Anthropology 103 Chapter 4 The Biological Issue of Race Scott A. Lukas, Ph.D.

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Anthropology 103Chapter 4The Biological Issue
of RaceScott A. Lukas, Ph.D.
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The Issue
You will recall that in our considerations of
Chapters 2 and 3, we focused on how the
advancements of genetic science radically altered
our understandings of inheritance and
evolutionary theory. As well, we were able to
illustrate the problems associated with physical
theories of humans as opposed to modern,
biological theories of humans. Lets review that
segment briefly
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From Physical to Biological
The very name of our subfield, Physical/Biological
Anthropology, offers an interesting
understanding of the changing perspectives on
humans as biocultural beings. Prior to the major
genetic discoveries, humans were understood
largely as physical beings. Scientists,
anthropologists and everyday citizens focused on
the perceived physical differences between
humans. Here is one such example of this earlier
conceptualization
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From Physical to Biological
Recall that early understandings of humans were
focused on the physical (outward) significance of
specific features. In this case criminal
anthropologist E.A. Hootens typology of Old
American Robbers.
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From Physical to Biological
Hooten, along with criminologists around the
world, believed that the physical characteristics
of humans allowed for meaningful determinations
about behavior. In this case, Hooten determined
that certain physical characteristics increased
ones likelihood of criminality,
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From Physical to Biological
Much of this work on physicality and human
behavior is derived from nineteenth century
racialism--a doctrine that assumed that physical
race was in all ways meaningful. This assumption
produced academic and everyday reflections on
physicality.
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From Physical to Biological
The example of the work of cultural evolutionists
illustrates the academic side of racialism.
The anthropological evolutionist Lewis Henry
Morgan offered this conception of humanity. He
called them Ethnical Periods. I. Older Period
of Savagery    II. Middle Period of
Savagery   III. Later Period of Savagery IV.
Older Period of Barbarism  V. Middle Period of
Barbarism VI. Later Period of Barbarism VII.
Status of Civilization
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From Physical to Biological
The Ethnical periods were associated with
specific technologies and institutions that
determined the advancement of a people. Of
course, we can guess which people were
civilized and those who were savages. I.
Lower Status of Savagery, From the Infancy of the
Roman Race to the commencement of the Next
Period.  II. Middle Status of Savagery, From the
acquisition of a fish subsistence and a
knowledge of the use of fire, to etc. III.
Upper Status of Savagery, From the Invention of
the Bow and Arrow, to etc. IV. Lower Status of
Barbarism, From the Invention of the Art of
Pottery, to etc.  V. Middle Status of
Barbarism, From the Domestication of animals on
the Eastern hemisphere, and in the Western
from the cultivation of maize and plants by
Irrigation, with the use of adobe-brick and
stone, etc.  VI. Upper Status of Barbarism, From
the Invention of the process of Smelting Iron
Ore, with the use of iron tools, to etc. VII.
Status of Civilization, From the Invention of a
Phonetic Alphabet, with the use of writing,
to the present time.
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From Physical to Biological
Fortunately, pioneers like Franz Boas, the Father
of American Anthropology, fought both racialism
and racism in and outside of the academy.
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From Physical to Biological
Boas combated the evolutionists by focusing on
their poor science. He was politically creative,
particularly as he rallied anthropologists
against racialism. He personally faced
anti-Semitism in the United States. Boas went on
to found the famous department of anthropology at
Columbia University.
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From Physical to Biological
Boas work and that of many others in profiled in
George Stockings historical look at physical
anthropology in the United States.
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From Physical to Biological
Even beyond the evolutionists, assumptions about
physicality and behavior continued. An example
is the emphasis on the physicality of the cranium
and the clues it offers to human psychology.
Phrenology is this example.
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From Physical to Biological
Phrenology, like criminal anthropology, was based
on poor science and inaccurate assumptions about
physicality and human behavior. As the twentieth
century developed, unfortunate social events,
like the rise of fascism in Europe, led to
eugenics and genocide. The example of Nazism
confirms the danger of assumptions about race,
physicality and human behavior.
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From Physical to Biological
Even today, people perceive meaning in physical
differences that, in reality, do not exist.
Evolutionary biologist Joseph Graves offers a
contribution to the layperson. His text
demonstrates the fallacies of racialism, even as
it continues today.
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Definition of Race
Race
Ethnicity
The term race connotes biological differences
among peoples (skin color, facial features,
stature, and the like) which are transmitted
from generation to generation.
When a subpopulation of individuals reveals,
or is perceived to reveal, shared historical
experiences as well as unique organizational,
behavioral, and cultural characteristics, it
exhibits its ethnicity.
Culture
Biology
Source American Ethnicity The Dynamics and
Consequences of Discrimination, Adalberto
Aguirre, Jr., and Jonathan Turner, McGraw-Hill,
1995
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Definition of Race Our Chapter
Culture
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Definition of Race Webster
Culture
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Graves Approach
Culture
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Graves Approach
Culture
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Significance of Race
As this next chart indicates, we can observe
variation in skin color in our many populations
around the world.
Culture
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Significance of Race
Culture
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Significance of Race and Other Characteristics
Glogers Rule states that populations of birds
and mammals living in warmer climates have more
melanin and, therefore, darker skin, fur, or
feathers than do populations of the same species
living in cooler areas. Other interactions of
environment and physicality, such as high
altitude adaptation, also have significance for
anthropology.
Culture
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Wrong Assumptions
Many people wrongly assumed that such variation
was significant as it related to behavior and
other cultural issues. We know that such
assumptions were quite wrong-headed.
Culture
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Goulds Analysis
In one such study the late Stephen J. Gould
dismantled the work on the basis of poor science
and measurement this in his important work The
Mismeasure of Man.
Culture
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Goulds Analysis
Culture
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Study on Pages 102-3
Culture
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Study on Pages 102-3
Culture
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Study on Pages 102-3
What these studies illustrate is that when skin
color is measured in terms of luminescence, there
is much more variation in light reflection than
one would imagine given the assumptions of racial
difference, particularly at the level of skin
color. Studies of skin color do not allow us to
place people in the discrete categories suggested
in census or employment forms. Instead, we see
that skin color is continuous with many
variations. Discrete Black White Hispanic
Asian Continuous Light Skin.Dark Skin
Culture
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Source of Assumptions
As I have indicated in a number of the previous
case studies, incorrect assumptions--based on
poor science and racism--have led to the cultural
and historical constructions of race. Even when
presented with overwhelming scientific evidence,
many people hold on to these assumptions. This
fact alone should clue us in on the cultural
significance of race, even in this new
millennium.
Culture
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Number of Race
Darwins Summary of Racial Classification in 1871
Investigator No. Races Identified
Julian-Joseph Virey 2 Honore Jacquinot 3 Immanu
el Kant 4 Johann Friedrich Blumenbach 5 Georges
Buffon 6 John Hunter 7 Louis
Agassiz 8 Timothy Pickering 11 G. Bory de St.
Vincent 15 Louis-Antoine Desmoulins 16 Samuel
Morton 22 George Crawfurd 60 Edmund Burke 63
It is interesting to consider the variable number
of races reflected in historical documents. Here
is one example.
Culture
Source The Emperors New Clothes Biological
Theories of Race at The Millennium, Joseph L.
Graves, Jr., Rutgers University Press, 2001
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Traits
Eighteenth-Century Studies of Africans
Year Traits Relative Heritable? Envir?
Separate Exam. To Europ. Species?
Again, the early understandings of race were
based on physical traits.
Francois 1684 Gen Neutral ?
? No Bernier G. W.
von 1690 Gen Neutral No
Yes NoLeibniz Home
1774 Skin, Inferior Yes
No No Kames
Lips, Hair Blumenbach 1775 Skin, No
rank Yes Yes No
Lips, Hair Samuel
1784 Gen Not always Yes
No No Sommering
Inferior Camper 1786
Skull angle Inferior Yes No
No Georges 1789 Skin, smell
Inferior Yes No
No Buffon C. Meiners 1790 Gen
Inferior Yes No No
Source The Emperors New Clothes Biological
Theories of Race at The Millennium, Joseph L.
Graves, Jr., Rutgers University Press, 2001
Culture
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Traits
Nineteenth-Century Studies of Africans
Year Traits Relative Heritable? Envir?
Separate Exam. To Europ. Species?
Again, the early understandings of race were
based on physical traits.
Charles 1799 Skulls Skulls,
Yes No Yes White
Sex organs S. organs James
1813 Skin, Inferior Yes
Yes No Prichard
Civil. Lawrence 1823 Gen
Inferior Yes No
Yes Georges 1831 Gen
Inferior Yes No
Yes Cuvier Samuel 1849 Skull vol.
Inferior Yes No
Yes Morton Louis 1850 Skin,
smell Inferior Yes No
Yes Agassiz Intellect John
1855 Fertility Equal
Yes No No Bachman J.
Nott 1857 Gen Inferior
Yes No Yes G. Gliddon
1857 Gen Inferior Yes
No Yes Paul Broca 1862
Skeletal Inferior Yes No
Yes
Features
Source The Emperors New Clothes Biological
Theories of Race at The Millennium, Joseph L.
Graves, Jr., Rutgers University Press, 2001
Culture
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Graves on the Bell Curve
Culture
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Problems with the Concept of Race
The Number of Human Races
There is lack of agreement among different
researchers over the number of human races. Part
of the arbitrary nature of this scientific
construct of race is the emphasis on physical
characteristics.
The Nature of Continuous Variation
Biological anthropology often looks at human
variation. We know that many biological
qualities of humans are continuous yet,
as cultural beings we construct discrete
categories (examples heightshort, medium, tall
skin colorblack, white, brown, yellow)
Source Fundamentals of Biological Anthropology,
John Relethford, Mayfield, 1997, Pp. 267-276.
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Problems with the Concept of Race
Correspondence of Different Traits
If race were a useful biological concept, the
classifications would have to work for a number
of independent traits. Many traits, such as the
sickle cell allele and lactase deficiency, have
varied rates in numerous race populations.
Variation Between and Within Groups
By placing races in a discrete typology, the
assumption is that most human variation exists
between races. In fact there is more biological
variation within races than between them.
Correspondence of Different Traits
Source Fundamentals of Biological Anthropology,
John Relethford, Mayfield, 1997, Pp. 267-276.
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Race and Biological Anthropology Today
The power of biological anthropological science
allows us to make sense of the natural world. As
Joseph L. Graves suggests, the biological race
concept must be replaced with an understanding
of biological diversity within our species.
By embracing the four fields of anthropology ,we
can better understand concepts like race from
holistic, comparative, and bio-cultural
perspectives.
As Graves again suggests, we can spread the
word about the biological concept of race in
education. Again, the issue may be approached
from the bio-cultural perspective. A student
should take biological anthropology courses
alongside courses on cultural diversity.
We must look at the issue of race in the public
setting, such as on census forms and the like.
We must also confront unscientific and racist
assumptions such as The Bell Curve.
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AAA Statement on Race
Source http//www.aaanet.org/stmts/racepp.htm In
the United States both scholars and the general
public have been conditioned to viewing human
races as natural and separate divisions within
the human species based on visible physical
differences. With the vast expansion of
scientific knowledge in this century, however, it
has become clear that human populations are not
unambiguous, clearly demarcated, biologically
distinct groups. Evidence from the analysis of
genetics (e.g., DNA) indicates that most physical
variation, about 94, lies within so-called
racial groups. Conventional geographic "racial"
groupings differ from one another only in about
6 of their genes. This means that there is
greater variation within "racial" groups than
between them. In neighboring populations there is
much overlapping of genes and their phenotypic
(physical) expressions. Throughout history
whenever different groups have come into contact,
they have interbred. The continued sharing of
genetic materials has maintained all of humankind
as a single species.
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AAA Statement on Race
Physical variations in any given trait tend to
occur gradually rather than abruptly over
geographic areas. And because physical traits are
inherited independently of one another, knowing
the range of one trait does not predict the
presence of others. For example, skin color
varies largely from light in the temperate areas
in the north to dark in the tropical areas in the
south its intensity is not related to nose shape
or hair texture. Dark skin may be associated with
frizzy or kinky hair or curly or wavy or straight
hair, all of which are found among different
indigenous peoples in tropical regions. These
facts render any attempt to establish lines of
division among biological populations both
arbitrary and subjective. .
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AAA Statement on Race
Historical research has shown that the idea of
"race" has always carried more meanings than mere
physical differences indeed, physical variations
in the human species have no meaning except the
social ones that humans put on them. Today
scholars in many fields argue that "race" as it
is understood in the United States of America was
a social mechanism invented during the 18th
century to refer to those populations brought
together in colonial America the English and
other European settlers, the conquered Indian
peoples, and those peoples of Africa brought in
to provide slave labor. From its inception, this
modern concept of "race" was modeled after an
ancient theorem of the Great Chain of Being,
which posited natural categories on a hierarchy
established by God or nature. Thus "race" was a
mode of classification linked specifically to
peoples in the colonial situation. It subsumed a
growing ideology of inequality devised to
rationalize European attitudes and treatment of
the conquered and enslaved peoples. Proponents of
slavery in...
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AAA Statement on Race
particular during the 19th century used "race" to
justify the retention of slavery. The ideology
magnified the differences among Europeans,
Africans, and Indians, established a rigid
hierarchy of socially exclusive categories
underscored and bolstered unequal rank and status
differences, and provided the rationalization
that the inequality was natural or God-given. The
different physical traits of African-Americans
and Indians became markers or symbols of their
status differences. As they were constructing US
society, leaders among European-Americans
fabricated the cultural/behavioral
characteristics associated with each "race,"
linking superior traits with Europeans and
negative and inferior ones to blacks and Indians.
Numerous arbitrary and fictitious beliefs about
the different peoples were institutionalized and
deeply embedded in American thought. Early in
the 19th century the growing fields of science
began to reflect the public consciousness about
human differences. Differences among the "racial"
categories were projected to their greatest
extreme when the argument was posed that
Africans, Indians, and Europeans were separate
species, with Africans the least human and closer
taxonomically to apes.
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AAA Statement on Race
Ultimately "race" as an ideology about human
differences was subsequently spread to other
areas of the world. It became a strategy for
dividing, ranking, and controlling colonized
people used by colonial powers everywhere. But it
was not limited to the colonial situation. In the
latter part of the 19th century it was employed
by Europeans to rank one another and to justify
social, economic, and political inequalities
among their peoples. During World War II, the
Nazis under Adolf Hitler enjoined the expanded
ideology of "race" and "racial" differences and
took them to a logical end the extermination of
11 million people of "inferior races" (e.g.,
Jews, Gypsies, Africans, homosexuals, and so
forth) and other unspeakable brutalities of the
Holocaust. "Race" thus evolved as a worldview, a
body of prejudgments that distorts our ideas
about human differences and group behavior.
Racial beliefs constitute myths about the
diversity in the human species and about the
abilities and behavior of people homogenized into
"racial" categories. The myths fused behavior and
physical features together in the public mind,
impeding our...
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AAA Statement on Race
comprehension of both biological variations and
cultural behavior, implying that both are
genetically determined. Racial myths bear no
relationship to the reality of human capabilities
or behavior. Scientists today find that reliance
on such folk beliefs about human differences in
research has led to countless errors. At the end
of the 20th century, we now understand that human
cultural behavior is learned, conditioned into
infants beginning at birth, and always subject to
modification. No human is born with a built-in
culture or language. Our temperaments,
dispositions, and personalities, regardless of
genetic propensities, are developed within sets
of meanings and values that we call "culture."
Studies of infant and early childhood learning
and behavior attest to the reality of our
cultures in forming who we are. It is a basic
tenet of anthropological knowledge that all
normal human beings have the capacity to learn
any cultural behavior. The American experience
with immigrants from hundreds of different
language and cultural backgrounds who have
acquired some version of American culture traits
and behavior is the clearest evidence of this
fact.
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AAA Statement on Race
Moreover, people of all physical variations have
learned different cultural behaviors and continue
to do so as modern transportation moves millions
of immigrants around the world. How people have
been accepted and treated within the context of a
given society or culture has a direct impact on
how they perform in that society. The "racial"
worldview was invented to assign some groups to
perpetual low status, while others were permitted
access to privilege, power, and wealth. The
tragedy in the United States has been that the
policies and practices stemming from this
worldview succeeded all too well in constructing
unequal populations among Europeans, Native
Americans, and peoples of African descent. Given
what we know about the capacity of normal humans
to achieve and function within any culture, we
conclude that present-day inequalities between
so-called "racial" groups are not consequences of
their biological inheritance but products of
historical and contemporary social, economic,
educational, and political circumstances.
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AAA Statement on Race
Another interesting document American
Anthropological AssociationResponse to OMB
Directive 15 Race and Ethnic Standards for
Federal Statisticsand Administrative Reporting

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Summary and Conclusion
Physicality, Race and Human Behavior
Physicality is not a significant factor in
understanding the behavioral conditions of
humans. Race is a social construct, NOT a
meaningful biological fact of humans.
Unfortunately, racialism continues to plague our
planet in the form of bigotry and genocide.
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