The meaning of race

As far back as I can remember I have always identified myself as a member of the “White” race. I don’t recall specifically how I came to think in those terms. It might have been while filling out one of those standardized test forms in school. Perhaps Sister Beatrice, my kindergarten teacher, instructed me to blacken the “White” or “Caucasian” balloon on the form with my number two pencil. Perhaps it was my mother or father who taught me that I am “White.” I don’t remember.

No one ever provided me with a definition of “White.” Like most such concepts, I learned to recognize different races through my experiences. Most of the people I knew, my family and friends, were “White.” Other darker-skinned people I saw while growing up in New Orleans, I would learn, were “Black.” I think the other categories were “Asian,” “Hispanic,” “Pacific Islander,” and “Other.” I didn’t know any of those, although I probably first learned to recognize them from TV and the movies.

Like most people, I originally assumed that “race” was a scientific classification, indicating distinctions that could be made at a biological level. It was only much later that I began to realize that the concept of race was problematic. It is now clear that “race” is a concept that was invented by our human societies. It actually has no basis in biology. The research bearing on this surprising conclusion was reviewed by Yale University researchers Robert Sternberg, Elena Grigorenko, and Kenneth Kidd in the January issue of American Psychologist, published by the American Psychological Association.

Scientists generally accept that all of us humans are descendants of humans who first appeared in Africa about 200,000 years ago. Some time around 100,000 years ago, small numbers of people began migrating out of Africa and into southwestern Asia. The descendants of that non-African population are now believed to have migrated further, over subsequent tens of thousands of years, to eventually populate all continents and habitable regions of the world.

Over many thousands of years, populations living in relative isolation from one another changed for various reasons. Some of the changes were cultural, such as developing different foods and different clothing. Some of the changes, of course, were genetic.

Sometimes changes occurred as a result of Darwinian natural selection, meaning that those with gene patterns providing some advantage for survival or reproduction would, in time, become more prevalent. Other changes could occur randomly through genetic mutations, and also through a mechanism known as “random genetic drift.” Interbreeding within groups would also, over time, result in members of those groups becoming more and more similar to one another, and less similar to groups more geographically distant.

Obviously, differences in skin color are based in the genes. Sternberg and his colleagues insist, however, that “there is nothing special about skin color that serves as a basis for differentiating humans into so-called races.” That’s because if you identify any two groups of people that are different in one way, you can naturally find a cluster of ways in which they are different. For example, it has been noticed that groups who have survived over many generations in cold climates, such as Eskimos, tend to have rounded bodies, which are better suited for conserving heat. On the other hand, some populations that survive in hot climates, such as the Masai, have lanky bodies. A high ratio of surface area to volume, it is argued, permits better heat radiation, allowing such individuals to remain cooler.

Using our current racial classification systems, lanky and rounded people are viewed as representing two kinds of members of the Black and White races. It would, however, be just as reasonable to decide that classification of races should be done on the basis of lanky, versus rounded bodies, resulting in Black and White members of the lanky and rounded races. One could then identify certain genetic patterns that correspond to lankiness and roundedness, just as we could find genetic patterns corresponding to different skin colors.

Interestingly, we don’t speak of different “races” of, say moths, based upon differences in coloration within a given species. According to some, the concept of “race” is used by humans exclusively to classify human populations in order to create social divisions that are beneficial to the majority or ruling classes. Also, different racial classification systems are commonly found in different places and times. There is no universal agreement concerning a method of racial classification, nor can there be.

Human societies will probably always make racial distinctions. We categorize things quite naturally, it seems, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Racial categories often serve as a source of pride and personal identity. Unfortunately, racial classifications are too often used as a basis for discrimination against groups of people, even genocide. Perhaps as our societies come to grips with the fact that race is a social, rather than scientific construct, we will become less tolerant of such injustices.