A Four Letter Word Called Race
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A Four Letter Word Called Race
| Author(s) | Brace, C. Loring |
|---|---|
| Abstract | Human biological variation is real, and its study is a most interesting subject. However, we can make no sense of it if we start with “racial” categories as entities for comparison. Traits that are of importance for human survival are distributed in clinal fashion according to the distribution of the selective forces that govern their expression. Those selective forces, in turn, are not constrained by human population boundaries and cannot be perceived or understood if such boundaries are assumed as the starting points for analysis. There are traits that are constrained by human population boundaries, and it is these that allow us to recognize the part of the world from which their possessors originally came. Those traits, however, simply constitute ‘family resemblance writ large’ end have no adaptive significance. Population samples will cluster with their nearest neighbors because they share the genetic background for such adaptively unimportant traits. The best way to refer to people who display the configuration characteristic of the clusters of population samples that come from the same region is to use geographical designations. Thus people can be identified as African, or Australian, or European and the like. More precise localization can be achieved by using modifiers such as West African, Eastern European, and Southeast Asian among any others. Data relating to the distribution of Hemoglobin S, skin color and tooth size are presented to show how each responds to the varying intensity of the particular selective force controlling its manifestation. The independence of the clines associated with each one demonstrates the futility of trying to use a concept such as “race” to understand adaptively important human biological characteristics. Finally, the case of intelligence is considered, and it is noted that, while no human population today is living under the circumstances that shaped the common human condition during the Pleistocene, it is still largely true that it takes at least as much intelligence to survive and contribute to the next generation in one part of the world as it does in another. Since the conditions governing the emergence of our extraordinary human brain power were essentially everywhere the same during the long period of time when human intelligence was evolving, it follows that the intellectual capabilities of the various living human populations in the world are now also everywhere the same. Those who continue to advocate the value of investigating “racial” difference in intelligence, then, are evidently driven by a subjective desire to demonstrate that difference is to be expected. At bottom, that expectation is simply a manifestation of racism. |
| IssueNo | |
| Pages | 106-141 |
| Article | Access to Article |
| Source | Race and Other Misadventures: Essays in Honor of Ashley Montagu in His Ninetieth Year |
| VolumeNo | |
| PubDate | 1996 |
| ISBN_ISSN | 1-882-28935-8 |
| Browse Path(s) | Anthropology —-Biological/Physical Anthropology ——–Biology, Eugenics, and Racism |
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