January 23, 2022

You have probably heard it said that race is genetic, or biological, or physical. Most Americans assume that there is an u

2-3 pages long (not double space)

due on Jan 24, please take a look at the readings before you write the research.

RESEARCH: Submit two research write-ups after reading the first 3 weeks’ readings, 2-3 pages in length. In these regular writing assignments, please analyze different aspects of an organization of their choosing in order to develop an anthropological account of that organization over the course of the class.

READING (YOU MAY WANT TO USE): ● "Culture" Readings • Clifford Geertz, “The Impact of Culture on the

Concept of Man” ● Horace Miner “Body Ritual Among the Nacirema” ● "Classifying People" Readings ● American Anthropological Association, “Race Does Not Equal Biological

Variation” ● Isabell Wilkerson. NYT Magazine. "America's Enduring Caste System" ● James Spradley & Mark Philips "Culture Shock: A Quantitative Analysis

[DEEP DIVE READING] ● Claudia Rankine, NYT Magazine, “I wanted to know what White people

thought about their Privilege. So I asked.”

Introduction Race ≠ Human Biological Variation

Isn’t Race Biologically Obvious?

You have probably heard it said that race is genetic, or biological, or physical. Most Americans assume that there is an unassailably tangible reality to race and that race has a clear inherent basis. Race is in our genes. Race seems to be obvious: certain and scientific. Race is universal. Race is a truth. Without thinking much, you have probably taken the fact that race is biologically real and a scientific universal to be unquestionably true. A fact! Like the air we breathe, race is just there.

But the facts are different from what our eyes tell us. Simply put, people are different. We see this differ-

ence, first with our eyes and later on by measuring and by microscopes.

However, this does not mean that races are real. Human variation is real. Race is an explanation for that variation. We have better explanations. Evolution is a much more dynamic and fitting explanation. Our culture still retains the idea that race explains variation as a remnant from a time, not so long ago, when we thought that what was today, was always. The world did not change. But it evolves and that evolutionary process explains the variations and similarities among us. Race, on the other hand, does not.

In part 2 we explore human variation, patterns of differences and similarities from one person to another and one group to another. We describe the patterns we observe over space and time as well as other ways

to look at variation. Our question is, How did the structure of human variation, the patterns we see, come to be? In some cases, specifically for skin color and sickle cell, we use scientific detective work to make a case for how specifics of evolution and history lead to these well-known variations. We then explore why race is a faulty and even harmful explanation.

You might marvel at the many, many physical differences, or what biologists call outward pheno- typic differences, among us. People come in different sizes and shapes. Skin colors are different. So too are eye colors. Hair varies in color and texture. Our eyes see lots and lots of difference. Below these visible dif- ferences are even more variations from the size, shape, and function of internal organs to single changes in the chemical structures of molecules such as proteins and DNA. Vive la différence!

But these differences are not RACE. Some of you might remember a widely used American

Express Commercial featuring Wilt Chamberlain, the retired basketball player, and the retired jockey, Willie Shoemaker. They are similarly attired in white formal wear against a blue sky. Among their many differences are skin color and height: Willie is rather short and light skinned Wilt is rather tall and darker skinned. Figure 7.1 also foregrounds two famous personalities from the world of basketball. Jeff Van Gundy, a coach, is in the suit and Yao Ming, the basketball player is in the red and white uniform.

Goodman, Alan H., et al. Race : Are We So Different?, John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/upenn-ebooks/detail.action?docID=818189. Created from upenn-ebooks on 2018-12-07 13:54:18.

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Take a moment to look at them and think about all the ways they are the same and all the ways they are different. John Barlow Reid, a geologist and former professor at Hampshire College, calls this exercise “page 1.” On page one, students try to describe what they see as best they can without yet theoriz- ing the explanation for the facts that they are describing. It’s often not easy to “see” without try- ing to “explain.”

There are many similarities such as in attire, num- ber of arms and legs, and stuff like that that we take for granted. The most obvious difference is probably size, and particularly stature. Jeff is short and Yao is very, very tall: over seven feet tall. Jeff and Yao also differ in hair texture and hair and skin color. These latter dif- ferences are, in the American system of racial classifi- cation, signs of race. As we previously noted, these biological signs have been imbued with deeper mean- ing because they are looped into a cycle of racial thinking, a cycle that is flawed. Jeff and Yao are classi- fied as different races in the United States because of these differences.

But race does not explain all the marvelous differ- ences between them. Race certainly would not seem to explain why one is good at coaching and the other is good at playing basketball. Size explains some of that but not all. Those so-called racial traits, like skin color and hair texture, are also just parts of the

wonderful spectrum of human variation. How they came about – through marvelous stories of evolution and history – have nothing to do with the human invention of racial types. In the following chapters we tell the story of two of these traits, skin color and sickle cell, which are not indicators of race, but rather, marvels of evolution.

What do we mean – and not mean – by that short declarative sentence that race does not explain human variation? In this section we will work through the following propositions:

● The idea of race is real. Like all ideas, it is “real” in the sense that it influences thoughts and actions. We do not see everything without beginning to classify and otherwise make sense. Race was a cat- egory that once made sense. Ideas such as “democ- racy” and “superiority” are powerful, and race is among the most powerful of ideas.

● Humans vary biologically, as our eyes and our scientific instruments make clear. Variation is also real. We will explore this variation at the visible (phenotypic) level and also at the genetic level, with surprising results.

● Human variation is real, BUT the idea of race, as a way to describe and studying biological variation, is factually and theoretically inaccu- rate and outmoded. As the title of this section declares, Race ≠ human biological variation. The main point of this section is to demonstrate this “reality.”

● Furthermore, we would be better off both scien- tifically and socially if were we to stop using race as a proxy for human biological variation and used it solely as a socio-cultural designation. Separating the reality of human variation from the idea of race is both scientifically correct and a matter of social justice.

In other words, race and human biological variation are each real – but in different ways. One cannot be reduced into another. The biological and the social have been linked. However, our studies show us that the way they are linked, primarily that the biological explains the social, is wrong. As we will later see, the social idea of race has biological costs in terms of health. However, for now we might argue

Figure 7.1 Jeff Van Gundy and Yao Ming. Courtesy of Sports Illustrated.

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that human biological variation and social ideas of race are better off with a complete divorce.

In part 1 of this book we told the story of how the idea of race was invented and became real (the first of the points in the bullet-point list in this chapter). In this section we focus on the next two bullets, showing that human biological variation is real, but that it is not race. In this sense, we are granting a divorce for irreconcilable differences between the idea of race and the reality of human biological variation. Their passion for each other was an adolescent flirtation, and as they lived together, their lives became almost com- pletely entangled and enmeshed. However, as mature adults, they have grown irreconcilably apart. It is time to cut the ideological cord.

So, why do we think this is a critical distinction? Why such a cold divorce?

A fundamental lesson from the study of both sci- ence (which is a sort of culture) and society is that ideas are powerful. And, of course, race is among the most powerful ideas of all time. Here, thinking that race and human biological variation are much the same is part of the deep and persistently wounding history of race and racism.

This conflation of race and human biological variation is no less than the chief weapon of racists. How this conflation came about is doubtlessly intentional in part and serendipitous in other parts. Once the conflation was fixed, it could be used by deeply intentional racist scientists and others to sup- port slavery and other race-based institutions. More important still, the racial smog caused many to see racist institutions as natural, and instead of fighting racism, we aided and abetted racism. It is time to disarm.

We are not so naive as to think that we will end all of racism by divorcing the idea of race from human biological variation. However, ideas are powerful. By showing that race is not the same as human biological variation we undermine one of racism’s chief ideo- logical tennets.

Think of ideology as a loaded gun. It is time to take the bullets out, one by one.

In this introduction to part 2 we are going to out- line two bottom-line points: (1) that humans do vary biologically and (2) that this variation is explained by evolution (and not by race). Then, in the following three chapters of part 2, we will fill in the details to

understand more completely the key differences between race as an idea and human biological variation as a measurable set of attributes that are amenable to scientific investigation.

Humans Do Vary Biologically

Consider this thought experiment. You are sitting comfortably in a room. It is a large room such as a gymnasium. Two hundred fellow members of your species, Homo sapiens, otherwise known as humans, parade in, one by one. One hundred of them are from Nairobi, Kenya, and the other one hundred hail from Oslo, Norway, some 7,109 kilometers away. Once in the room, they line up along the walls and you can move them and sort them around the room in any way you choose. Your task is a simple one: to make an educated guess at who is from Nairobi and who is from Oslo.

You quickly notice that individuals vary in skin color, as well as eye color and hair color. In fact, you sense that there are two clusters of individuals, one with light, pale skin and light, straight hair and the other with dark, brownish skin and dark and curly hair. You also notice a wide variety of sizes and shapes: tall and short; thin and thick. But these size differences don’t seem to relate to the color differences and you

Figure 7.2 Race is like a gun. One could say it is not the gun that maims and kills, but the gun is a powerful ideological tool; it is a threat of violence and control. Like a gun in the hands of an angry man, race in the hands of a racist does harm. Discovery of Nat Turner by William Henry Shelton. Courtesy of Encyclopedia Virginia.

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stop focusing on them. Of course, you guess that those with lighter skin and hair are from Oslo and those with darker skin and hair tones are from Nairobi. You are almost certainly right. The pictures above show clear differences, in gender, dress, and physical appearance. In fact, you may be perfectly right. Everyone fits into a box, correctly classified.

What did this prove? Proof only comes with repeated confirmation of results. So, technically this doesn’t prove much, except that on this day you did a good job of separating out individuals from two loca- tions that are thousands of miles apart. That said, most would agree that it shows that human phenotypes seem to vary geographically. Phenotypes, defined as

the measurable result of the interaction of genes and environment, tend to vary by location. In fact geno- types, the differences in alleles and at the level of the genome, as we will see, also vary by location. But here it is particularly interesting that some aspects of phe- notype, most notably skin color, that we very visual humans can all see, seems to particularly change with geography.

If you have ever bought a house, you have doubt- lessly noticed that some houses cost more than others. Size matters as does the quality of the home. But those in the real estate business have another saying. When it comes to price, real estate agents are fond of saying, “Location, location, location.” The three most important determinants for housing costs are location (and location and location).

The same is true for human biological variation. Location determines variation. In chapters 10 and 11 we will focus on how evolutionary forces vary by geography and are the driving force behind the geo- graphic variation we see.

Variation ≠ Race

If you lived during the 18th or 19th century, you’d have virtually no cognitive alternative, no conceptual framework, but to think that the biological variation you observed on the street, in your medical practice, or even studied in your laboratory was the same as race. Human variation was race. Race was your only tool to describe and explain differences. So, naturally, to use the tool metaphor again, one would use the hammer of race to pound the nail of difference. You did your best with that one tool. Where the hammer didn’t work, perhaps bending the nail, you just got by and sort of ignored that it wasn’t working, and grabbed another nail. This natural inclination is not unlike ignoring size variation because it does not help to figure out who was from Oslo. The idea of race became reified and transformed into a unity with the reality of biological variation. We do not want to sug- gest that doing so was a planned conspiracy, but it is clear that doing so helped justify systems of inequality such as slavery and even contemporary differences in wealth. Basing such differences on a faulty belief in

Figure 7.4 Girls from Oslo. Photograph courtesy of Ilan Kelman (http://www.ilankelman.org).

Figure 7.3 Kenyan children. Photograph courtesy of Jeremy Wilburn.

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biological inferiorities and superiorities helped make them seem less unjust.

Many scientists and most non-scientists (politicians, teachers, garbage collectors, whatever) still think this way. Biological anthropologist Alice Brues told Newsweek, “If I parachute into Nairobi, I know I’m not in Oslo.” Another biological anthropologist, Vincent Sarich, would say that the experiment in which you separated Norwegians from Kenyans proves that race is real.

However, the variation we have just noticed – that was knocked-us-over-the head obvious – is NOT race. Why not? The short answer is that the idea of race inadequately describes and explains human biological variation. Below are five key reasons why race ≠ human variation.

1 Evolution, rather than race, explains human biologi- cal variation. Race-as-biology is based on the false idea of fixed, ideal and unchanging types. Race categories were first a European folk idea from an era in which the world was seen as fixed and unchanging. As is out- lined in the history of mismeasurement (chapter 4) European scientists once thought the world was fixed and static. All of that changed with evolutionary the- ory. The illusion of unchanging racial types is com- pletely incompatible with evolutionary theory.

2 Human variation is continuous. Allele frequencies, or variations in DNA, tend to vary gradually. Therefore, there is no clear place to designate where one race begins and another ends. Skin color, for example, the physical characteristic we most often use to distin- guish “races,” slowly changes from place to place and person to person.

If one were to take a walk from Norway to Nigeria one would encounter slow and gradual changes in skin color. There is no place to unambiguously say where dark skin ends and lighter tones begin. Variation is continuous.

The same that is true about the average variation among groups is also true of variation within groups. Line a group of individuals up by height and one can see that variation in height is continuous. Continuous variation in height is further illustrated in the boxed text.

3 Human biological variation involves many traits that typically vary independently. Skin color, for example, is

only correlated with a few other traits such as hair and eye color, leaving unpredictable the huge number of other traits. While we might be able to predict that someone with light skin is more likely to have light hair, we are unable to predict virtually any other traits. Thus, it is a truism that “race is only skin deep.”

Figure 7.5 is a visual representation of this phe- nomena of trait independence originally developed by Paul Ehrlich and Richard Holm (1964). Imagine that there are four traits represented by four layers. In this case, suppose that skin color is on top, followed by eye and hair color and hair form. However, they could be most any trait, and of course there are thou- sands to choose from, from simple to complex. Think of the four “cores” as either individuals or groups. The two to the right both have light skin color, but then they differ in the other traits. This is because the top layer, skin color, does not predict the variation in the other traits/layers. Skin color is independent of most other traits.

4 Genetic variation within so-called races is much greater than the variation among them. One might assume that genetic variation among races is great; however, there is actually little genetic variation among the groups we have come to call races. For example, two individuals who might identify as “white” might well be far more genetically different from one another than from someone self-identified as “black.” Moreover, rather than seeing Europeans and Asians as “races,” they may be more accurately seen as different-looking subsets of Africans, since the human population descended from human beings liv- ing on that continent. Given these genetic realities, race simply fails to account for the genetic variation among us. This phenomenon is explained in detail in subsequent chapters.

5 There is no way to consistently classify human beings by race. Race groups are impossible to define in a stable and universal way, and if one cannot define groups one cannot make scientific generalizations about them. Race groups are unstable primarily because the socially determined color line changes over time and place. Someone considered “white” in Brazil can be considered “black” in the United States; someone who lives as “white” in the United States today might have been considered “Mexican” a generation earlier.

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Roma and other “dark” babies in Romania are classi- fied as inferior, and even “black” and were often put up for adoption at the fall of the Communist regime. In the United States, where white couples clamored to adopt them, these children were seen as “white.” Their racial classification was totally nationally dependent. Since there is no consistent way to classify human biological diversity using race categories, we cannot use these categories to say anything scientific about human biological diversity.

Summary

A number of linked reasons lead us to strongly urge the reader to rethink the relationship between the idea of race and the structure of human variation. For theoretical reasons, for practical reasons, and for scientific reasons, race fails to explain or describe human variation. The

result of using race ambiguously is that individuals often go to a default position of accepting that race has something to do with genetics and evolution, and thus, that inequalities in health and others aspects of life could be explained based on racial genetics. But this is conceptually and factually incorrect. It now appears that the increased blood pressure of African diasporic groups, for example (see chapter 16) has more to do with perceptions of difference and the social dynamics of skin color than it does with underlying biology. And of course, skin color is not race. Moreover, a focus on race-as-genetic has inhibited a full exploration of the consequences of racial thinking and racism.

In the chapters of part 2 we explore the details of how variation in sickle cell and skin color came about, and what the world geographic distributions of these traits means. We will then explore in detail the under- lying structure of human genetic variation, with some surprising results.

People

Trait 1

Trait 2

Trait 3

Trait 4

Figure 7.5 Cube of variation. The cube visually shows the idea of trait independence. Illustration by R. Boehm. (Redrawn from Ehrlich, 1964). Modified from Michael Alan Park, Biological Anthropology, 2nd edn, © McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

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Height, History, and Human Variation

Not all variation is associated with race. Some variation, such as height, does differ by group; however, what is remarkable is the degree of variation in height and other size variables within groups. Archaeologists and historians have also found that height also varies over decades, centuries, and millennia. Not surpris- ingly, they find that as nutrition, health, and other living conditions wax and wane, heights change. They are a sort of biological barometer of the quality of life. Height is an example of a complex trait that has multiple genetic and envi- ronmental causes.

Humans come in all sizes. Historically, we have changed heights based on living conditions. And it is also clear that there is a great deal of variation within any human group.

Height is one aspect of variation that clearly displays the notion that variation is continuous. Figure 7.7 shows three ways to look at height variation. In Figure 7.7a, three individuals are dis- played in profile. One could clearly distinguish the short from the medium and tall individual. However, as individuals are added, in Figure 7.7b and Figure 7.7c, where one draws the line becomes increasingly difficult. Height changes from a discrete trait with clear differences among

the groups, to a continuous trait. In the latter case it becomes difficult to objectively decide where to draw the line between short and tall.

Figure 7.6 “The Tall and Short of It.” Photograph # NH 45759. Courtesy of Naval History and Heritage Command.

(a)

(b)

(c)

Figure 7.7 Drawing of silhouettes of individuals from short to tall. Courtesy of S2N Media, Inc.

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Conclusions

Variation is marvelous. However, it does not conform to the idea of race. Variation, as we have noted, is con- tinuous with no clear breaks. And the pattern of variation in one trait is invariably a poor predictor of the variation in another. Thus, we are truly complex creations. You cannot tell much from any one trait.

References

Ehrlich, Paul, and Richard Holm 1964 A Biological View of Race. In The Concept of Race.

Ashley Montagu, ed. pp. 153–179. New York: Free Press of Glencoe.

Further Resources

American Anthropological Association 1998 AAA statement on race. Anthropology Newsletter,

September. p. 3. (www.aaanet.org/stmts/racepp.htm.).

AAPA (American Association of Physical Anthropologists) 1996 AAPA Statement on Biological Aspects of Race.

American Journal of Physical Anthropology 101: 569–570.

Brace, C. Loring 1964 A Nonracial Approach Towards the Understanding

of Human Diversity. In The Concept of Race. Ashley Montagu, ed. pp. 103–152. New York: Free Press of Glencoe.

Diamond, Jared 1994 Race Without Color. Discover 15(11):82–89. Goodman, Alan 1997 Bred in the Bone? Sciences 37(2):20–25. Loveyoy, A. O. 1936 The Great Chain of Being. Cambridge, MA:

Harvard University Press. Marks, Jonathan 1995 Human Biodiversity: Genes, Race, and History.

New York: Aldine de Gruyter. Montagu, A. 1963 Race, Science and Humanity. New York:

Van Nostrand. Montagu, A. 1964 Man’s Most Dangerous Myth: The Fallacy of Race.

Meridian Books: New York.

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Body Ritual Among the Nacirema

by Horace Miner from American Anthropologist, 1956, 58(3), 503-507

FEATURE

My college class asks what it means to be white in America — but interrogating that question as a black woman in the real world is much harder to do.

By Claudia Rankine

July 17, 2019

n the early days of the run-up to the 2016 election, I was just beginning

to prepare a class on whiteness to teach at Yale University, where I had

been newly hired. Over the years, I had come to realize that I often did

not share historical knowledge with the persons to

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You have probably heard it said that race is genetic, or biological, or physical. Most Americans assume that there is an u

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