The Fallacy of Race

A point I hammered home in my book For a Dignity Deserved (as yet unpublished) is the fallacious nature of race. It has been an obsession of European Americans and Europeans for more than two centuries, slipping unnoticed from the works of supposed naturalists into the American lexicon. It is a filthy four-letter sound whose meaning rests not in science but the quagmire of disregard, bigotry, and hatred.

Originally the Romans used the word to describe people of different cultures, such as the Greeks, Gauls, Franks, Egyptians, and Ethiopians. The word did not denote a particular skin color. That came much latter as European, followed by American, polygenists wanted to prove God’s loving approval of the European (white) people. They, therefore, “believed that modern races had emerged either through separate acts of divine fiat or from distinct ancient progenitors,” according to Charles King in his wonderful and easy-to-read book Gods of the Upper Air.

Then Charles Darwin turned the argument of polygenists upside down with Descent of Man.

“He took aim squarely at the concept of race itself,” writes King. “No one could even agree on how many races there were, he wrote, subtly mocking his scholarly rivals: ‘Man has been studied more carefully than any other animal, and yet there is the greatest possible diversity among capable judges whether he should be classed as a single species or race, or as two (Virey), as three (Jacquinot), as four (Kant), five (Blumenbach), six (Buffon), seven (Hunter), eight (Agassiz), eleven (Pickering), fifteen (Bory St. Vincent), 16 (Desmoulins), twenty-two (Morton), sixty (Crawfurd), or as sixty-three, according to Burke.’”

King noted that Darwin concluded: “’Those naturalists…who admit the principle of evolution…will feel no doubt that all the race of man are descended from a single primitive stock.’ Human being came in backward varieties and more advanced ones, Darwin believed, but these were largely a result of environment and habit rather than of innate biological distinctions derived from separate paths of evolutionary development.”

Several years later, Franz Boas single-handedly created American Anthropology at Columbia University (with little support from the university). (Read Gods of the Upper Air or the Wikipedia listing for the genius.) Through a variety of anthropological studies in the early 20^th Century, he disproved what then was called scientific racism for a study commissioned by the U.S. Senate, which then ignored his findings. He also introduced the then controversial notion of cultural relativism. He pointed out the obvious. No culture is higher or lower than another. They merely are different. He argued that too often we judge other cultures based on the priorities of our own, which in and of themselves are subjective preferences.

Polygenist theory died a deserved death, but its shadow cast its darkness over too many European Americans. You may doubt me. You may believe racism is dead. Okay. Then ask any African American man or woman if I’m wrong. If he/she believes you are sincere, you may hear a litany of polygenesis-based behavior.

At the same time, cultural superiority waves like the stars and stripes over Yankee Stadium. Ask Donald Trump which country has the best culture? America, of course! It’s a strong cultural. How does it compare to China, India, France, Italy, Great Britain—all considerably different from American culture and from each other?

American boasts of its wonderful, Constitutionally mandated ideals. Yet it falls short of achieving them. Does that make it a terrible culture? No. But it does make it one of many in the world that serves the needs and wants of people—sometimes well, sometimes not so well. Why? We’re all too human.