{"id":7725,"date":"2002-01-18T21:40:00","date_gmt":"2002-01-18T21:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/multiracial.com\/?p=7725"},"modified":"2021-07-04T06:42:49","modified_gmt":"2021-07-04T06:42:49","slug":"lte-biological-non-existence-of-race","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/multiracial.com\/index.php\/2002\/01\/18\/lte-biological-non-existence-of-race\/","title":{"rendered":"LTE: biological non-existence of \u201crace\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Date: Friday, January 18, 2002 9:40 PM
From: George Winkel
Subject: Letter to the Editor biological non-existence of \u201crace\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Radley Balko has written a splendid piece for Fox News Straight Talk<\/em>, \u201cBiologically Speaking, Race Doesn\u2019t Exist\u201d<\/a> (byline 1\/17\/02). Balko argues It\u2019s time government stops recognizing race.\u201dIf science ceases to recognize race, government ought to follow suit. It\u2019s time to take race off of the U.S. Census. And, while we\u2019re at it, off of college applications, loan applications, and off the minds of New Jersey\u2019s state troopers.\u201dHere! Here!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Balko explains, Dr. J. Craig Venter and Dr. Joseph L. Graves, Jr., both found \u201crace\u201d lacking support in the human genome DNA evidence. I applaud them both for urging physicians and scientists to stop categorizing in terms of \u201crace.\u201d After government and law, science and medicine must certainly be the institutions most guilty for creating and propagating the hypnotic \u201crace\u201d delusion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That said, I have a caveat for the approach of \u201crace\u201d-minimizing which Mr. Balko reports in his article. To minimize \u201crace,\u201d as being \u201conly\u201d six genes out of the 30,000 to 40,000 genes that make us human; or to say the sickle-cell trait is found other places beside sub-Saharan Africa, and so on, is not enough. If only one gene implicitly defines a \u201crace\u201d then \u201crace\u201d stands immutable. It implies \u201cdifference\u201d between people, which never can be truly bridged or \u201cblended\u201d away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cRace,\u201d in the U.S. of America, is a vast, horrid obsession, with a long, ugly history. I think the national hypnotic suggestion-obsession with \u201crace\u201d needs more curative attention than this casual, inferential denial that \u201cenough\u201d genes support our historical racial classifications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the one hand, white supremacists can (and do) argue that the greatest portion of genetic material is not specific to anything. Since we share most of the genome with everything from trees to warthogs, it follows that a few genes may mean a lot among the few exclusively-human genes. On the other hand, black nationalists have been building up an allegedly separate \u201cblack culture,\u201d and redefining \u201crace\u201d as \u201csocial reality,\u201d immune to any scientific epiphany for quite some time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But first things first. \u201cRace\u201d certainly is the Frankenstein monsterous creation of bad science, and it must be slain by science or it will never go away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First, I suggest hammering the point that peoples\u2019 \u201crace\u201d is scientifically undefined, and it is undefinable scientifically. \u201cRace\u201d purports to be some kind of scientific, medical truth which flat does not exist. Science cannot comprehend things which cannot be defined. All discussion of \u201crace\u201d is as metaphysical as witchcraft.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Second, \u201crace\u201d is said to be subdivision of species. Species are scientifically factual, because each species ideally is defined by its inability to breed out with any other species. This can be scientifically proven. If any two zoological \u201ctypes\u201d cannot reproduce viable offspring, then they are necessarily different species \u2013 for being \u201cmutually exclusive.\u201d<\/em> Thus, each species is defined as a closed breeding population by species.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Species, not race is the fundamental unit of scientific taxonomy. Race<\/em> merely notices the variation often visible within a species. Apparently, close adaptation to each climatic environment, brought about by the constant pressure of natural selection, impress some recognizable regional racial variation onto many species of wild animals, and on people, too. People are a species distributed world-wide, and it is not surprising we show some adaptation to the diverse climatic homelands peoples occupy. And the sheer size of the Earth partly explains human racial variation: Since almost every marriage is between persons fairly local to their region of the world, the genetic distance between all peoples worldwide almost exactly matches the number of miles between them. Racial somatic variation is simply a continuous effect of distance between peoples.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The only sharp lines of demarcation found separating races (as opposed to species) are those separating the man-made animal races, which are the domesticated animal breeds. (E.g., the artificially selected breeds of dogs, cows, horses, chickens, etc. \u2013 separated by fence-lines.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To summarize: The word \u201crace\u201d in America can only mean \u201cspecies\u201d or else \u201cbreed.\u201d But all human beings the world over are absolutely the same species \u2013 Homo sapiens. Therefore, \u201crace\u201d cannot exist as difference by species. To attribute any so-called \u201cpure race\u201d in people to some sort of human \u201cdomestication\u201d or miraculous \u201cbreeding\u201d is absurd. Although people clearly show regional racial variation, it can reflect only natural variation, acquired generally in boundless worldwide environmental patterns (i.e., same as for wild animals). Human racial variation, as said, mainly reflects miles distance. Anyway, variation is not logically divisible by anyone, since no one is \u201cmore human,\u201d or more disinterested in their perspective from which to tell other people which \u201crace\u201d they belong in. And there is no rational basis for counting any number of \u201craces\u201d as alleged \u201csubspecies\u201d of the human race. \u201cRaces\u201d CANNOT BE DEFINED, PROVED OR COUNTED. \u201cRace\u201d does not exist in ANY scientific sense. \u201cRace\u201d is a mythical construct, albeit somewhat complexion-chauvinist based, as a system of social caste. \u201cRace\u201d has noting to do with ANY genes in the human biome.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All of this scientific logic was confronted before, long ago, in fact, by people bent on denying the lesson of history. More than a century ago there were \u201cwhite\u201d doctors and \u201cscientists\u201d determined to prevent what they called \u201cmongrelization\u201d<\/a> of their \u201crace\u201d by racial \u201camalgamation\u201d with Negro \u201cblack\u201d genes. The former Jim Crow laws that were in place through the middle of the last century were supplemental to \u201canti-miscegenation\u201d laws. The whole idea was to deny the evidence of history that populations in contact eventually blend. The highest powers of government then wanted to keep America white for the \u201cwhite man\u201d (legally defined then as \u201cpure white\u201d). They wanted to hold all Negroes in apartheid until their removal to Africa or somewhere far away \u2013 permanently \u2013 along with everyone \u201ctainted\u201d with \u201cblack blood,\u201d even if only \u201cone drop.\u201d Through the distorting lens of \u201crace\u201d \u201cwhite\u201d Americans once saw justice, evidently \u2013 after their enslaving \u201cblack\u201d ones for almost two-and-a half centuries \u2013 in not even letting African descendants remain when no longer needed for slaves. If the \u201cwhite\u201d legislators enacting Jim Crow had troubled consciences about it, they apparently decided that only their own \u201cwhite\u201d racial \u201cpurity\u201d merited concern.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Long before that, in order to justify enslaving \u201cblack\u201d people on the \u201crace\u201d theory doctors in the 19th<\/a>, as in the early 20th century<\/a>, too, tried to show the \u201craces\u201d were in fact separate species. Failing that, they tried to show the \u201craces\u201d were separate domesticated animal \u201cbreeds\u201d<\/a>. They were able to pass off shoddy reasoning only because then, as now, the country was so committed to classifying everyone by \u201crace\u201d that shoddy claims could be palmed off as \u201cscience.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhite\u201d Americans today are far different. I believe the greatest revolution of the 1960\u2019s civil rights movement was the \u201cwhite\u201d people then forsaking their racial \u201cpurity\u201d \u2013 their historical self-definition by \u201crace,\u201d and accepting inevitable racial \u201camalgamation\u201d (the true meaning of \u201cintegration\u201d) \u2013 the final racial justice in America. The other shoe has yet to drop. \u201cMinorities\u201d flirting with the notion of their racial \u201cempowerment\u201d are the ones asking for the return of Jim Crow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Racial variation does obviously exist, and it is inheritable. Racial variation is a proper concern of science and medicine. But racial variation does not allege any mutually exclusive<\/em> \u201crace-lines\u201d are embedded in us \u2013 not even one gene. Also, racial variation does not purport to count named \u201craces,\u201d or force anyone to \u201cbe\u201d one. Natural human regional somatic variation simply does not mean the same thing as \u201crace.\u201d<\/em> \u201cRace\u201d is about endogamy, about \u201clines\u201d that someone in society doesn\u2019t want to see crossed \u2013 for so-called \u201crace\u201d is all about social caste. But, finally, not escaping our notice is the so-called national civil rights organizations\u2019 conspicuous failure to challenge the patently bogus \u201crace\u201d pseudo-science. They are exploiting the \u201crace\u201d delusion now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

George Winkel<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Date: Friday, January 18, 2002 9:40 PMFrom: George WinkelSubject: Letter to the Editor biological non-existence of \u201crace\u201d Radley Balko has written a splendid piece for Fox News Straight Talk, \u201cBiologically Speaking, Race Doesn\u2019t Exist\u201d (byline 1\/17\/02). Balko...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":347,"featured_media":7987,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[223,61],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7725","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-george-winkel","category-reader-forum"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/multiracial.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/Letters-to-the-Editor.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p89tuq-20B","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/multiracial.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7725","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/multiracial.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/multiracial.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/multiracial.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/347"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/multiracial.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7725"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/multiracial.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7725\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7726,"href":"https:\/\/multiracial.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7725\/revisions\/7726"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/multiracial.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7987"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/multiracial.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7725"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/multiracial.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7725"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/multiracial.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7725"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}