Written by Geoffrey Chia
Philosophical Musings #3
Notwithstanding off-the-cuff dumb racist comments made ages ago by James Watson, co-discoverer of DNA (he was NOT a population geneticist), virtually all biologists and geneticists today agree that “race” is a social construct and has no meaningful biological basis.1
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There is no doubt that the deceitful ideology of biological race has it roots in social power dynamics: namely the political, economic, military and cultural control and domination of one group over another or over others. Racists are obsessed with their divinely (and/or genetically) ordained “right” to dominate others, a situation they always portray as the “natural order of things”. The best way for the oppressor to control the oppressed (who might otherwise revolt against the grave injustices imposed on them) is to convince the oppressed that this state of affairs is indeed the “natural order of things”. Simply put, racism facilitates mental enslavement and captivity. Shades of the Stockholm syndrome, uncle Tom!
To summarise: promotion of the idea of biological race by the oppressors represents their mechanism of control over the oppressed. Acceptance of the idea of biological race by the oppressed represents the shackles of mental enslavement imposed on them by the oppressors. I could say the same thing about organised religion, priests and their flock: promotion of divinely ordained religion by the priests represents their mechanism of control over the flock. Acceptance of divinely ordained religion by the flock represents the shackles of mental enslavement imposed on them by the priests.
I would argue that the Hindu caste system (an organised religion involving priests and their flock) was a precursor of racism. Each caste was supposedly distinct, with separate and different skills, cognitive abilities and “natural” tendencies (eg honourable demeanour of the Brahmin vs contemptible fecklessness of the Dalit etc). However western racists lump all Indian castes into one single racial category of “South Asians”, not caring whether one is Brahmin or Dalit or whatever.
To the Nazis, a blonde Jew belonged to a separate and inferior racial category compared with a brunette “Aryan” (perhaps a short, dark Austrian with a moustache and unshakeable sense of Destiny?). According to them, being Jewish or Aryan was entirely racial and biological and had nothing to do with socially and culturally determined differences. Their eugenicists claimed there were innate and irreconcilable genetic2 differences between the groups and used pseudoscientific racism to justify their “final solution”. In fact, they had zero evidence for any of their claims, indeed our current scientific knowledge proves the exact opposite.
Did you know that the Iranians have always considered themselves Aryan and the name of their country, Iran, means “land of the Aryans”? Nowadays western racists tend to lump Iranians in the same category as Arabs. After all, Iranians look the same as Arabs, don’t they? And all of them swarthy Ay-rabs, every last damned one of them, even a 3 year old toddler, are terrorists who deserve to be bombed, right? So good-ole-boy mini-Bush (AKA George W Shrub) was absolutely right to invade Iraq for revenge against 9/11 (a Saudi Salafist plot) and it is now time to bomb the shit (or “Shi’ite”) out of Iran! And Israel has the divine right (being the Chosen People of God) to kill any Palestinians with impunity because every single one of them goddamned Ay-rabs are terrorists!
To me, such thinking is clearly racist, even though ethnographers state that Jews and Arabs belong to the same ethnic group of “semitic peoples”. One thing is clear: racial boundaries are capriciously fluid and vary enormously from day to day, depending on the political agenda du jour of the pundits behind the propaganda.
The USA itself has a shameful history of treating the Irish as an inferior “race” compared with Anglos and it was not uncommon in those bad old days to see shop signs stating “dogs and Irish not welcome”. That was obviously sickening social discrimination, nothing like the more “scientific” racial categories adopted today, right?
So what are the current so-called racial categories? These vary considerably according to what level of arbitrariness and “granularity” is chosen, eg perhaps Caucasian, (North) East Asian, South Asian and African. There is plenty of confusion here. What race are the Polynesians? What race are the Native Americans? Do the Canadian Inuit belong to the Native American category or to the same category as the Siberian Inuit (or Yupik), who have similar appearance and culture to the Canadian Inuit? Do both groups of Inuit actually belong to the same racial category as North East Asians? After all, didn’t the Siberian Inuit people “originate”* from the north east corner of the Asian continent and don’t they look sorta similar to North East Asians?
Furthermore, don’t Australian Aboriginals look sorta similar to Africans, with “black skin, flat, broad noses and frizzy hair”? Surely both groups therefore belong in the same racial category? DNA studies have in fact shown that there is much greater genetic similarity between Australian Aboriginals and Scandinavians, than there is between Australian Aboriginals and Africans. This crucial fact may be surprising to you and requires clarification.
How far back might it be possible to trace the genome of Africans? Probably 200,000 years, the estimated age of homo sapiens itself. We know there was only one major ancient migration of humans out of Africa about 72,000 years ago. Those migrants included the future Australian aboriginals and Eurasians, and those two groups in turn genetically diverged about 58,000 years ago.3
Genetic diversity is directly related to how ancient a particular geographic population is. It is directly related to the passage of time. By far the widest genetic diversity has been found between Africans at different locations on that single continent. Diversity between Africans is far wider than the genetic diversity between, say, Australian aboriginals and Scandinavians. These scientific findings have been demonstrated repeatedly in many population genetic studies 4.5 and provide robust proof for the “out of Africa” theory.
Accordingly, using hard logic and robust scientific evidence, we can argue that Australian Aboriginals should be placed in the same “racial” category as Scandinavians, even though they have different skin colours. Furthermore, various groups of Africans should be placed in separate “racial” categories from each other because of the large genetic differences between them, even though they have the same skin colour.
Do the findings above however suggest that Africans belong in a separate category to non-Africans? Actually, no. Here is study which showed there were larger genetic differences between Africans than between Africans and Eurasians: 6 (reflecting the very wide genetic variability found on the African continent but also great overlap of common genes between Africans and Eurasians).
If you are confused by all this, it is because it is impossible to use objective findings of genetic diversity or similarity to cobble together any meaningful biological racial categories. So don’t even try.
*Going back to the Siberian Inuit: they did not actually “originate” from north east Asia. Nobody did. Their original origination (if there is such a term) was Africa. Each and every homo sapiens, every single last one of us, originated from Africa. We evolved there. That is a proven indisputable scientific fact etched in the fossil record and in our genes.7 Because of our tropical origin, we can be certain that our common ancestors all had black skin.8 Every last one of us, without exception, even the palest Scandinavians, all had black ancestors.
Bottom line: we are ALL Africans.
Let’s talk about one biological categorisation which has an absolutely clear cut genetic and heritable basis: blood groups. If ever there was a fundamental, scientific way to categorise sharply distinct groups of human beings, this is it. So I ask you this: would you rather receive an incompatible blood transfusion from a member of your “own” race, or would you rather receive a compatible blood transfusion from a member of a “different” race? If you were stupid and racist enough to choose the former, you would die and thereby actually help to improve the human gene pool. Good riddance to bad rubbish. Another candidate for the Darwin Awards. On the other hand, choosing the latter could very well save your life (depending on how ill you already were).
I say again: the idea of biological race is bullshit.
Despite all that, it is unfortunate that the social meme of “race” continues to persist. It is a toxic brain virus that may actually be impossible to eradicate and we should ask why.
Human beings are tribal. Our real life social circles tend to be less than the Dunbar number of 150, a consequence of our limited brain capacity and our history of living in small tribes, stretching back 200,000+ years prior to the development of agriculture and large urban centres. We are fine tuned to pick up subtle differences in physical appearance that suggest someone else might be a member of a different tribe and perhaps a potential threat. Larger physical differences might possibly trigger louder alarm bells. What proportion of this tendency is innate? We cannot know for sure, however it is certain that social programming plays a huge role. Therefore it is eminently feasible to socially re-programme ourselves to adopt a better, more functional (as opposed to dysfunctional) approach. This is important because the world has changed a great deal since there were geographically scattered small tribes everywhere. All children today must learn how to look beyond superficial appearances and (to paraphrase MLK) to judge people by the content of their character, not by the colour of their skin. Unfortunately our main obstacle is laziness: snap judgements based on appearance are quick and easy, but getting to know someone takes time and effort.
It is obvious to the casual observer that different so-called “races” look, on average, physically different from each another. Studies have shown however that those differences in appearance, which may sometimes appear marked, have been shaped by a relatively trivial number of genes which rapidly responded (over a few thousand years) to the different environments that each geographic group found itself in 9,10. When examining the vastly greater number of our other genes, we find no fundamental deep seated irreconcilable genetic differences between the so-called races. If your blood type is “AB positive”, you have exactly the same blood antigens as someone from any other “race” who is also “AB positive”. There are no consistent clear cut genetic boundaries, based on single genes or groups of genes, that we can use to meaningfully define different races. Merely fuzzy statistical clusters of varying gene frequencies with huge overlap between geographic groups.
It is true that certain genes eg for the sickle cell trait, may be found almost exclusively in just one group of people eg those with African ancestry, however that cannot be used as a “racial” marker because the vast majority of Africans do not have the sickle cell trait. There are no biological impediments whatsoever to reproduction between so-called “races” (arguably, their offspring may actually be more robust due to a more diverse and healthy mix of genes). This is yet more proof that there are in fact NO biological races or subspecies of humans. We are all one and the same race. There has been no sub-speciation of homo sapiens. We did not emerge from Africa long enough ago, we have not been geographically isolated from one another for long enough, for us to evolve into different sub-species or races.11
In conclusion, the idea of different and separate biological human races is simply wrong. It has absolutely no basis in fact whatsoever. It is total bullshit. It is in fact a toxic meme, a pathogenic and persistent brain virus which unfortunately may never be completely eradicated. However just because we cannot eradicate it does not mean we cannot contain it, just as we strive to contain other types of pathogenic viruses. It may be possible to cure the minds of a tiny minority of racists by logical persuasion. Unfortunately the vast majority of racists may well be incurable and such people need to be contained. Failure to contain such an infection could lead to the breakdown of societies, even war between nations. We need to fight against racism, our very survival may depend on it.
This brings us to the next point: that prevention is better than cure. As the song goes,
We must instead teach our children to love. Our best strategy may be the educational immunisation of children’s minds against the toxic brain virus of racism. I hope this article may represent one form of immunisation.
The final comment here belongs to Muhammad Ali. Was he the greatest boxer of all time? Perhaps, I am no expert, but there were many other aspects about him that made him “the greatest”. He changed his name from Cassius Clay, an appellation imposed upon him at birth. Cassius Clay was originally the name of a slave master (who later relented) who had “owned” some of Ali’s previous family members. When Ali resisted being drafted to fight in the Vietnam War (which the Vietnamese called the “American War”), he did so on moral grounds. He refused to kill other people overseas who had never posed any threat to him whatsoever. His famous quote?
“No Vietcong ever called me nigger”
Footnotes
1. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/race-is-a-social-construct-scientists-argue/
2. Even before the discovery of DNA, scientists subscribed to the concept of genes which were the as-yet undefined biological codes by which traits were transmitted. Mendel proved that genes existed, even though he did not know what they were.
4. Genetic similarities within and between human populations: Witherspoon et al 2007
5. Why race is not a thing: Simon Worrall 2017.
6. Larger genetic differences within Africans than between Africans and Eurasians: Yu et al 2002.
7. https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2019-10-29/human-birthplace-southern-afric/11639186
8. In the tropics, where sunlight is intense, dark skin protects against melanoma and sunburn. At high latitudes, where sunlight is faint, melanoma protection is less relevant and paler skin is required to absorb enough light to produce sufficient vitamin D. There appears to be a continuous gradation of skin colour according to latitude. Northern Europeans developed the palest skin because the warm Gulf Stream enabled them to live comfortably and grow enough crops to support substantial populations at the highest latitudes. Similar high latitudes in Siberia or Alaska were too bitterly cold and too perpetually icebound to support substantial populations. But why are the Inuit not as fair as the Scandinavians? My speculation is that in permanently ice and snowbound landscapes, reflected sunlight from the ice/snow, especially in summer, rendered total light intensity large enough to favour skin somewhat darker than that of Scandinavians (evidence: people need to wear sunscreen when they go skiing)
9. How science and genetics are reshaping the race debate of the 21st century: Vivian Chou 2017. As an aside, this article cites a case study of genomic comparison between “caucasian” scientists Craig Venter and James Watson and “east asian” scientist Kim Seong-Jin. The result showed there was greater genetic similarity between Kim and Venter and between Kim and Watson, than there was between Venter and Watson. Yet another tiny example which makes a complete mockery of the idea of race.
10. https://www.nytimes.com/2000/08/22/science/do-races-differ-not-really-genes-show.html
11. Even if true human subspeciation had occurred, there would be no basis for unfair discrimination between or against “subspecies”, as many utilitarian ethicists have argued and I agree. But that is a whole other lengthy discussion
Caption photo credit: Image by Capri23auto from Pixabay
Articles in this series to date:
17 Jun 2021 – Why The Idea Of Biological Race Is A Toxic Brain Virus
11 Jun 2021 – Letter To A Young Philosopher: What Can And Should Philosophers Question? Is The Apparent Relation Between IQ And Race A Valid Question?
02 Jun 2021 – Letter To A Young Philosopher: Should Philosophers Question Everything? What Is Truth?
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