PD2

The Concept of Race: Is Race Simply a Social Construct?
Under the pervasive influence of cultural norms which are designed to stabilize and legitimize multiracial societies, most people have come to understand race solely in terms of the superficial differences in appearance that distinguish human subgroups. By ignoring or minimizing racial differences, and by denigrating the concept of race, people can be led to believe that race is not meaningful, that the concept of race is chimerical and without substance, and that most of our ideas about race are in fact only social constructs. The aim of propagating this view of race is clear. Our well intentioned social engineers, civil authorities, and even the average citizen, desire to promote civility and good relations between the races in multiracial societies. They want to stress our similarities, minimize our differences, and emphasize how much human subgroups (races) have in common as a way of promoting stability under a form of social organization that is inherently unstable. As a result of such well meaning efforts, most people have come to accept that racial differences really are only skin deep, and that they merely extend to superficial differences in appearance. Yet, there is a strong and growing body of evidence in the biological sciences that the innate differences which distinguish human subgroups extend far deeper than mere differences in appearance.

The sciences are revealing that substantive differences evolved in human subgroups and these differences have important implications for how we organize our societies. People who assert that race is only a social construct which does not have important implications for how we organize our societies are consciously choosing to ignore what science is revealing about the traits that distinguish the human subgroups, and about the evolutionary origins of these traits. For the sake of what they believe is the higher goal of maintaining social stability, many people are choosing to ignore the objective evidence that is mounting about the important differences that exist between human subgroups. People often make this choice with the best of intentions. They simply conclude that no matter how substantive the differences between human subgroups might be, to emphasize these differences would not be helpful in a society in which people of different races must live and work together, and could potentially be destabilizing.

Preserving stability in any society is admittedly a very important priority. And, it is precisely for the sake of enhancing social stability that we should recognize, rather than deny, the extent of our differences and the existence of of any innate behavioral propensities which might be in tension with the ideals we adopt as a models for social organization. An objective assessment of our evolutionary origins and a comprehensive understanding of human nature reveals that multiracial societies are distinctly at odds with certain natural behavioral propensities, and that, over the longer term, multiracial societies will prove more unstable than societies which are more racially homogeneous.

Despite the best attempts of our well meaning social engineers to undermine the legitimacy of race as a concept, race is more than just a social construct. The idea of race encompasses a numbers of substantive physiological differences that exist between human subgroups, including, but not limited to: differences in neurological responsiveness, temperamental propensities, metabolism and susceptibility to certain diseases. The concept of race is meaningful for many other reasons as well. To the extent that most people can easily place themselves in one of the major racial categories, race remains an important source of personal identity.
Those who would attempt to minimize the significance of race, for whatever motives, are effectively disparaging qualities that are valuable to most people.

From casual observation, most people know that there are light skinned people with straight hair, there are dark skinned people with curly hair, there are medium skinned people with straight black hair, etc. These features are generally sufficient as criteria for assigning people to one of the major racial categories. Basically, if the visual cues about someone allow us to identify the geographical regions from which their ancestors originated, or if their traits allow us to say with a high degree of certainty that they belong to a certain subgroup, then the traits which allow for such classification are valid as "racial" traits. These traits represent an important subset of the distinctive differences that are characteristic of human subgroups. These features define race and correspond to the meaningful categories of race. And, once again, these characteristics are more than just superficial or skin deep.

The visible differences that allow for the racial classification of people, or for their assignment to one of the major subgroups, include a variety of characteristics in addition to mere skin pigmentation. They include differences in facial features, hair color and texture, cranial and skeletal structures, body build and mass. In combination with the more subtle but nonetheless important differences mentioned above, these qualities extend to the core of our biological essence to define the major races of man. In summary, race corresponds to significant biological differences between human subgroups. Human subgroups evolved these important differences to make them better adapted to the environmental challenges they faced in the particular regions in which they evolved.

Formal Systems of Racial Classification
If one looks up the concept of race in an encyclopedia from the 1950s one will quickly see that it has a meaning and significance which would seem foreign to most people today. Attempts to minimize the significance of race stands as one of the seminal achievements of our social engineers. Nonetheless, until recently, anthropologists were typically able to define race as: a group which has a combination of distinguishing inherited characteristics which allow for classification or placement in a category corresponding to race. Most anthropologists in the 1950s and early 1960s divided man into three major racial groups. These groups included the Caucasoid, the Negroid, and the Mongoloid. In turn, these major groups could be subdivided into other groups. For instance, the Caucasoid could be subdivided into Nordic, Denaric, and Mediterranean groups, etc. Similarly, the Negroid could be further subdivided into African Negro, Oceanic Negro and Pygmoid; while the Mongoloid could be further divided into Eastern Mongoloid, American indian, Eskimos, etc. This system of classification served very well to distinguish groups with distinctive "racial" features, until it came to blows with the objectives of social engineers who wanted us to stress our similarities and to minimize (if not trivialize or deny) our differences.

Once they began to pursue the strategy of racial minimization, and once they began to perceive that the real substantive racial differences between human subgroups posed a threat to their humanist agenda, our humanistically inspired social engineers began a subtle but continuous attempt to undermine the legitimacy of the very concept of race. Their assault was three pronged. First, they wanted to minimize the significance of race by suggesting that all the races of man had a common ancestor (which in fact they did), and that, as a consequence, all men share so many similarities that any differences between them are strictly superficial, or restricted to differences in appearance. Secondly, they wanted to divert attention from the fact that over a period of many thousands of years, and notwithstanding that all subgroups had a common ancestor, that from the time they became geographically separated from one another, they began to follow divergent paths of evolution, mainly as an adaptive response to the different environmental extremes they encountered in the regions to which they migrated. Social engineers attempted to divert attention away from this fact by arguing that in cosmic and evolutionary terms, the few tens of millennia that have elapsed since the various subgroups parted company with their common ancestor were not sufficient for the subgroups to have evolved significant differences. They failed to emphasize the fact (which subsequently became well known among evolutionary theorists) that evolution does not progress in a linear fashion, but tends to occur much more sporadically in fits and starts, and that relatively large differences can evolve in isolated populations over a relatively short period of time. Third and finally, our social engineers completely discounted, failed to recognize, or refused to accept that there was an innate component to xenophobia (the xenophobic response) which strongly influenced reactions between members of the various subgroups. In short, they chose to ignore the evolutionary origins and functions of our racial differences in order to advance their social engineering agenda.

In their quest to stabilize an inherently unnatural situation, our social engineers (principally, academics in the social sciences, but also Christian clerics, members of the press, etc.) all act in concert to convey a single message with regard to racial characteristics. This message is that racial differences are insignificant and because they are insignificant, they are necessarily unimportant and undeserving of any special efforts aimed at their preservation. It is a short step from this attitude towards racial differences to the argument that racial differences are not worthy of respect. And, many "progressively minded" social scientists do not hesitate to make this small conceptual leap. Our social engineers make no allowance for the fact that even if race had no objective basis in our biological differences, the subjective meaning that people attach to it makes it important and deserving of respect!

There is a large variety in the characteristics by which race has been customarily defined. But, their commonality and incidence in certain human subgroups, as well as the absence of such traits in other subgroups allows for a system of classification to be applied. Insofar as one set of traits (such as skin pigmentation, hair texture, etc.) are more characteristic of one subgroup than another, it is generally possible to assign one to a race or a subgroup using this system of classification. Correspondingly, we speak of the major characteristics that can be used to distinguish human subgroups as "racial" traits or characteristic. As such, race is a concept used to refer to categories of real differences that exist between human subpopulations.

Critics of this system of "racial" classification will say that there is no such thing as racial purity, and that the very concept of race is a social construct which is indefensible on grounds of objective biological differences between human subgroups. But evolutionary biology, sociobiology, endocrinology, neurology and epidemiology (among other fields) say differently. These fields have revealed that important differences emerged between human subgroups, to make them better adapted to the environments in which they evolved. The relatively high level of geographic isolation that has historically existed between human subgroups, (in combination with the xenophobic response) allowed these subgroups to evolve their distinctive characteristics as adaptive responses to enhance their survivability, despite the fact that they may have all had a common ancestor as recently as 40,000 years ago.

The various human subgroups evolved distinctive traits (traits that would later be recognized as the identifying markers of race) to make them better adapted to the environmental challenges they faced in the different regions in which they evolved. Those who would dismiss the process of evolution or the adaptations that it has given rise to, have an agenda. To suggest that racial differences are confined to superficial traits simply because they are visible, is to misunderstand the deeper significance of race. Again, visible racial differences are only the outward signature of race.

Although seemingly superficial from one standpoint, these outward differences are not physiologically insignificant. Under natural circumstances, differences in skin pigmentation between groups could translate into a significant survival advantage or disadvantage for a group. In addition, because it can represent fitness of a group in a given environment, the level of skin pigmentation serves as the key triggering mechanism of the xenophobic response. Yet, such observable or "superficial" differences that serve as the outward identifiers of race only represent a fraction of the differences that actually exist between the major human subgroups

The Distinction Between Race and Ethnicity
As opposed to the concept of race, ethnicity refers mainly to distinctive differences between people in the way of culture, customs, and sometimes, language. In short, it refers to differences which are the result of differential socialization. Whereas, race applies to inherited traits that are more typical of groups in particular regions of the world. Once again, the three broadest categories of racial classification are Caucasian, Asian, and Negro, or, in the older system of classification used by anthropologists, Caucasoid, Mongoloid and Negroid. Most human beings can be readily classified into one of these major subgroups. These three principal racial families make up the major categories of racial classification. These categories can be further subdivided on the basis of more subtle differences. For instance, American indians are distant descendants of Asiatic peoples who crossed into the New World by way of a land bridge that extended from Asia to Alaska. Hence, they would be included under the major category of Asiatics. Over the millennia, these New World descendants have come to constitute a racial subgroup with its own distinctive characteristics. Similarly, those in the Indian subcontinent also have distinctive characteristics, as do the Polynesians, Aborigines etc. Thus, the major racial families would include a number of subclasses in each of the major classes. This system of classification illustrates that race corresponds to real differences in the inherited characteristics between human subgroups. The fact that some of the key identifiers of race are visible does not automatically mean that they should be dismissed as superficial. Our well meaning social engineers are all too quick to make this leap.

In summary, racial differences are substantive and important. Race corresponds to real differences in human subgroups. These subgroups evolved distinctive traits to make them better adapted to the environmental conditions they faced in the regions in which they evolved. These differences are not just superficial or restricted to variations in skin color and hair texture. More substantive differences have evolved between human subgroups. These differences include endocrinological and neurological differences, differences in the way groups metabolize certain foods, behavioral differences, differences in cranial thickness and shape, etc. To make a point, racial differences are more than just skin deep. They encompass a variety of important genetic characteristics. They are substantive, measurable and real. These differences extend to the core of our biological essence. Because these differences influence our thought patterns and behavior, they have implications for how societies are organized and how cultures develop. Notwithstanding that representatives from all subgroups may be flexible enough to live in any culture, some cultural conventions may be "more natural" for one subgroup than for others.