Are there human Races?
One of the touchiest subjects in human evolutionary biology —o r human biology in general — is the question of whether there are human races. Back in the bad old days, it was taken for granted that the answer was not only “yes,” but that there was a ranking of races (invariably done by white biologists), with Caucasians on top, Asians a bit lower, and blacks invariably on the bottom. The sad history of biologically based racism has been documented in many places, including Steve Gould’s book The Mismeasure of Man (yes, I know it’s flawed).
But from that sordid scientific past has come a backlash: the subject of human races, or even the idea that they exist, has become Taboo. And this Despite the Palpable morphological Differences between human groups — differences that MUST be based on Genetic Differences and Would, if seen in Other species, lead to their classification as either Races or Subspecies (the terms are pretty interchangeable in biology). Racial delimitation could, critics say, lead to a resurgence of racism, racial profiling, or even eugenics.
So do races exist? The answer of Jan Sapp, a biology professor at York University in Toronto, is a firm “no”, as given in his new American Scientistpiece “Race finished,” a review of two new books on human races (Race?: Debunking a Scientific Myth by Ian Tattersall and Rob DeSalle and Race and the Genetic Revolution: Science, Myth, and Culture, edited by Sheldon Krimsky and Kathleen Sloan). As Sapp notes, and supports his conclusion throughout the review:
Although biologists and cultural anthropologists long supposed that human races—genetically distinct populations within the same species—have a true existence in nature, many social scientists and geneticists maintain today that there simply is no valid biological basis for the concept. The consensus among Western researchers today is that human races are sociocultural constructs.
Well, if that’s the consensus, I am an outlier. I do think that human races exist in the sense that biologists apply the term to animals, though I don’t think the genetic differences between those races are profound, nor do I think there is a finite and easily delimitable number of human races. Let me give my view as responses to a series of questions. I discuss much of this in chapter 8 of WEIT.
What are races?
In my own field of evolutionary biology, races of animals (also called “subspecies” or “ecotypes”) are morphologically distinguishable populations that live in allopatry (i.e. are geographically separated). There is no firm criterion on how much morphological difference it takes to delimit a race. Races of mice, for example, are described solely on the basis of difference in coat color, which could involve only one or two genes.
Under that criterion, are there human Races?
Yes. As we all know, there are morphologically different groups of people who live in different areas, though those differences are blurring due to recent innovations in transportation that have led to more admixture between human groups.
How many human races are there?
That’s pretty much unanswerable, because human variation is nested in groups, for their ancestry, which is based on evolutionary differences, is nested in groups. So, for example, one could delimit “Caucasians” as a race, but within that group there are genetically different and morphologically different subgroups, including Finns, southern Europeans, Bedouins, and the like. The number of human races delimited by biologists has ranged from three to over 30.
How different are the races genetically?
Not very different. As has been known for a while, DNA and other genetic analyses have shown that most of the variation in the human species occurs within a given human ethnic group, and only a small fraction between different races. That means that on average, there is more genetic difference between individuals within a race than there is between races themselves. Nevertheless, there are some genes (including the genes for morphological differences such as body shape, facial features, skin pigmentation, hair texture, and the like) that have not yet been subject to DNA sequencing, and if one looked only at those genes, one would obviously find more genetic differences. But since the delimitation of races has historically depended Not on the degree of underlying genetic differences but Only on the existence of Some genetic difference that causes morphological difference, the genetic similarity of races Does Not mean that they Don’t exist...."
