Racism and Breedism
I'd like to say a little something about racism. As an educated, white male, this is a difficult issue to talk about, since I am "part of the problem." How can I discuss a subject which I am incapable of understanding in an experiential way? This is an interesting question, but I'm going to sidestep it, if I can. I will limit my discussion to the purely theoretical as much as possible, and my conclusions will be hardly revolutionary. I just want to bring up an interesting comparison which I don't recall having seen before.
First of all, there is no question that human beings of all races are the same species. For organisms that reproduce by sexual reproduction, a species is defined by being able to reproduce with other members. Now that miscegenation laws are no longer the norm, we have seen that inter-racial unions are just as capable of producing perfectly normal children, both biologically and socially, as any kind of union. The historical (and I'm sorry to say, still lingering) antipathy towards inter-racial pairings among certain groups has no biological foundation.
My goal here is to undermine the rationale for racism. Since race is a genetic trait, that rationale pretends at being scientific and biological. In fact, racial differences in human beings are minute compared to how significant they could be. Of course, there are cultural differences between groups from various geographic regions, economic classes, cultural backgrounds, but those are independent of racial determinants.
Since human beings are all the same species yet there are still recognizable morphological differences between certain strains, the concept of races is basically a human-specific type of a subspecies. I'm no biologist, so someone can correct me if I'm wrong about this, but another kind of subspecies that people - particularly pet owners - might be more familiar with is that of different breeds.
Before I go about the comparison of race to breed, I should point out that I am using this analogy purely as an intuition pump - that is, a way of encouraging a person's intuition towards a certain conclusion.
The domestic dog is a single species as well, which is how it is possible to have mixed-breeds and mutts that are still capable of reproducing. Think for a moment about the amount of variation between different breeds of dog. Humans are practically uniform across the board, by comparison.
For example, I don't have the statistics offhand, but I think it's fair to say that difference in average height between major races isn't anymore than 10%, at the maximum. Skin shades may vary significantly, but every race has a pigmentation that is some kind of brown or tan.
On the other hand, according to www.dogbreedinfo.com the chihuahua has an average height of 6-9 inches and weight of 2-6 pounds. Great Pyrenees average about 27-32 inches and 100 pounds. That's about four times (400%) as tall and twenty-five times (2500%) as heavy. That's not even taking into account the variations in fur thickness and patterns, face, ear, paw and tail structures, and so on and so forth.
Imagine the intensity of prejudice that would exist if human beings had this much physical variation from race to race. Even the relatively isignificant variations of eye and nose structures and skin tone have led to centuries of violence and hatred. I just want to suggest that we're really not that different from one another, and that the hurdles we have to overcome to see the different races as essentially the same are nowhere near as monumental as they could have been.
First of all, there is no question that human beings of all races are the same species. For organisms that reproduce by sexual reproduction, a species is defined by being able to reproduce with other members. Now that miscegenation laws are no longer the norm, we have seen that inter-racial unions are just as capable of producing perfectly normal children, both biologically and socially, as any kind of union. The historical (and I'm sorry to say, still lingering) antipathy towards inter-racial pairings among certain groups has no biological foundation.
My goal here is to undermine the rationale for racism. Since race is a genetic trait, that rationale pretends at being scientific and biological. In fact, racial differences in human beings are minute compared to how significant they could be. Of course, there are cultural differences between groups from various geographic regions, economic classes, cultural backgrounds, but those are independent of racial determinants.
Since human beings are all the same species yet there are still recognizable morphological differences between certain strains, the concept of races is basically a human-specific type of a subspecies. I'm no biologist, so someone can correct me if I'm wrong about this, but another kind of subspecies that people - particularly pet owners - might be more familiar with is that of different breeds.
Before I go about the comparison of race to breed, I should point out that I am using this analogy purely as an intuition pump - that is, a way of encouraging a person's intuition towards a certain conclusion.
The domestic dog is a single species as well, which is how it is possible to have mixed-breeds and mutts that are still capable of reproducing. Think for a moment about the amount of variation between different breeds of dog. Humans are practically uniform across the board, by comparison.
For example, I don't have the statistics offhand, but I think it's fair to say that difference in average height between major races isn't anymore than 10%, at the maximum. Skin shades may vary significantly, but every race has a pigmentation that is some kind of brown or tan.
On the other hand, according to www.dogbreedinfo.com the chihuahua has an average height of 6-9 inches and weight of 2-6 pounds. Great Pyrenees average about 27-32 inches and 100 pounds. That's about four times (400%) as tall and twenty-five times (2500%) as heavy. That's not even taking into account the variations in fur thickness and patterns, face, ear, paw and tail structures, and so on and so forth.
Imagine the intensity of prejudice that would exist if human beings had this much physical variation from race to race. Even the relatively isignificant variations of eye and nose structures and skin tone have led to centuries of violence and hatred. I just want to suggest that we're really not that different from one another, and that the hurdles we have to overcome to see the different races as essentially the same are nowhere near as monumental as they could have been.
posted by Matthew at 2:47 PM
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