Does Race Exist?

My last post prompted a few responses. 2 of those were from ‘national anarchists’ and i marked them as spam because i’ve already made it clear i’m not interested in giving them a voice on my blog. they’ve got their own blogs where they can run on as much as they want. Fact is, while many of the NA’s claim to be anti-racist, the fact that they’re willing to work with white nationalists tells me everything i need to know about just how flimsy their commitment to anti-racism really is. (not nationalists who happen to be white, like say scottish nationalists, but white racists who want to create explicitly and exclusively white “nations” in america, australia, south africa, etc. That’s not an endorsement of scottish nationalists either, I’ve got a completely different set of issues with the SNP, but I’ll save that for another post.) So …. yeah. I’m not down with NA’s and i’m not going to approve their comments or dignify them with further response.

The third response, and the one that prompted this post, was from a right-libertarian who asserts that I am wrong and race does actually exist. He provided a link to an article by Ernst Mayr, a biologist, to support his statement. This is my response to his claim:

Mayr’s article is interesting and raises some good points. In a nutshell, he asserts that while the idea of ‘superior’ and ‘inferior’ races is silly, there is enough genetic differentiation between different groups that it’d be silly to refuse to recognize it and pretend ‘races’ don’t exist. His definition of race is “an aggregate of phenotypically similar populations of a species inhabiting a geographic subdivision of the range of that species and differing taxonomically from other populations of that species.” And if that was the definition that’s been historically used and if he applied it consistently I wouldn’t have a problem with it. Problem is, it’s not and he doesn’t.

According to the framework of logic he lays out, it’s pretty much indisputable that eskimos, for instance, are phenotypically distinct from people’s who’s ancestors have adapted to live on the plains of kenya (or the plains of central europe, for that matter) by selecting for long legs and running ability.

That’s all fine and dandy, but it doesn’t bring any validity at all to the concept of ‘race’ as it’s been understood and implemented in the western europe and its colonies for the last three centuries. A tribesman from the kenyan plains may well be distinct from an eskimo, but he is also just as distinct from a bushman or a person from any of africa’s hundreds of other ecological niches, each of which has had its own effect on the people who’ve adapted – culturally and physically – to live in them. In fact, our hypothetical kenyan has more in common (physically) with a hypothetical german or mongolian – tall, skinny, muscular but light build, adapted to be able to run long distances and chase down the game animals that are the staple of the diet in the plains of all three regions – then any of them do with the majority of other europeans, africans, or east asians. In other words, races – as they’ve been understood for most of the last several centuries – DO NOT EXIST.

So if people want to adopt Mayr’s definition of ‘race’, go ahead. But recognize it is a drastic departure from the way race has been discussed for the entire history of ‘race’ as a social construct, and that if you do adopt his arguments you’ve got to talk about literally thousands of bio-regionally specific and distinct ‘races’, and abandon the default black, white, native american, east asian, south asian, native australian, “races” that have been traditionally talked about and that correspond to continent of origin – not to bioregional niche. Personally, I think it’d make a lot more sense to use a different term entirely. ‘Phenotypical type’ has a nice clinical scientific sound to it and is a much more accurate term to describe what he’s talking about anyway.

Further, you’ve got to recognize that in the modern world it will be completely impossible to tell what phenotypical type / “race” anyone belongs too since humans have moved around and moved each other around (often involuntarily) so much in the last few centuries that virtually no one outside of the members of a few small tribal groups knows enough about their personal genetic history to accurately place themselves in a bioregion of ultimate origin. Which makes race useless as a means of social identification.  This is what people who say that race does not exist mean. No one would be silly enough to pretend that there isn’t dramatic variation among human populations. But that variation corresponds to bioregion of origin, not to skin color. Skin color is only one relatively insignificant variable out of a whole long list of variables that the human aniumal is capable of changing over generations to adapt to its local climate.

So, “race” does not exist. human variation does. That’s the same statement that the American Association of Physical Anthopologists made back in ’96 and that has been consistently made since. and – contrary to Mayr’s unwarrented assertion – not just by people who don’t understand biology. (1, 2, 3)

No one but no one is trying to deny that our species has a tremendous amount of genetic diversity. But the fact is that adaptation at the level of the local bioregion does not lend validity to the concept of large monolithic ‘races’ that dominate entire continents. In fact, the opposite is true.   The existence of localized phenotypical types clearly disproves the validity of monolithic ‘races’ as they have been socially constructed and understood since the start of the trans-Atlantic slave trade.  There is no white race. there is no black race. there is definitely no ‘jewish race’ (why is it that out of all europe’s people’s only the jews get split off and put in their own “race” box? could it be because during the middle ages they were the only non-christians around and were ‘other’-ized for their refusal to convert? gee, i wonder?!). there is definitely no ‘asian’ race, and there is no ‘native american’ race. Instead there are hundreds or thousands of phenotypical types in each of these regions. And people from similar climates and with similar economic modes are usually physically more similar to people in other parts of the world who share that climate and economic mode then they are to others who live a bit closer and happen to have the same skin color.

People who take the obvious fact of human genetic and physiological diversity and try to spin it to revive the concept of ‘race’ are attacking a straw man.

ps: None of this should be construed to mean that RaceISM doesn’t exist and doesn’t need to be combated, another strawman that gets thrown at people who point out that race is a social construct. But if you’re going to be anti-racist, and we understand racism as a system of power and prejudice that privileges some people at the expense of others based on their ‘race’; then it’s definitely helpful to keep in mind that the system of categorization being used is patently absurd.

Posted: July 1st, 2008 under culture war, race & racism, science and history.
Comments: 2

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