Human Diversity and “Race”

1. This chapter discusses the concept of “race” as it is applied to humans. It shows how the biological and social categories of race are largely unrelated, and demonstrates this by discussing the construction of race in Brazil, Japan, and the United States. Human Diversity and “Race”

2. Race: A Discredited Concept in Biology • In biological terms, a race is a geographically isolated subdivision of a species that can reproduce with individuals from other subspecies of the same species, but does not because of its geographic isolation. • Ethnicity and race are not synonymous, although American culture does not discriminate between the two terms.

3. Races Are Not Biologically Distinct • Race is supposed to describe genetic variation, but racial categories (particularly early on) are based on phenotypes. • Phenotypes are the product of genetic, developmental, and environmental factors. • The so-called three great races (white, black, and yellow) are more a reflection of European colonialist politics than an accurate representation of human biological diversity. • Even skin color-based race models that include more than three categories do not accurately represent the wide range of skin color diversity among human populations.

4. Fundamental Problems with Phenotype-Based Race. • Populations grouped into one race based upon phenotypic similarity may be genetically distinct; such similarities may be the result of parallel evolution or other factors. • Genetic traits occur together due to the selective forces of the environments in which they evolved, and therefore do not constitute an internally coherent “type.”

5. American Anthropological Association’s Statement on “Race” • Human populations are not unambiguous, clearly demarcated, biologically distinct groups. • There is greater genetic variation within racial groups than between them. • Physical variations are distributed gradually rather than abruptly through space. • Physical variations in human populations have no meaning other than the social ones societies attribute to them. • Historically, racial categories have been used to divide, rank, and control populations ethnically separate from Western Europe. • Some populations have been assigned to a perpetual low status (e.g., African-Americans). • Other populations have been assigned to a perpetual high status with access to privilege, power, and wealth.

6. Explaining Skin Color. • Natural selection • Variation in skin color is determined by the amount of melanin in the skin cells, which is in turn genetically determined. • Prior to the sixteenth century, darker skinned populations were closest to the equator, while lighter skinned populations were closer to the poles.

7. Selective Advantages and Disadvantages of Skin Color • Light skin in the tropics is selected against because it burns more easily • Sunburn impairs the body's ability to withstand heat by reducing the skin’s ability to sweat. • Light skin is more susceptible to skin cancer. • The effect of sunlight on vitamin D formation indicates how dark skin might have been selected for in tropical environments • Light skin might have been selected for in low-sunlight environments, and against in the tropics.

8. Social Race • “Race,” as it is used in everyday discourse, refers to a social category, rather than a biological category. • Hypodescent: Race in the United States • In the United States, race is most commonly ascribed to people without reference to genotype. • In extreme cases, offspring of “genetically mixed” unions are ascribed entirely to the lower status race of one parent, an example of the process called hypodescent.

9. Race in the Census • The U.S. Census Bureau has been gathering data by race since 1790 because the Constitution specified that a slave counted as three-fifths of a white person, and because Indians were not taxed. • More recently, the way in which information regarding race is collected has been hotly debated. • Some social scientists and interested citizens have been working to add a “multiracial” category to the census. • This “multiracial” category has been opposed by the NAACP and the National Council of La Raza because both groups feel that the communities they represent will lose access to funding, resources, and jobs if their numbers as counted by the census go down.

10. Race in the Census (cont.) • The choice of “some other race” has more than doubled from 1980 and 2000. • This represents an imprecision in and dissatisfaction with the existing categories. • Also, the number of interracial marriages and children is increasing. • Comparing the U.S. with Canada, minorities represent a smaller percentage of the population, with a significantly smaller black population and a much larger percentage of people who identify themselves as Asian.

11. Not Us: Race in Japan • Despite the presence of a substantial (10%), various minority population, the dominant racial ideology of Japan describes the country as racially and ethnically homogeneous. • Dominant Japanese use a clear “us-not us” dichotomy as the basis for their construction of race. • While dominant Japanese perceive their construction of race to be based upon biology, the burakumin construct provides evidence to the contrary. • Burakumin are descendants of a low-status social class. • Despite the fact that burakumin are genetically indistinguishable from the dominant population, they are treated as a different race. • The mixed Japanese-Koreans are treated as wholly foreign, despite otherwise complete cultural and linguistic assimilation.

12. Phenotype and Fluidity: Race in Brazil • While it has some historical and social similarities with the United States, race in Brazil is very different from race in the United States and Japan. • The Brazilian construction of race is attuned to relatively slight phenotypic differences. • More than 500 distinct racial labels have been reported. • The complex flexibility of Brazilian race categories has made racial discrimination less likely to occur on the same scale as in the United States and Japan.

13. Stratification and “Intelligence” • Over the centuries, dominant groups have used racial ideology to justify, explain, and preserve their privileged social positions. • Anthropologists know that most of the behavioral variation among human groups rests on culture not biology. • The capacities for culture are equivalent in all human populations.

14. Stratification and “Intelligence” • Within any stratified society, differences in performance between economic, social, and ethnic groups reflect their different experiences and opportunities, not biological differences. • There is no conclusive evidence for biologically based contrasts in intelligence between rich and poor, black and white, or men and women.

15. Stratification and “Intelligence” • The best indicators of how any individual will perform on an intelligence test are environmental, such as educational, economic, and social background. • All standard tests are culture-bound and biased because they reflect the training and life experiences of those who develop and administer them.

16. Standardized testing • An environmental explanation acknowledges that for many reasons, both genetic and environmental, some people are smarter than others; however, these differences in intelligence cannot be generalized to characterize whole populations or social groups. • Psychologists have come up with many ways to measure intelligence, but there are problems with all of them. • Intelligence tests reflect the experiences of the people who write them. • Middle- and upper-class children do well because they share the test makers’ educational expectations and standards. • The SATs claim to measure intellectual aptitude but they also measure the type and quality of high school education, linguistic and cultural background, and parental wealth. • Studies have shown that performance on the SATs can be improved by coaching and preparation, placing those students who can pay for an SAT preparation course at an advantage.

17. Standardized testing • Cultural biases in testing affect performance by people in other cultures as well as different groups in the same nation. • Native Americans scored the lowest of any group in the U.S., but when the environment during growth and development for Native Americans is similar to that of middle-class whites, the test scores tend to equalize (e.g., the Osage Indians). • At the start of World War I, African-Americans living in the north scored on average better than whites living in the south due to the better public school systems in the north.