have scientists not abandoned the concept of race? Because most are captive of the same social and world view as nonscientists. For centuries , race has been an integral part of this outlook. It has been held that human beings are divided biologically into discrete and exclusive groups and that these groups are, by nature, unequal and that they can be ranked according to a superiority-inferiority scale. One 201 202 Alain Corcos consequence of this view has been the justification for the enslavement of those who are seen as physically different and therefore considered to be inferior. There is no doubt that the economic foundation of the modern world has been based on the preservation of these so-called racial distinctions. Hence, scientists raised in such a social environment have been led to search for biological bases for racial distinctions rather than to inquire as to whether or not races existed. And although the belief in the existence of biological human races long remained unchallenged, about twenty-five years ago, a few bold anthropologists confronted the race dogma. The result is that today most anthropologists no longer think of human diversity in terms of race. Unfortunately, they failed to communicate their findings, that races were, and are, figments of our imagination, to the public at large. That is why so many of us still firmly believe that human beings are naturally divided into biologically distinct groups and why we treat each group as if it were a different species, rather than part of the same speCles. Though we are all human beings, we are biologically unique. We have thousands and thousands of genes in each of our cells. Due to the processes of mutation, each of these genes can have different forms. The number of possible combinations of these different forms is infinite . Hence, the chances for an individual having the same combination of gene-forms as another individual are nil. This is true even for children of the same parents. This diversity is insured by the natural phenomenon of meiosis. Meiosis is generally unknown to most people, and its importance and significance are generally minimized in biological science courses taken by college students. Another reason why each of us is different from everyone else is that we are the product not only of a unique set of genes, but also of a unique environment in which we grow and develop. The interaction of a unique set of genes and a unique environment assures our singleness, physical as well as mental. The fact that each of us is unique explains why biologists have discovered that diversity within a group is always far greater than diversity among groups, whatever the criterion used...