Feature: Reflections on Race Classification
The concept of race is a myth, argues a profesor whose theory would destroy our government's current race classification scheme.
When Tiger Woods won the Masters in the Spring of 1997, everyone was surprised not only because he was so young but also because he was the first 'black' to win the tournament. But, according to him, he is not 'black,' but the product of Caucasian, African, American Indian, Thai and Chinese ancestries.
When he appeared on the Oprah Winfrey Show, he said that he was a 'Cablinasian,' which he explained was a self-crafted acronym that reflected his ancestry. Another well-known personality who refused to be labeled as a member of only one 'race' is the actor, Teja Arboleda, who calls himself the 'Ethnic Man' because his father's father is Filipino-Chinese, his father's mother is African-American and Native American, his mother's father is Danish and his mother's mother is German.
Many articles were written to explain Tiger Woods' position on race. Some stressed the fact that there is today an explosion of 'interracial, interethnic and interreligious' marriages and that children resulting from these marriages make a mockery of age-old racial categories and attitudes. These children refuse to be pigeonholed into one of the neat oversimplified racial classifications used by government agencies. They refuse to be forced to identify with one parent or choose one racial group over the other. Their feelings and opinions about race run contrary to those of today's American society which focuses so heavily on race that it sees every problem in black or white, as in the O.J. Simpson trial for example. Many journalists have deplored the problems that confront the American society concerning the classification of its citizens. But, they have not realized that race classification of human beings is an impossible task because human races do not exist. If they did exist, we should have been able to classify easily mankind into mutually exclusive groups.
However, we have been unable to do so because we have never found specific characteristics that we could use to distinguish one group from another without ambiguity. The reason that there are no human races is that race formation requires reproductive isolation and we, humans, have never been isolated. In order to have races of animals or plants, we need to prevent the members of one group from breeding with the members of another group. This is, in part, what, we did to have the numerous races of dogs we have today. How did we shape a wolflike ancestor of the dog into descendants having so many different forms and qualities: a hunting dog such as the English setter, a sheep or cattle driving dog such as the Collie, a guard dog such as the Great Dane, a police dog such as a German Shepherd, or an ornamental dog that does absolutely nothing, such as the Yorkshire Terrier? 'Elementary, my Dear Watson.' We did this by artificial selection and complete reproductive isolation. At first, when we were strictly hunters, we kept all the dogs most useful in the hunt. This was a primitive type of selective breeding. When we domesticated sheep and cattle we needed dogs which could fight off predators, dogs which could run fast, which were intelligent and obedient. How did we get them? Obviously, at first, no dog had all these qualities. But within the whole population of dogs at the time, there were some which though not obedient, ran fast, others were obedient, but slow. Others were very intelligent, but not necessarily fast and obedient. Our ancestors thought about a way to produce dogs with all these three qualities. How about mating Rover who runs fast with Rosie who is very obedient? Hopefully, some of their puppies might be obedient and run fast though they might not run as fast as their father and might not be as obedient as their mother. Nevertheless on the whole these puppies would be very useful. These dogs would be even more useful if they were very intelligent. Mating these dogs with Ginger who is remarkably smart would give puppies which could be fast, obedient and smart. All these modern races of dogs will remain intact only as long as dog breeders keep them separated from each other. This isolation is absolutely necessary.
What would happen if a door was suddenly opened in the wall of isolation maintained by the dog breeder? Think about your favorite dog for whom you have opened the front door letting it go outside to answer a call of nature! It may encounter a dog of opposite sex and a different race. Sixty three days later you may be presented with a litter of puppies sharing some characteristics of your dog and some of the characteristics of the other contributor. As long as races of dogs are reproductively separated, we will be able to distinguish them. Every spaniel will look different from any golden retriever. Any labrador will look different from a foxhound. But this is not true with human beings.
As the case of Tiger Woods demonstrates, we have terrible problems when we attempt to classify people. The reason for that is that we, humans, have never been bred and selected by a super authority to produce special races of peoples. We have never been reproductively isolated. Within bounds we have been free to chose our mates. In some cases some of us traveled thousands of miles to find a spouse, sometimes thanks to the generosity of our governments when engaged in military action. Wars have always offered wide opportunities for breeding between the invades and the invaded. But even in peace time attraction between the sexes has often been enhanced by the difference in culture, customs and manners of the two individuals involved. Sometimes it even overcame the lack of common language. For reasons of this kind, we were never isolated in the past, we are not isolated today, and most likely we will not be isolated in the future.
The process of race formation, which was highly successful in the case of dogs and other domesticated animals, is continuously nipped in the bud in the case of humans because no group of us is ever reproductively isolated from any other. This explains why many of us, not just Tiger Woods or Teja Arboleda, cannot be pigeonholed in any group. It explains why human race classifications is an impossible task.
The concept of human races is a myth that originated centuries ago with the European voyages of discovery around the world. For centuries scholars attempted to classify mankind into groups, looking for distinctive physical, biochemical, and intellectual differences. In spite of their efforts, they were never able to find any. The history of their attempts is a history of constant failure. Yet they did not give up for a long time. When one method failed, they switched to another. They continued to cling to the concept that races in humans existed. It is only recently that scientists have abandoned such a concept.
However , the public at large still believes in the existence of human races as firmly as it believes in the existence of planets. But, it should not because, while planets are natural bodies that exist independently of mankind, human races exist only in the minds of humans. Race is, and has always been a social concept without biological foundation. It is time for the public at large to abandon an idea which has brought only harm to human relations.
Let us conclude by going back to Tiger Woods. The fact that he is an excellent golfer has nothing to do whatever with his 'race' classification which is a misplaced, illogical, and unscientific, social perception, but has everything to do with his right genetic make-up and his training as a golfer since he was a child.