The Race Myth: Why We Pretend Race Exists in America - Softcover

Graves, Joseph

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0452286581 ISBN 13: 9780452286580

Verlag: Penguin Publishing Group, 2005

Inhaltsangabe

“Graves’ integration of science and objective analysis with popular biological assumptions of race makes this an enlightening and provocative work.”—Booklist

DOES RACE AS WE KNOW IT REALLY EXIST?

Preeminent evolutionary biologist Joseph Graves proves once and for all that it doesn’t. Through accessible and compelling language, he makes the provocative argument that science cannot account for the radical categories used to classify people, and debunks ancient race-related fallacies that are still held as fact, from damaging medical profiles to misconceptions about sports. He explains why defining race according to skin tone or eye shape is woefully inaccurate, and how making assumptions based on these false categories regarding IQ, behavior, or predisposition to disease has devastating effects.

Demonstrating that racial distinctions are in fact social inventions, not biological truths, The Race Myth brings much-needed, sound science to one of America’s most emotionally charged debates.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Joseph L. Graves Jr. is one of the world’s leading evolutionary biologists. He is currently Professor & Associate Dean for Research at the Joint School of Nanoscience and Nanoengineering (JSNN) of North Carolina A&T State University and the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. He has appeared in multiple documentaries about race and his opinions have appeared in the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times. He is also the author of The Emperor’s New Clothes.

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Introduction:
The Problem, Simply Stated

The traditional concept of race as a biological fact is a myth. I am going to show you that nearly everything you think you know about race is a social construct. You donÆt have to be a racist to be wrong about what race is. That doesnÆt make the effects of a belief in race any less damaging, or the situation any less perilous. Most Americans still believe in the concept of race the way they believe in the law of gravityùthey believe in it without even knowing what it is they believe in.

If you ask the average American college student if biological races exist, most will say yes. In my classes, when I asked students to identify their own race, most couldnÆt be any more specific than a vague catchall like ôwhite.ö They couldnÆt say what the criteria are for membership in a racial group, and most believed that black, white, Asian, Hispanic, and American Indian are biological races. Some of them thought that every country has produced its own biological race.

A few students responded that races had existed since the beginning of time. I asked them if they meant 1980, when the universe began for them, or 19 billion years ago, in the big bang? Several had to think about it for a while. Some thought races had existed since the breakup of Pangaea, around 300 million years agoùwhich would have been tough, since humans didnÆt evolve until 299,999,999 years later! Some thought that races were formed in antiquity at about the time of the fall of the Tower of Babel, as described in the biblical book of Genesis. (Surprisingly, none related the curse of Ham as a source of modern human races.)

Many also believed that race determined intelligence quotient (IQ) and other personality traits, as well as sexual characteristics, athletic ability, and disease predisposition, following commonly held social stereotypes. When asked about intellect, most cited the superior performance of their Asian classmates in their science courses. When asked about sex, most stated that blacks had higher sexual appetites and larger genitals. When asked about athletic ability they again cited the superior performance of black basketball and football players. Finally, almost all agreed that sickle cell anemia, Tay-Sachs, and cystic fibrosis were all proof positive of the existence of racially defined disease.

These examples clearly show the prevailing ignorance that our society exhibits about the definitions and significance of human biological diversity, and its confusion with socially constructed races. In this book, IÆm going to show you in detail how to tell the difference, and why itÆs so important.

How We Got Here

It was the ultimate missed opportunity, with devastating consequences. The European colonists who founded the United States had a chance to start over with an egalitarian social order, but they blew it: They accepted the idea of racial hierarchy that was prevalent in Europe at the time. It was just too convenient: The socially constructed concept of race was a powerful tool that aided them in the conquest of the continent.

This concept allowed them to build a society in which superficial physical differences would be used to determine an individualÆs worth. It justified racism, the belief that groups were different in their very natures, and that these differences should be used to stratify society.

The colonists did not see themselves as racists, nor did many question their treatment of non-Europeans. They saw what they were doing as good, necessary, and even unavoidable. It is ironic that many of these people were outcasts from Europe, who came to the New World seeking religious freedom. Yet they brutally conquered, then imposed their civilization upon, the native people that they called Indians in the New World.

Because they believed that races were genetically different (although they didnÆt describe it in those terms), many saw the exploitation of the Indians and Africans as no different from the use of farm animals. For such thinkers, the fact that the Bible had no explicit proscription against slavery justified the importation of millions of slaves from the western shores of Africa to meet the growing needs of agricultural production in the colonies.

Even if we accept conservative estimates of the loss of life that resulted from the slave trade, it is still the greatest sustained act of genocide in the history of our species. Those who survived the passage to the New World were gradually transformed into a new biological and cultural population. They had been gathered from different ethnic groups along the western coast of Africa (Fula, Jolla, Mandinka, Manjago, Wolof, and many others); some were African spiritualists, some Islamic, and many of these groups spoke different languages. In America, they would be both genetically and culturally hybridized amongst themselves and with Europeans and Indians.

The economy of the English colonies, and in turn, that of the new American nation, was wedded to chattel slavery. The African descendents enslaved in America would be denigrated, exploited, tortured, and murdered. They would be culturally and scientifically relegated to the bottom of American society. They would be called a variety of names: nigger, mulatto, Nigra, and Negro.

Later, new groups of immigrants from Europe and Asia would arrive. Irish, Poles, Italians, Chinese, Japanese, and (eventually) virtually every nation of the world would send people, bringing both their genes and culture to America. The early pioneers had been predominantly Protestant; Catholics and Jews would later add to the American tapestry. These people would also be named: Paddies, Polacks, Wops, Chinks, Nips, and so forth.

Anglo-Saxon Europeans did not manage to create a racial state in their own image, although many tried hard to accomplish that goal. One, Madison Grant, would argue that the loss of so many Anglo-Saxon males in the Civil War led the country to allow in too many immigrants from non-Teutonic European countries, who were reproducing faster than the Anglo-Saxons. Another, General Francis Amasa Walker, actually stated that the idea of bringing forth sons and daughters who would have to compete with people who were clearly their inferiors had dulled the desires of Anglo- Saxons to have and rear children!

The anti-immigrationists thought that the great race was being destroyed both from within and without. Their thinking would lead to the formation of a large eugenics movement in the United States. Charles Benedict Davenport would become its chief executive officer, and his Eugenics Record Office would help enact laws that led to the sterilization of ten of thousands of Americans against their will.

Despite the efforts of the likes of Grant and Davenport, the Klan, and the segregationists, European Americans who once had sole dominion over AmericaÆs social and political life now wake up each day in a nation that has been both biologically and culturally hybridized. The founding fathers would not recognize the racial and social composition of todayÆs America.

TodayÆs Euro-American youth idolize Shaquille OÆNeal, look up to the great neurosurgeon Dr. Ben Carson, and read Toni Morrison. Thomas Jefferson would have never thought it possible that we could have both a secretary of state and a national security advisor of African-American ancestry.

However, we have paid dearly for the policies of racism, and are continuing to pay in a currency of despair, unfulfilled dreams, and blood. We paid in King PhilipÆs War, in the middle passage, on the cotton fields, in the masterÆs bedchamber, and along the underground railway. John Brown warned us we would pay further, and we saw the fulfillment of that terrible prophecy on the battlefields of the...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Penguin Publishing Group
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2005
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0452286581
• ISBN 13: 9780452286580
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 320
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: GPSR Kontakt; gpsr@libri.de; ; Europaallee 1; Bad Hersfeld; 36244; Deutschland