The Race Problem

Abstract

THE analysis of factors contributing to popular judgment in discriminating between races, which appears in another column of this issue of NATURE (see p. 635), agreeing substantially with the views expressed by Prof. Julian Huxley in his Friday Evening discourse before the Royal Institution on March 27 (see NATURE, April 4, p. 570), also lends support to his contention that a serious effort should be made to put an end to the propagandist exploitation of pseudo-scientific inference, depending upon the use of the term ‘race’, in political and nationalist activities. It is problematic, however, whether any pronouncement following on an international inquiry, which Prof. Huxley suggests as a possible remedy, would be effective, whatever the course adopted to secure that it should be widely known and generally accepted. Apart from practical difficulties, which are considerable, but of course not insuperable, clearly such a pronouncement, if it is to go beyond the fact, which is patent, that scientific terminology is being abused, must be based upon some agreement as to the meaning of the term, of which it attempts to regulate the use. It is open to question whether such agreement could be attained at present among representative students of manstudents of man's structure, descent, heredity, varieties and distributioneven without entering upon the thorny problems of racial psychology and culture. If, however, the major objective of such an inquiry were the purely scientific aim of clarifying current ideas on race among anthropologists, even though it ended indecisively, or, as is not impossible, in a deadlock Germania contra mundum, it would clear the way, at present blocked, for rapid progress in racial studies. It might even be found desirable that a term of coinage now so debased should be eliminated entirely from scientific use. In the meantime, it is a function of science to expose ruthlessly on every occasion loose thinking and an inexact terminology; and perhaps, in this way, the pitfalls of ‘race’ can best be brought home to the man in the street.