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Is Race Real?
To the Editors:
In his article “Refuting a Myth About Human Origins” (March–April), John Shea
repeats the assertion, often made by sociologists, that race is a discredited scientific
concept. I recently read a book by Nicholas Wade entitled Before the Dawn: Recovering
the Lost History of Our Ancestors (2006) in which he makes the case that race in indeed
a very sound scientific concept and a very important one. He defines race as most of us
understand it, that is, as the continent of origin of one’s ancestors. These are: Africa,
Australia and New Guinea, the Americas, East Eurasia and West Eurasia, where people
were isolated from other humans either by distance or by the Last Glacial Maximum.
By scientific, he means something that can be measured and determined with objective
accuracy. With modern methods of DNA analysis, not only can we now trace the
continent of one’s ancestors but even determine the location within that continent.
Race is an important concept because it has been found that different races respond in
different ways to drugs and medical procedures. Drugs that have been found very
effective in one race can be completely ineffective in another. This is not something that
we can ignore in our efforts to be politically correct.
Malcolm Johnson
Lapeer, MI
Dr. Shea responds:
An anthropologist who proposed using race as a serious way of describing human
variability would be laughed out of the profession—not for reasons of political
correctness, but because the idea displays a manifest ignorance of biology. More than
60 years ago, M. F. Ashley Montagu demolished the concept of “race” in his book,
Man’s Most Dangerous Myth: The Fallacy of Race (1945). Nevertheless, like many a
bad idea, the notion persists that there is some useful purpose in classifying humanity
into five, six or a dozen races. But it persists at the margins of anthropology, among
popular-science books and in the nonscientific imagination. Living humans share too
recent a common ancestor for there to be many deep-seated biological differences
among us. From an evolutionary standpoint, we are all Africans.
Race is folk taxonomy, not science. The variables used to organize it, such as skin color
and hair texture, are arbitrary choices. A case can be made that the concept of discrete
European, African, Asian and American races probably arose from the medieval theory
that variation in human behavior reflected imbalances in the four (white, black, yellow
and red) “humours.” A belief in discrete races might also have arisen from a shift from
overland travel by caravan to the use of ocean-going watercraft in the 15th century A.D.
Prior to this period, voyagers traveling overland and sailors making frequent landfalls
would have observed gradual changes in the appearance of the people they encountered.
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With longer oceanic voyages and less frequent landfalls, differences appeared more
stark, leading to categorical models of human variation, such as race. Tellingly, most
racial classifications of humans postdate this innovation in marine transportation.
Whatever their origins, racial classifications are not informed by prior knowledge or
compelling evidence that these physical characteristics are biologically significant.
Yes, there are geographic differences in human biology and, perhaps, in vulnerabilities
to particular diseases. But seeing these differences as meaningfully organized around
race is a distraction from the search for the actual social, economic and physiological
causes of these diseases.
Answer the following questions
In his book Before the Dawn N. Wade asserts
a) you can recover your origins thanks to DNA analysis
b) validates the idea that race is a sound scientific concept
c) confirms race in a discredited scientific concept
According to Wade, race developed because
a) people originated in different places
b) people interbreed
c) people were isolated in certain areas
According to M. Johnson, race is still an important concept because
a) it can be used to verify how different people reacts to drugs and medical
procedures
b) it is be acknowledged if you want to be politically correct
c) Wade explains so in his book
Dr. Shea
a) does not consider race a scientific concept
b) laughs at M. Johnson’s idea
c) maintains race a serious way of describing human variability
The concept of race is scientifically invalid because:
a) it doesn’t have any useful purpose
b) human beings share too recent a common ancestor to have biological differences
c) classification into five, six, or a dozen races isn’t agreed upon by the scientific
community
The concept of race may have arisen from:
a) medieval theory of the humors
b) humorous biological interpretations of the human behavior
c) travelling by caravan
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