Race: The Reality of Human Differences--Opening Statement: The Case for Race

In Race: The Reality of Human Differences, before beginning their chapter-by-chapter treatment of the subject of race, Sarich and Miele present an opening statement briefly explaining the purpose of the book and laying out the general path it will follow.

They begin by calling race "America's most taboo four-letter word." Obviously "race" is not comparable to other four-letter words in terms of the reaction to speaking it, but it is true that the subject it denotes is one on which our society's opinion-makers will brook no dissent from the accepted view. Obviously, it was not always this way. The authors marshal an array of quotations from four American presidents--Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, and Richard Nixon--that would be unspeakable in polite society today. For example, Abraham Lincoln said, "There is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race." The authors intend for these quotations to demonstrate that belief in universal equality is a relatively recent phenomenon, and that for most of human history, the accepted view was what we might call race realism. Of course, we are used to hearing from the left that all of human history was a nightmare of ignorance, oppression, and injustice until the 1960's, so race deniers will likely be unpersuaded by this argument, dismissing it as argumentum ad populum.

As many of us know from real-life or online interactions with liberals, race deniers generally really believe that scientifically established facts are on their side; they tend to claim to be impartial, willing to evaluate any empirical evidence, and project an image of themselves as believing that race is a mere social construction only because that is what the best information we have tells us. While not mentioning this view directly, the authors provide a rebuttal to it:

Denying the biological reality of race and recognizing it as a pseudoscientific myth created to justify white supremacy, they admonish, will produce what biological anthropologist Alan Goodman in the PBS documentary Race: The Power of an Illusion terms "an absolute paradigm shift." The resulting realization that "race is not based on biology but race is rather an idea that we ascribe to biology" will cause any thought of genetically based group differences to disappear as well, or at least it will set society on the road to their long-overdue remediation through social and economic policy.

In other words, race-deniers don't say race is a social construction because they think that true, but rather because they think having people believe it will eliminate racism. The authors seem to be implying that race-deniers are less concerned with the truth or falsehood of their views than they are with how those views can be used as a means to their desired end.

Sarich and Miele intend to present "the case for race" in three parts: first, race being understood in the context of the history of the concept itself, second, what we know about race from evolution, and third, the political problems associated with race in our present society. In Chapter 1, "Race and the Law," they tell us, we will see that the commonsense idea of race is accepted without question in the legal system. Again, this will be useful in understanding the reality of race, but given what we know of the cultural left's view of the world, where common sense is always wrong, where what seems obvious is never really true, where we need experts to enlighten us, race-deniers will probably dismiss this argument as an appeal to the majority or to authority.

Chapter 2, "Race and History," sounds as though it will stand on more solid ground, in that it will present evidence from a variety of cultures throughout human history that the concept of race has always been with us, that even ancient civilizations believed that different racial groups had different physical and mental characteristics. In the authors' view, this chapter will refute the contention that race is a recent concept invented to justify European colonialism.

Chapter 3 is entitled "Anthropology as the Science of Race." This chapter will address, among other things, "the Darwinian revolution, when anthropology emerged as the science of race, and how and why that viewpoint was increasingly marginalized after World War II." That little tidbit was surprising to me, since the great majority of anthropologists today accept the "race is merely a social construction" view! What a drastic change for a field that, as the authors say, was created as the science of race. I'll be interested to learn how exactly that view of the field was marginalized after World War II.

Chapters 4, 5, and 6, "Resolving the Primate Tree," "Homo Sapiens and its Races," and "The Two 'Miracles' That Made Humankind" respectively, will address race in the context of evolution. It's interesting to use evolution to prove the reality of race, since the left wholeheartedly accepts evolution. I believe this is why, as I alluded to earlier, the race-deniers that make up the left claim to have the best scientific evidence on their side. They cannot dismiss the consensus view arrived at by a materialist scientific approach to human history, since that view hinges on Darwinian evolution, which provides them with their arguments against God, against transcendence, and for the religious right being a bunch of fascist rednecks trying to establish a theocracy in America. So instead they must claim to hew to modern science, distorting or misinterpreting scientific evidence to show that race is not real. The authors repeat the statement that Homo sapiens originated "only 50,000" years ago at least thrice in this opening statement; clearly they believe this is an unusually short time and that this shortness is significant in understanding race. Exactly why and how remain to be seen.

Sarich and Miele describe the views of three eminent scientists: Stephen Jay Gould (race cannot exist), Richard Lewontin (race does not exist), and Alan Goodman (even if race can and does exist, it should not be studied), and say that they reject all three of these views. Of particular interest will be their refutation of Lewontin: he was one of the star witnesses against race in the PBS documentary, and I know from online debates into which I have attempted to inject race realism that his name is often used by race-deniers as someone who's created an airtight argument against race being a valid biological concept. That is, when you get into an argument with a race-denier, their response is often to the effect of, "go read Richard Lewontin. Case dismissed."

Chapters 7, 8, and 9 sound to me like they will prove the most interesting; they are the ones which most directly address the common contention that the phenotypic differences between the races, which we see all around us every day, are illusory. Chapter 7 is entitled "Race and Physical Differences" and in it the authors intend to introduce the topic of racial differences in the least controversial, most accepted arena in which they are manifest: athletic performance. They mention the Kalenjin, the Kenyan tribe which utterly dominates world long-distance running. Of course, race-deniers do not deny the reality of such examples; they just say that that is one single trait that cannot be used to classify individuals into races in a valid way, and add that there is more genetic variation within races than between races (an argument the authors intend to address.) It will be interesting to see if the authors flesh this argument out in such a way as to answer the race-deniers' objections.

Chapter 8, "Race and Behavior," will address, inter alia, what is probably the most controversial topic of all related to race: intelligence differences. Entire books have been written on this subject, none of which, I'm ashamed to admit, I have read, so I'm looking forward to what will hopefully be a good overview of the topic from Sarich and Miele. They will use a classic study in dog breeds to elucidate this topic. Unsurprisingly, they say, Sarich had difficulties publishing a similar study done to examine race differences in humans.

In Chapter 9, "Learning to Live with Race," the authors will present three approaches to dealing with race: Meritocracy in the Emerging Global Economy, Affirmative Action and Race Norming, and Rising Resegretation and the Emergence of Ethno-States, and describe the pros and cons to each. While Rising Resegregation sounds best to me, and most realistic in dealing with the conflict created by racial diversity, the authors state their preference for the global meritocracy.

And this ties in with my one criticism of this opening statement. Several times the authors refer to the concept of evolution, by which I assume they mean Darwinian evolution, as though it were an end in itself. For example, they say that they believe "it is not only appropriate but important to study race, because it helps us to apply the evolutionary perspective to the analysis of human variation generally." In other words, it's not important to apply the evolutionary perspective because doing so helps us understand race; rather, it's the other way around. It's almost as though studying race were merely a means to an end, that end being applying the evolutionary perspective. When writing about the subject of race, we race realists often place scare quotes around the word "mere," because race-deniers say that race is "merely a social construct," implying that it is somehow less significant or important than commonly believed. But those to whom Darwinian evolution explains everything about mankind also inspire scare quotes, believing as they do that man, not merely his physical body but his highest, noblest, most transcendent thoughts, his dreams, aspirations, and hopes, is "merely" the product of random mutation and natural selection.

Whether this view informs the authors' preference for the meritocracy I cannot say for sure, but their stated goal is to enhance "the potential for achievement by individuals." This is a fine goal within a particular nation that can handle it, such as America, but to make this a worldwide goal is not something one would expect of those who understand the reality of race, unless their worldview was one in which there was nothing higher than man, and the autonomy and happiness of each individual was considered the greatest good.

That said, by the looks of the opening statement, the book will be a tour de force through race realism, and I'm looking forward to reading the rest of it.

Next up: Chapter 1, "Race and the Law."