Biological Concept Of Race Research Articles

The spectre of race in American medicine

Controversies and debates surrounding race have long been a fixture in American medicine. In the past, the biological concept of race—the idea that race is biologically determined and meaningful—has served...

Theodosius Dobzhansky and the genetic race concept

The use of ‘race’ as a proxy for population structure in the genetic mapping of complex traits has provoked controversy about its legitimacy as a category for biomedical research, given its social and political connotations. The controversy has reignited debates among scientists and philosophers of science about whether there is a legitimate biological concept of race. This paper examines the genetic race concept as it developed historically in the work of Theodosius Dobzhansky from the 1930s to 1950s. Dobzhansky’s definitions of race changed over this time from races as ‘arrays of forms’ or ‘clusters’ in 1933–1939, to races as genetically distinct geographical populations in 1940–1946, to races as genetically distinct ‘Mendelian populations’ in 1947–1955. Dobzhansky responded to nominalist challenges by appealing to the biological reality of race as a process. This response came into tension with the object ontology of race that was implied by Dobzhansky’s increasingly holistic treatment of Mendelian populations, a tension, the paper argues, he failed to appreciate or resolve.

Blood-Speak: Ward Churchill and the Racialization of American Indian Identity

After publishing a controversial essay on 9/11, Professor Ward Churchill's scholarship and personal identity were subjected to a hostile public investigation. Evidence that Churchill had invented his American Indian identity created vehemence among many professors and tribal leaders who dismissed Churchill because he was not a “real Indian.” This essay examines the discourses of racial authenticity employed to distance Churchill from tribal communities and American Indian scholarship. Responses to Churchill's academic and ethnic self-identification have retrenched a racialized definition of tribal identity defined by a narrow concept of blood. Employing what I term blood-speak, Churchill's opponents harness a biological concept of race that functions as an instrument of exclusion and a barrier to coalitional politics.

Rehabilitating a biological notion of race? A response to Sesardic

The point Sesardic (Biol Philos 25: 143–162, 2010) makes about the possibility of distinguishing groups for which there is a lot of within-group variation is not sufficient to rehabilitate a biological concept of race. In this note, I sketch a number of issues that quickly arise once we delve more deeply into the relevant scientific knowledge, concepts, methods, and questions for inquiry.

Race: a social destruction of a biological concept

It is nowadays a dominant opinion in a number of disciplines (anthro- pology, genetics, psychology, philosophy of science) that the taxonomy of human races does not make much biological sense. My aim is to challenge the arguments that are usually thought to invalidate the biological concept of race. I will try to show that the way ''race'' was defined by biologists several decades ago (by Dobzhansky and others) is in no way discredited by conceptual criticisms that are now fashionable and widely regarded as cogent. These criticisms often arbitrarily burden the biological category of race with some implausible connotations, which then opens the path for a quick eliminative move. However, when properly understood, the biological notion of race proves remarkably resistant to these deconstructive attempts. Moreover, by analyzing statements of some leading con- temporary scholars who support social constructivism about race, I hope to dem- onstrate that their eliminativist views are actually in conflict with what the best contemporary science tells us about human genetic variation.

Current Views of European Anthropologists on Race: Influence of Educational and Ideological Background

ABSTRACT Significant differences in views on race (once a core anthropological concept) occur between scientists from different countries. In light of the ongoing race debate, we present the concept's current status in Europe. On three occasions in 2002–03, we surveyed European anthropologists' opinions toward the biological race concept. The participants were asked whether they agreed that there are biological races within the species Homo sapiens. A dependence was sought between the type of response and several factors. Three of these factors—country of academic education, discipline, and age—were found to be significant in differentiating the replies. Respondents educated in Western Europe, physical anthropologists, and middle‐aged persons reject race more frequently than respondents educated in Eastern Europe, people in other branches of science, and those from both younger and older generations. The survey shows that the views of anthropologists on race are sociopolitically (ideologically) influenced and highly dependent on education. [Keywords: human races, race concept, physical anthropology, Europe]

Understanding race and human variation: Why forensic anthropologists are good at identifying race

American forensicanthropologists uncritically accepted the biological race concept from classic physical anthropology and applied it to methods of human identification. Why and how the biological race concept might work in forensic anthropology was contemplated by Sauer (Soc Sci Med 34 1992 107-111), who hypothesized that American forensic anthropologists are good at what they do because of a concordance between social race and skeletal morphology in American whites and blacks. However, Sauer also stressed that this concordance did not validate the classic biological race concept of physical anthropology that there are a relatively small number of discrete types of human beings. Results from Howells (Papers of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology 67 1973 1-259; Papers of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology 79 1989 1-189; Papers of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology 82 1995 1-108) and others using craniometric and molecular data show strong geographic patterning of human variation despite overlap in their distributions. However, Williams et al. (Curr Anthropol 46 2005 340-346) concluded that skeletal morphology cannot be used to accurately classify individuals. Williams et al. cited additional support from Lewontin (Evol Biol 6 1972 381-398), who analyzed classic genetic markers. In this study, multivariate analyses of craniometric data support Sauer's hypothesis that there are morphological differences between American whites and blacks. We also confirm significant geographic patterning in human variation but also find differences among groups within continents. As a result, if biological races are defined by uniqueness, then there are a very large number of biological races that can be defined, contradicting the classic biological race concept of physical anthropology. Further, our results show that humans can be accurately classified into geographic origin using craniometrics even though there is overlap among groups.

Leaving Few Bones Unturned: Recent Work on Repatriation by Osteologists

In this essay, I consider recent osteological and bioarchaeological contributions to literature on Native American repatriation given the heightened visibility of theoretical and methodological conflicts within physical anthropology over race and race determination. Contestations between researchers, particularly at the osteological nexus with the traditional biological race concept, have intersected with repatriation, both in and out of the anthropological literature, and in federal district court. The publications reviewed here exemplify this emerging multiplicity of practice in osteology and bioarchaeology, and therefore, in toto, incisively portray the complexities that repatriation has brought to skeletal inquiry in the United States.

Biological conceptions of race and the motivation to cross racial boundaries.

The present studies demonstrate that conceiving of racial group membership as biologically determined increases acceptance of racial inequities (Studies 1 and 2) and cools interest in interacting with racial outgroup members (Studies 3-5). These effects were generally independent of racial prejudice. It is argued that when race is cast as a biological marker of individuals, people perceive racial outgroup members as unrelated to the self and therefore unworthy of attention and affiliation. Biological conceptions of race therefore provide justification for a racially inequitable status quo and for the continued social marginalization of historically disadvantaged groups.

Creeks and Southerners: Biculturalism on the Early American Frontier

Creeks and Southerners examines the families created by the hundreds of intermarriages between Creek women and European American men in the southeastern United States during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Called Indian countrymen at the time, these intermarried white men moved into their wives' villages in what is now Florida, Georgia, and Alabama. By doing so, they obtained new homes, familial obligations, occupations, and identities. At the same time, however, they maintained many of their ties to white American society and as a result entered the historical record in large numbers. Creeks and Southerners studies the ways in which many children of these relationships lived both as Creek Indians and white Southerners. By carefully altering their physical appearances, choosing appropriate clothing, learning multiple languages, embracing maternal and paternal kinsmen and kinswomen, and balancing their loyalties, the children of intermarriages found ways to bridge what seemed to be an unbridgeable divide. Many became prominent Creek political leaders and warriors, played central roles in the lucrative deerskin trade, built inns and taverns to cater to the needs of European American travelers, frequently moved between colonial American and Native communities, and served both European American and Creek officials as interpreters, assistants, and travel escorts. The fortunes of these bicultural children reflect the changing nature of Creek-white relations, which became less flexible and increasingly contentious throughout the nineteenth century as both Creeks and Americans accepted a more rigid biological concept of race, forcing their bicultural children to choose between identities.

On the Concept of Biological Race and Its Applicability to Humans

Biological research on race has often been seen as motivated by or lending credence to underlying racist attitudes; in part for this reason, recently philosophers and biologists have gone through great pains to essentially deny the existence of biological human races. We argue that human races, in the biological sense of local populations adapted to particular environments, do in fact exist; such races are best understood through the common ecological concept of ecotypes. However, human ecotypic races do not in general correspond with ‘folk’ racial categories, largely because many similar ecotypes have multiple independent origins. Consequently, while human natural races exist, they have little or nothing in common with ‘folk’ races.

Against the odds: scholars who challenged racism in the twentieth century

Over the course of the past century the struggle against racism took many forms, from petitions and lawsuits to sit-ins and marches. This book records the testimony of eleven scholar-activists who challenged prevailing racial beliefs and practices while engaging in resistance and reform. Included in this group are nine African Americans (Kenneth B. Clark, St. Clair Drake, W. E. B. Du Bois, John Hope Franklin, John Glover Jackson, Hylan Lewis, Frank Snowden Jr., and Robert C. Weaver); one Sri Lankan who lives and works in Britain (A. Sivanandan); and one white American (Herbert Aptheker). Most of these men began their careers before World War II, in a time when biological conceptions of race dominated public policy and severely limited opportunities available to people of color. By struggling with these impediments to their personal and professional lives, each in his own way helped redefine race as the social and cultural construct it has always been. To highlight both the similarities and the differences in their experiences, the editors asked each of the subjects the same set of general questions about formative influences, major obstacles, and principal accomplishments. These were followed by more narrowly focused queries about specific writings. Most of the responses were recorded on tape as interviews; several were submitted as written reminiscences; and one, the essay on Du Bois, was the shared recollection of two associates who had worked closely with him for many years.

The Reality of Race: Contra Biondi and Rickards

The article examines the paper by Biondi and Rickards entitled "The Scientific Fallacy of the Human Biological Concept of Race," published in this issue, and presents evidence supporting the scientific utility of race as a conceptual scientific tool. He shows how modern genetic research is validating the findings of physical anthropologists as to the identification of racial groups and their varying degrees of kinship.

The Scientific Fallacy of the Human Biological Concept of Race

Key Words: Physical anthropology, forensic anthropology, evolution, Linnaeus, Darwin, Broca, Blumenbach, Carleton Coon, Cavalli-Sforza, F. Boas, Margaret Mead, Ashley Montagu, R. Lewontin, S. J. Gould, L. Lieberman, dismantling race, nazi-fascist racism. A Wrong Approach Modern science try to understand the phenomena of nature through the formulation of hypotheses and their subsequent empirical control by comparing predictions and observations. If a scientific hypothesis receive the empirical validation then it become part of the construction of a paradigm; otherwise, the hypothesis must be simply rejected if falsified by experimental results (Popper 1934; Kragh 1987). That was not the case of the construction of the anthropological dogma of human biological concept of race. Physical anthropology originated as an independent scientific discipline during the eighteenth century, and has been affected by an epistemological error from the very beginning. In fact, the existence of races was considered the basic principle of physical anthropology instead of just being a hypothesis amenable to empirical investigation, and therefore for about two centuries physical anthropologists refused to be led by the only criterion of truth that natural sciences recognize, namely empirical validation. However, all scholars who dedicated themselves to that futile classificatory exercise unintentionally contributed to demonstrate that they were involved in a false paradigm, because of the problematic aspects in explaining human biological variability using the taxonomic sub-specific category of race. This difficulty in identifying human races was proved by the high number of subdivisions suggested, which included two to sixty-three races, and differences in the traditional definition of race: Race as synonymous of sub-species, ethnic group, population, and so on (Darwin 1871; Count 1950; Biasutti 1967; Could 1981; Brace 1982). Why did so many physical anthropologists refuse to test the hypothesis of whether human biological variability could be neatly subdivided according to the taxonomic sub-specific categories of race? Why did so many physical anthropologists accept the racial paradigm? Three main constrains, two external and one internal to the scientific process, contributed to this serious error in scientific logic. First, the history of the cultural context from which physical anthropology originated. Second, the history of the social context in which physical anthropologists formulated the concept of race. Third, the broad process of construction of theories within Biological Sciences. The Cultural Context which Conditioned Physical Anthropologists The first reason emerged from a western culture idea that biological and ethnic diversity is very ancient. This concept developed in Egypt during the second millennium B.C., and represented a deep change in perspective. In fact, before then not only humanity but the whole world was considered as a unit. The Egyptians subdivided humankind into four groups, one of which was made up by themselves. They in fact called themselves Remet which simply means man. In their paintings of the fifteenth century B.C. they were portraid in red, while the Asiatics named Aamu in yellow, the populations of sub-Saharan Africa, the Nubians named Nehesyu, in black, and the Libyans, as well as some western populations named Tjemehu, with yellow hair and blue eyes (Bresciani et al. 1993; Gardiner 1947). Still in ancient times, the father of history Herodotus (490/480430/420 B.C.) gave a physical description to a great number of people in his Historie, and Pliny the Elder (23-79) in his Naturalis historic explained physical differences between Africans and Europeans as a direct consequence of climate. After Herodotus all long-distance travellers, up to the origin of physical anthropology, left descriptions of the peoples they met (Daumas 1957; Duchet 1971; Geymonat 1973). …

Race Unreal?

Comments on the paper 'The Scientific Fallacy of the Human Biological Concept of Race,' by Gianfranco Biondi and Olga Rickards, published in the Summer 2002 issue of The Mankind Quarterly. Biondi and Rickards' reliance on the concept of the genetic continuity of all human population to invalidate the race theory; Genetic distances between dozens of human populations; Evidence of group differences in heritable traits.

Lessons from the Philosophy of Race in Mexico

Mexican philosophy has been an especially active site of thinking about race, leaving a considerable conceptual and terminological legacy in, e.g., the concepts of 'La raza cosmica', "indigenismo," and the claim that mestizaje can eliminate racism. Despite this legacy, the precise conceptions of race deployed by Mexican philosophers in the first half of the twentieth century have often been poorly understood. Consequently, the specifically racial components in their work have been frequently dismissed on the grounds that it was unscientific, irresponsible, and/or sloppy. I hope to show that with a sufficiently rich understanding of at least the seminal works, many-though certainly not all-of these criticisms can be blunted. Historically, race has generally been understood as a somatological category identifiable by morphological differences. That is, race was thought to be something that picks out physical features that mark off distinctive natural kinds. Although the word "race" can be traced back to 1580,1 the twentieth century's conceptual heritage is more closely tied to the developments of nineteenth century anthropology and biology. In particular, racial differences have often been thought to reflect underlying biological differences.2 It is hardly necessary to point out that current scholarly conceptions of race usually treat the biological concept as "artifactual" or "error-theoretic," that is, a socially constructed category that falsely purports to have biological underpinnings. Understanding race as artifactual has been a useful tool for illuminating how perceptions about membership in a racial group are and have been subject to numerous factors entirely disconnected from the ostensive source of racial classification, and how the categories themselves have been subject to variable, oftentimes pernicious human interests. Our interest, however, is in earlier biological conceptions of race. In the case of Mexican philosophers, their work was frequently influenced by the state of French Biology. The science of genetics, which has provided much of the purported foundation for thinking about race, was not unified until well into the twentieth century. Consequently, tremendous variations can be found in the biological conceptions that funded various philosophical treatments of race. Attention to this fact can go a long way towards removing the apparently embarrassing or contradictory race-based claims of various Mexican philosophers. Although our primary focus will be on two of the more unusual theories of race in Mexican philosophy, those of the positivist Francisco Bulnes and the anti-positivist Jose Vasconcelos, the instability of biological conceptions of race had more far-reaching consequences for the kinds of explanations of social theories proposed by subsequent generations of Mexican philosophers. I will briefly remark on some of these consequences for later figures like Samuel Ramos and Leopoldo Zea. As a group, these four figures represent the core of Mexican philosophical thought on race in the first half of the twentieth century. Bulnes and the Agrarian Races Like so many things in Mexican philosophy, the history of philosophical racial discourse has a natural starting point in the late nineteenth century. Racial discourse among Mexican intellectuals was tied to the rise of positivism, the adoption of Spencerian Social Darwinism, and in some interpretations, to class interests.3 An excellent example of racial thinking fully embedded in the intellectual currents of the day is the book El porvenir de las naciones hispanoamericanas, written by Francisco Bulnes (1849-1924). Published in 1899, it gives us a convenient place to begin our reflections on race in Mexican philosophical thought. Perhaps best known for being one of the original five cientificos during the Porfiriato, Bulnes was in many ways typical of Mexican intellectuals at the turn of the century. A contemporary of Justo Sierra's, Bulnes believed that science ought to applied to the problems of governance. …

Anthropological approaches to ethnicity and conflict in Europe and beyond

AbstractIt is widely assumed that the spread of civil wars since the late 1980s has been due to ethnic loyalties resurfacing after the cold war. The paper argues that this is a misleading and misinformed point of view. The academic discipline which has been most important in developing the concept of ethnicity is anthropology. Few anthropologists understand ethnicity as something that explains conflict in itself, and most perceive it as an aspect of social interaction rather than a set of cultural characteristics associated with a particular group. Anthropologists reject the idea that ethnicity is given in nature, although they recognise that its power is linked to the fact that is can appear to be so. Various models and theories of ethnicity are discussed under the headings of essentialist, instrumentalist and relationalist approaches. The paper ends by discussing some of the specific issues raised by anthropological studies among populations in Europe and North America, and draws attention to the dangers of conflating ethnicity with biological conceptions of race.

The Persistent Power of "Race" in the Cultural and Political Economy of Racism

Historically, anthropology has occupied a central place in the construction and reconstruction of race as both an intellectual device and a social reality. Critiques of the biological concept of race have led many anthropologists to adopt a “no-race” posture and an approach to intergroup difference highlighting ethnicity-based principles of classification and organization. Often, however, the singular focus on ethnicity has left unaddressed the persistence of racism and its invidious impact on local communities, nation-states, and the global system. Within the past decade, anthropologists have revitalized their interest in the complex and often covert structures and dynamics of racial inequality. Recent studies shed light on race’s heightened volatility on contemporary sociocultural landscapes, the racialization of ethno-nationalist conflicts, anthropology’s multiple traditions of antiracism, and intranational as well as international variations in racial constructions, including the conventionally neglected configurations of whiteness.

The Persistent Power of 'Race' in the Cultural and Political Economy of Racism

Historically, anthropology has occupied a central place in the construction and reconstruction of race as both an intellectual device and a social reality. Critiques of the biological concept of race have led many anthropologists to adopt a “no-race” posture and an approach to intergroup difference highlighting ethnicity-based principles of classification and organization. Often, however, the singular focus on ethnicity has left unaddressed the persistence of racism and its invidious impact on local communities, nation-states, and the global system. Within the past decade, anthropologists have revitalized their interest in the complex and often covert structures and dynamics of racial inequality. Recent studies shed light on race’s heightened volatility on contemporary sociocultural landscapes, the racialization of ethno-nationalist conflicts, anthropology’s multiple traditions of antiracism, and intranational as well as international variations in racial constructions, including the conventionally neglected configurations of whiteness.

Racial identification in the context of prehistoric-historic biological continua: Examples from South Asia

The practice of ‘racial palaeontology’ disappeared 50 years ago with the fall of the biological race concept in systematics and population genetics. However, certain ethnic minorities claim close biological affinities with extinct (sometimes Pleistocene) populations. Forensic anthropologists may be involved in this issue through analyses of prehistoric and modern populations in circumstances where a biological continuum may exist. Skeletal evidence from South Asia is discussed.