A couple of things about that review of Sarich & Miele’s book.

1. Very clearly race or ethnic groups do have a biological basis. Dr Neil Risch has found that small genetic differences have evolved between races
because of the geographic isolation of generations of sub-Saharan Africans, Caucasians, Asians, Pacific Islanders and Native Americans. (See, for example, Risch et al., Am. J. Hum. Genet. 76:268–275, 2005.)

Risch has shown that by analyzing DNA, can correctly
match an individual’s self-described race in 99.9 per cent of cases. In an interview he has also noted there is a greater chance, of incorrectly identifying an individual’s self-described gender.

2. Two groups that form distinct clusters are likely to exhibit different frequency distributions over various genes, leading to possible group differences.

Two groups that form distinct clusters are likely to exhibit different frequency distributions over various genes, leading to group differences.

This leads us to two very distinct possibilities in human genetic variation:

Hypothesis 1: (the PC mantra) The only group differences that exist between the clusters (races) are innocuous and superficial, for example related to skin color, hair color, body type, etc.

Hypothesis 2: (the dangerous one) Group differences exist which might affect important (let us say, deep rather than superficial) and measurable characteristics, such as cognitive abilities, personality, athletic prowess, etc.

Note H1 is under constant revision, as new genetically driven group differences (e.g., particularly in disease resistance) are being discovered. According to the mantra of H1 these must all (by definition) be superficial differences.

A standard argument against H2 is that the 50k years during which groups have been separated is not long enough for differential natural selection to cause any group differences in deep characteristics. I find this argument quite naive, given what we know about animal breeding and how evolution has affected the (ever expanding list of) “superficial” characteristics. Many genes are now suspected of having been subject to strong selection over timescales of order 5k years or less.

The predominant view among social scientists is that H1 is obviously correct and H2 obviously false. However, this is mainly wishful thinking. Official statements by the American Sociological Association and the American Anthropological Association even endorse the view that race is not a valid biological concept, which is clearly incorrect.

The predominant view among social scientists is that H1 is obviously correct and H2 obviously false. However, this is mainly wishful thinking. Official statements by the American Sociological Association and the American Anthropological Association even endorse the view that race is not a valid biological concept, which is clearly incorrect.

It is important to note that any group differences are statistical in nature and do not imply anything about particular individuals. Rather than rely on the scientifically unsupported claim that we are all equal, it would be better to emphasize that we all have inalienable human rights regardless of our abilities or genetic makeup.

If groups have, on average, different results though then this can lead to resentment. Particularly, if it is assumed that everyone is born equal. If you assume that then inequality must be due to unfairness or discrimination.

Steven Pinker and others have pointed this out, in terms of the Armenian Jews, the Chinese in Malaysia, or Indians in Kenya/Uganda.

Also, the blank slate assumption has been central to some of the Marxist ideologies that lead to massacres, such as the Kulaks under Stalin, Mao’s ‘Cultural Revolution’ and Pol Pot’s ‘Year Zero’.

William Saletan has recently discussed the problems with collecting test scores by race and focussing on the ‘achievement gap’. By doing this, research into the cause of the gap (including that by Jensen & Rushton which you attempt to disiss with name calling) is unavoidable.

Most working evolutionary biologists probably feel, understandably, that they have better things to do (i.e. doing science) than engage cultural anthropologists and these types of critiques.

I’m all about bad faith, because I tell people all the time that truth is relative but I totally think I’m right. (Actually, I think I’m an ironist when maybe I’m just delusional.)

But I see Gray in good faith trying to understand that he doesn’t have the weaponry to fight a war about what truth is; noticing that having those sorts of fights is an inevitable consequence of the structure of truth claims; and sort of gamely trying to referee without irrelevantly taking sides. Am I right about what he’s doing, and is that an enterprise with which you have any sympathy?

By the way, “bad faith” the way you use it is a product of the version of existentialism that was the last gasp of the greco-euro-american philosophical tradition’s attempt to discover the nature of absolute truth. So it looks like it makes sense only as a claim to that sort of truth, as a way of ‘unmasking’ inauthentic truth positions. Is that what you meant?

This does not mean they do not stigmatize and one-up each other based on appearance, including skin color, and a whole bunch of other junk. No paradise here, just a different way to do hell that only looks better because we don’t know what to look for. Stuart Hall gets at this elegantly when he talks about becoming “black” when he got off the plane from Jamaica in London. That whole way of thinking was foreign to him and to Jamaicans in general until, he says, the ’70s. However, he also talks about the consequences growing up of being the darkest-skinned member of his own family.

E.g.: “But the very notion of culture is an artifact created by bracketing Nature off. Cultures – different or universal – do not exist, any more than Nature does. There are only natures-cultures…” *We Have Never Been Modern* (1993).

I think we agree about this, although it’s hard to tell since you’re apparently correcting me for agreeing with you and amplifying on a tangent.

I don’t think Jon Marks, let alone any “humanists” are dismissing the “threholdness” of some kinds of evolutionary changes. As far as the “stability” of racial categories goes, that’s the problem. The racists think “races” have existed, in some way, forever, through time and space. But (a) “races” as they are now conceived by many people, are actually *socially constructed* categories, which don’t necessarily correspond to biological ones. This is why most anthropologists(and many others), don’t believe there are any such things as biological “races”. If you want to test the reality of this, think of the “racial” categories you know, then take a trip to, say, Brazil(I have relatives by marriage there), and ask Brazilians what *they* think “racial” categories are. You might be surprised. This is another reason why anthropologists(and others) don’t think biological races exist.

This is *aside* from actual evolutionary changes that take place, all the time, among all groups of people. But since people tend to mix with other people over time(although the most adjacent groups are the *most* likely to exchange genes), these evolutionary changes can spread from one population to another, just through gene exchange. This is especially true nowadays, when lots of people travel or end up living somewhere other than where they were born. What JOn seems to be saying is, that creationistsx obviously have no “science” behind their beliefs, despite their claims(and they do make them). But those he calls “scientific racists” or other “ideologues” who jump onto the bandwagon of “Darwinism”, *claim* they have science on their side. I don’t happen to think they do. And this is a *belief*, but it’s based on my understanding of evolution and the way people actually act. Call it “politically correct” thinking if you will, and I make no claim that it’s “scientifically right”. But it’s odd that Dr. Marks has come to conclusions that are similar to mind, and he’s a trained biological anthropologist.

Just some food for thought,
Anne G

Nevertheless, for good humanists good science is a problem, because its operations may produce inconvenient facts like the superior aerodynamics of airplane wings over a nice qalicheh.

Thinking along with science, in the current state of the art there is robust confidence about evolutionary variability between individuals and within groups. Under the correct conditions, those variations become thresholdy and you’ve got an anthropologist rather than a pygmy chimp. Pause for some complications as we consider the flipping operations of Hox genes.

Humans are not exempt from this way evolutionary biology works. It’s therefore true that in this story it is disturbingly possible to think of the thresholds as racial thresholds and the variations in question as better/worse or higher/lower ones. Those would have to be cultural judgments, however, because all good scientific evolution wants to ‘talk’ about is whether you can get that seed cracked with your beak, buddy.

Another disturbing thing about this discussion is that the hypothesis of stable human racial variation has not been dismissed a priori as a tenet of humanist faith. Let’s look, the good scientist says; the racists could be right (because they’re right, not because they’re racists). Science has no way to tell us that’s not a question we should ask or answer, as Weber said in his nicely decentering essay. E.g. it could be that white people are, for reasons of separate situated evolution and thus by racial destiny, clueless ethnocentrists and environmental scourges; or at least so much trouble to train up in those respects that it would be more efficient just to dust ‘em.

But good scientists want to answer the question correctly, not prejudicially. Humanism is a prejudice and science is not a humanism, but science does have an ethic that works for us here. Because fortunately, the way human population dynamics have worked none of the conditions for stable racial variation have been met. Unless one has an axe to grind and an ideologically selective approach to data. Which is not good science.

First, “Bad” does not seem to distinguish between professional judgments and personal feelings. It’s not about “people I don’t like” – which is obviously a clumsy rhetorical device to de-legitimize my points. As I said, I like Vince Sarich; I even like Henry Harpending. This is about their ideas, and specifically about their ideas as ostensible spokesmen for evolution.

Second, “Bad” seems to suggest that “That was then, this is now” in spite of the evidence I and other respondents have adduced that scientific racism is very much a living issue. The question I raised is, Is it worse than creationism? My point is that as long as Darwinism is tethered to racism, it is burdened by racism, and it should be a higher priority of Darwinism to sever that connection. In denying the problem, as “Bad” does, we guarantee that the association can remain. I don’t see how Darwinism is served by doing so.

What I am suggesting is that neither creationism nor scientific racism is good, but that as a scholar and citizen (and an anthropologist), I would rather be perceived as being “soft” on creationism than as being “soft” on racism. Evolutionary biology should not be maintained as an intellectual space where racism can be allowed to flourish. And if we allow it to be, then we can’t really be surprised if people gravitate to non-racist alternatives. They have enough reasons for being anti-evolution, we don’t have to give them more.

Finally, when people rant about a “substantive issue of scientific validity” in this context, it is usually an indication that they are preparing to brandish something like Phil Rushton’s (whom I hear is also very nice, although I’ve never met him) data that show that the average IQ of sub-Saharan Africans is 70, i.e., indicative of mild retardation. Again, I’ve written a little bit about this. I apologize again for this, but here is a review essay recently out, if anyone is interested, from the Encyclopedia of Race and Racism: http://personal.uncc.edu/jmarks/pubs/Enc%20race%20Sci%20Racism%20Hist.pdf

There *is* such a thing as evolution. It goes on all the time, every day, even as we speak. And it can be measured — scientifically, in various ways. It can even be observed, indirectly, by scientist and nonscientist alike. Every time a mutation turns up in some organism, that is evolution in action. But none of you need to have this repeated to you. And it has nothing to do with belief or nonbelief in a deity, as Dawkins and some others seem to be implying. It is *this* that I think anthropologists(and scientists of other kinds) ought to be repeating, over and over and over again, to the Dawkins types of the world(though they probably won’t believe it), to the creationists(they won’t believe it either), and to the “general public”, some of whom probably will come to understand this. Eventually. That is the only way scientific ignorance can be overcome.
Anne G

Wrinkle: Albright did have a theory of history and it was…evolutionary! (see his From the Stone Age to Christianity). In some vague and ramified way he got it from Hegel, whose dialectic culminated in…Christianity.

What about Evolutionism vs. Creationism? I think our antinomy’s fallen and can’t get up. For Hegel and Albright at least, a progress-based morphology of history was the best way to smuggle a Christian teleology into a respectably empirical model of how things happen.

Maybe one reason Creationism is so marginal to respectable scholarship is that Evolutionism stole its place as teleology centuries ago.

Because if he didn’t frame things in that manner, what would he have left? A bunch of random anecdotes about people he doesn’t like, most in bygone eras, that’s neither particular representative nor comprehensive. and none of which has the least bit of bearing on any substantive issue of scientific validity.

I sure hope this slipshod method isn’t indicative of how your scholarship proceeds. And I hope the bizarre free-associative transition from the third to fourth paragraph isn’t indicative of your writing or thinking.

There is a big difference between being able to point to a small number of scholars in some field that represent some marginal position, and showing a position to be a mainstream school of thought in that discipline. Blurring the difference between these two very different kind of arguments is a time-honored rhetorical strategy for misrepresenting scientific consensus (popular, for example, among both creationists and global warming deniers). I want to give you the benefit of the doubt that this is *not* what you are trying to do: can you give us some compelling evidence that scientific racism is a *mainstream* school of thought in *modern* evolutionary biology?

If you can’t, then my question is: of what significance are the views of someone like Harpending for understanding the role of scientific racism in evolutionary biology? After all, there are a few creationist physicists, but that doesn’t mean that physics, as a discipline, provides support for creationism.