Concepts of Race in Culture and Biology:
From Carolus Linneaus to Claude Levi-Strauss
For: Dr. Hewson Smith
"Cell Biology, Genetics and Evolution"
Master of Liberal Arts
Graham School of General Studies
The University of Chicago
May 23, 2002
Introduction: Race as a Geographic Concept
In a recent essay by Ernst Mayr, the concept of race and its relationship to geography is addressed. 1 For many in the bygone century, the concept of race was not only a preoccupation, but also a measure of people, and a way to justify superiority of some members, and the enslavement and even genocide of those deemed inferior. The biology of race and understandings of race and genetics has been a great factor in the evolution of Western cultures.
In a recent lecture by Professor Hewson Smith, a chronology of the spread of the human species was presented. A chart was presented that illustrated the origins of homo sapiens in Africa in about 130,000 BCE, and the ultimate spread to the New World, to South American by 13,000 BCE. From this chronology, we may surmise the geographical influences of racial differences is probable.
Age and Spread of the Human Species
| Continent | Approximate Date of Appearance |
| Africa | 150,000 years BCE |
| Asia | 100,000 years BCE |
| China | 67,000 years BCE |
| Australia | 40-60,000 years BCE |
| Europe | 40,000 years BCE |
| North America | 20,000 years BCE |
| South America | 13,000 years BCE2 |
According to a recent Discovery Channel feature, "The Real Eve," we are all descendants of one woman who lived in East Africa 150,000 years ago. That "Eve" had her origins in Africa at this time is clearer, even as how the human species spread throughout the world remains a bit of a mystery, particularly the mystery of apparent racial and ethnic diversity that has emerged over time. 3 Scientists now postulate that such movement and differentiation was caused by the need to escape from climatic conditions such as glaciers, volcanoes, famine and the threat of starvation. It appears that our "ancestors" took a more southerly route to Asia and Australia, before they went North in what is now Europe.
One scientist, Martin Richards, used DNA samples to trace this migration. This evidence uses snippets from DNA in human mitochondria (mtDNA). The conclusion: "All humans can be traced back to an ancient mitochondrial 'Eve' who lived in Africa perhaps 150,000 years ago." 4 The original population of humans was a colony of perhaps 10,000 people. About 80,000 years ago, states scientists, humans were forced East and South by an expanding glaciation that turned much of North Africa into a desert. Human made tools are found in Asia dating about 75,000 years ago, and are found in Australia dating 60,000 years ago.
With the recession of glaciation in about 50,000 BCE, humans then began to push northward through the Fertile Crescent into Europe. Neanderthals, "another kind of human," were present in Europe. Cro-Magnons and Neanderthals coexisted for a time, but without apparent inbreeding. About 25,000 to 20,000 years ago, humans crossed the bridge of land from Asian to North America. These individuals survived intense glaciation and left stone tools that date to 16,000 BCE. For these scientists, human beings are really part of the same big family. "Research reveals that there is less genetic variation among Earth's entire population of humans than there is in a typical troop of our closest relative, the chimpanzee. 5
To Mayr, differences between individuals on the planet may have less to do with genetics, but more to do with culture and social geography. Mayr argues in fact that differences in geography and in culture within a sub species is really more variant than between sub-species. Race is more than just a biological fact. Since every local population has its own genetic pool and a mutational history that is unique to the local environment, Mayr concludes that geographical and cultural factors are more significant than "racial differences" than skin color or genetic differences. 6 For Mayr, "nothing could be more meaningless than to evaluate races in terms of their putative 'superiority.'" There is no "innate superiority" of any race, and indeed there is no clear scientific definition of racial purity. It is rather: "superiority where, when and under what circumstances?" 7
For Mayr, there is much ambiguity as to what is a race. The success of certain European populations, as well as various plants or animals, or due not to an innate genetic set of traits, but rather to "a constellation of favorable geographical factors." A superiority of a culture of race is thus not due to a set of innate characteristics, but rather due to technological innovation, favorable climate, and to the accident of history, being in the right place, first, at the right time. For James Blaut, such a historical accident has fed a belief system that holds that the Fertile Crescent, European culture and now New World civilization constitutes a direct line of cultural supremacy, and justifies the conquest and exploitation of peoples and resources by the core culture. Peripheral cultures suffer not only from the historical problem of having a relatively undeveloped technology, but are also blamed and stigmatized as "inferior" to justify and perpetuate the relationship. 8 Such tunnel vision that reflects a Eurocentric view has its origins in a biology of race.
However, for Blaut and for Mayr, a Eurocentric view based on race theory is unfounded. For Mayr, race is connected with geographical and historical situations. "A human race consists of the descendents of a once-isolated geographical population primarily adapted for the environmental conditions of the original home country." 9 For Mayr, the concept of race is highly variable. First of all, there are sizable differences within a sub species, and every sub-species has individuals who excel with very different human capacities. In fact, what passes as "racism" is really a distaste for certain cultural characteristics, none of which may be true of all members of a sub-species. As a point o observation, when people make derogatory remarks about a human sub-species, the remarks are not about physiology, but about cultural practices such as the assumption that a particular group of people who look somewhat similar are also "lazy, dishonest, unreliable, thievish, arrogant, etc." 10 Furthermore, these assumptions or "prejudices" serve to stereotype and label a particular group, but may have no basis in fact, and may not be true for all individuals who share a particular physical appearance or a set of cultural mores. "Race" is thus culturally relative.
The great tragedy is that "racism" is used in this respect to advance or maintain political goals and benefits. Race may be more of a social construct, or a political designation than a biological one. At heart of the discussion of race is the question of equality. Are all human beings essentially equal as human beings? Or, are all human beings subject to the same guarantee of human rights? Hence, the use of "race" seems to have the political purpose of justifying the advantage of one social grouping over another. Differences in performance, therefore, have less to do with racial superiority, and much more to do with cultural or geographical factors. In the face of such "prejudice," and not genetic differentiation, it is the duty of a civil society to see to it that all people, despite cultural and even geographical differences, have the need and guarantee of civil equality under the law. Differences in cultural upbringing must be taken into account when one establishes laws and institutional standards, especially in the area of education. 11 The goals of overcoming social inequality are directly connected, not with racial biology, but with an appreciation of historical and cultural differences within and without human sub-species.
Racial Biology from the Age of Discovery to Social Darwinism:
From the 15th Century, onward, travelers and scholars associated with the early rise of modern science in Europe have been fascinated with the problem of the other. Following the Age of Discovery and the encounter of tribal peoples in the new world, attempts were made to understand where non-Europeans fit in terms of society and society's evolution.
Racial classification was justified, not merely as a way to understand cultural difference, but as a way to justify the supremacy of European culture and of European civilization. Most early scientists assumed a literal view of creation by way of the Book of Genesis, which therefore implied a monogenesis. Early modern scientists, such as Isaac de la Peyrere, in 1655, postulated a polygenesis, that the peoples of the new world have a different origin than that of Europeans. Polygenist thinking was considered heretical, and Peyrere was forced to recant, and he finished the rest of his life in a monastery. 13 Other sixteenth century writers, such as Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592), argued that the cultures of new world civilizations were equally legitimate with European cultures and laws. Montaigne wrote: "All men are of one species and are provided with the like tools and instruments for judging and understanding." 14 Montaigne challenged the long tradition that divided humankind into the civilized world (Greco-Roman-European) versus the uncivilized barbarian world of savages or cannibals. In this respect, "non-Christian" peoples were assumed to be savage, sinister, demonic, evil, heathen and pagan. This stereotype was particularly applied to Africans, Muslims and Asians as distinct from Europeans.
In the eighteenth century, a number of scientists sought to categorize human beings. Thse included Jon Ray, Bernard Varen, Giordano Bruno, Bernier and others. By the middle of the century, one scientist, Carolus Lineaeus (1707-1778), published one of the earliest categorizations of human beings, classifying humans as like other primates in the animal world. His work was released in various editions from 1735-1755. Linnaeus and his successor, Johann Friederich Blumenbach, (1752-1840) shocked the Christian world with early attempts to categorize the human species by "race," utilizing physical characteristics. Linnaeus, for example, recognized four varieties of humankind. These included Americans=Native Americans (Homo Sapiens Americanus) who were "red," "ill-tempered" and "subjugated." The "European" category (Homo Sapiens europeaeus) was "white, serious and strong." The Asiatic (Homo sapiens asiaticus) is described as yellow, melancholy, and greedy) and finally the African (Homo sapiens afer) was described as "black, impassive and lazy." Implicit in the categories are stereotypes that one today might consider as racist, they did much to set up how scientists of later eras might categorize and interpret their observations. 15
Linnaeus also had a mixed category (monstrosus) that was made up of a diversity of types (including South American Patagonians and Canadian Flatheads), and other imagined types that did not fit in elsewhere. While this passed as "biological" or "scientific" categories, it is important to note that his descriptions were really derived more from perceived behavioral or cultural traits. He was most known for applying a binomial nomenclature to describe animals, and he believed that humans constituted a separate species.
J.F. Blumenach in 1775 categorized humans as "four varieties of mankind." These included first of all, those from Europe, West Asia and part of North America. The Second group was to be found in East Asia and Australia (indigenous people); the third from Africa; and the fourth from the rest of the new world. By 1781, Blumenbach's categories included five varieties: 1) Europe, West Asia, North Africa, and Eskimos of the New World; 2) East Asia; 3) sub-Saharan Africa; 4) non-Eskimos of the New World; and 5) Oceania. By 1795, these five categories were refined and were named as Caucasian, Mongolian, Ethiopian, American and Malay, while shifting "Eskimos" to be classified with East Asians. 16 Blumenbach believed that one could not demarcate boundaries between races, as he believed that races could overlap, and as one species, it was permissible to allow interbreeding among sub-species. "This sense of the fluid, overlapping, and blending nature of human physical characteristics diminished and became lost in popular and scientific thought with the rise of the racial worldview." 17
Other scientists, Voltaire and Lord Kames, concluded that Africans and Europeans were separate species, and did not and should not overlap, especially in the area of sexual relations and reproductive behavior. The scientific battle over race for the next two centuries was now set in motion.
Charles White, a Manchester physician, argued in 1799 in his, "An Account of the Regular Gradation in Man," that Africans, Asians, Europeans and Native Americans were separate species. He classified "Negroes" as closer to Apes than to Europeans, and appealed to the medieval concept of the chain of being to justify the presumption of Black inferiority. Polygenesis was thus the harbinger of 19th century racism and as a justification for slavery and colonization.
A Philadelphia scientist, Samuel Morton (1799-1851), compared the physiological appearance of Africans with whites and Asians and assumed a hierarchy of status and ability. Cranial capacities were measured and indexed by Dr. Morton, and cultures and civilizations were compared with climactic conditions. Morton collected crania from all over the world, assuming that the size of the cranium was synonymous with intelligence. He "concluded" that Negroes had the smallest cranial capacity, Native Americans were next, while Caucasians were presumed to possess the largest cranial capacity. Writing in the 1830s and 1840s, Morton's "scientific" study justified and supported the practice of slavery in the United States. 18
Morton lured Louis Agassiz to Harvard University in 1846. Following an intial encounter with Blacks in America in 1847, Agassiz became an ardent supporter of polygenesis, that Blacks and Whites were separate species. Agassiz had a strong visceral reaction to a black servant in a restaurant, having never seen a person of African descent before. His comments illustrate the extent that a cultural preference can influence one's scientific conclusions.
Early genetics, anthropology and theorists of evolution assumed a polygenesis-- that Negroes, Caucasians and "Mongoloids" were each descendents of separate and distinct races. Nineteenth Century science sought to justify the reality of European colonization and triumph over third world peoples, and to justify the assumed superior civilization of European and American (=white) cultures.
Prior to 1900, with the ascendancy of Darwinian science, notions of evolution, progress and the survival of the fitness were dominant. With the appearance of Charles Darwin's Origin of the Species in 1859, the idea of evolution and of the progress of the human species over time became accepted fact. Darwin held many of the same assumptions that people of his time did, that native peoples, especially those of African descent, were inferior. As he wrote: "what a scale of improvement is comprehended between the faculties of a Fuegian savage and Sir Isaac Newton." 20 Yet, on the other hand, Darwin was a staunch abolitionist. Darwin was paternalistic with regard to tribal cultures, but unlike many of his peers, he believed that tribal peoples "could be improved." He did not hold to a rigid polygenesis as did Agassiz. Nevertheless, Darwin provided the theoretical framework to justify racial theories advanced by his contemporaries. "The Darwinian contribution strengthened the notion of advanced and less advanced human groups, but now the arguments could be more scientifically expressed in the language of evolutionary theory." 21
These ideas were later applied to culture and society by writers such as Herbert Spencer (1820-1903), a self-acclaimed "social Darwinist." It was Spencer, not Darwin, who coined the term: "survival of the fittest." Further, other writers such as Joseph Arthur Comte de Gobineau (1816-82) in France and Houston Stuart Chamberlain (1855-1927), born in England, naturalized in Germany in 1917, having married the only daughter of Richard Wagner--developed a theory of Aryan white supremacy, the bedrock for Adolph Hitler's worldview in the 1920s and beyond. For many in the Social Darwinist camp, black people were assumed to be both genetically and culturally inferior.
While in many ways the myth of white supremacy was a perversion of evolution and a distortion of Darwinist views, the question remains as to how such a theory could have developed, and what, if any, is its place in the history of science and in the history of the development of evolution in particular. Though not to the extent of Hitler's genocidal actions versus Jews, gypsies and darker-skinned Mediterraneans, many Americans generally assumed white superiority as a justification for existing social hierarchy. For example, many "nativists" feared not only a rebellion from the ranks of former slaves, but they also feared the coming of immigrants including Chinese, Eastern Europeans, Hispanics, Russian Jews and even Roman Catholics of any stripe. Eventually, the nativists had their way, and by 1924 a law was passed limiting immigration to those of northern European stock (more like "us"). But a persistent problem existed. What should be done about the blacks and white European immigrants that remained? As Stephen Steinberg noticed, white ethnics were able to assimilate, whereas black Americans have not. 22 What could be done with those still mired in poverty? How might one reform the American caste system based on race, economic and political status in the U.S.? What could be done with the system of Jim Crow laws that served to keep black people separate, subordinate, and isolated from mainstream institutions? This, for W.E.B. DuBois (1868-1963), was the "problem of the color line." 23
Challenges to 19th Century Science
W.E.B. DuBois was not the only writer questioning the assumptions of nineteenth century science. Franz Boas (1858-1942), arguably the founder of modern anthropology, was at the forefront of the discussion. Boas challenged 19th century racial theory, refuting cranial capacity interpretations. He rejected climactic determinism and argued that differentiation within each racial grouping was greater than from racial category to another (between the accepted Negroid, Caucasoid and Mongoloid classifications). DuBois himself was a mulatto, a child of white and black grandparents. Many other blacks of course, had white blood in their system due to the exploitation of slave women by slaveowners. Very few people are pure bred. As a direct frontal assault on racial fears of miscegenation, Boas argued that mixed blood relationships have not led to biological degeneracy, but its opposite. On the other hand, wrote Boas, marriage relationships that are inbred with close kinship ties have had negative biological consequences. "Biological degeneracy is found rather in small districts of intense inbreeding." 24
For A.L. Kroeber (1876-1960), a disciple of Franz Boas and anthropologist at U.C. Berkeley, "race" was not a scientific concept at all. Rather it was the "average" of characteristics shared by a large number of individuals classified as a particular grouping. 25 While there may be differences between the races, "popular impression exaggerates the differences, accurate measurements reduce them." 26 Like Boas, Kroeber argued that variations between individuals were greater than differences between the races. "Black" or "colored" Hindus are of the same race as Blonde Northern Europeans. Dark Filipinos are of the same race as light-skinned Japanese or Koreans. Blacks represent a wide variation of color, even as blonde to red-haired Europeans represent less than 5% of the human race. 27
Further, there is no "pure" race, for interbreeding has obliterated clear lines of lineage. Finally, classifiers of the human species differ greatly among each other as to the number and types of racial categories. It is better to talk about physiological differences between members of the human race as a whole, than between designated racial groupings. Finally, classifications of human beings do not necessarily translate to cultural dominance, intelligence variation or cultural supremacy. The iconography of Egypt, for example, is filled with color variation. Blonde Germanic tribes were the very last to civilize in Europe, and Germany as a nation was not formalized as a nation until 1870 under Bismarck. In the New World, the Aztecs, Mayans and Incas were easily comparable to anything in Europe during the Meso-American cultural golden age from the 8th to the 13th centuries. Europeans came at a time when Meso-American cultures were in decline. Further, modern interpreters note that in the competition for Empire, Europe had the great fortune of having closer proximity to the rich and untapped resources of the new world, much closer than the maritime civilizations of Asia. For James Blaut and others, there is no European miracle, just great timing.
Boas, a historical relativist, believed that all cultures were changing and evolving. Each culture-group had the capacity to develop unique cultural forms. Differences in capacity were due, not to biological or hereditary factors, but due to the historic contexts and in differences in cultural formation. For Boas, there was no survival of the fittest, but different cultures that were on a different journey toward full cultural development. No culture was the superior of others. So, he cautioned, if a particular culture seemed undeveloped at a point in time, don't worry, things could and will change over time. This may actually be the belief that Charles Darwin held as well. Boas thus developed the theory of cultural lag, not cultural inferiority. He postulated that over time, the present condition of black people in America could change radically. 28
For Boas, deviations in culture could be explained by other factors than biological determinism. These factors included social mobility, immigration patterns, war and disease. The "fittest," he wrote, are usually the first to perish during times of war. Mental differences between races don't really exist, he thought, for retardation was largely an organic malady, and seems to effect all races of people at roughly the same rate. Like DuBois, Boas believed that cultural factors are primarily responsible for racial differentiation. Social settings and environmental factors, including principles that hold societies together, are better explanations for differences among peoples. So, who is to say if European civilization is better than African or American-Indian cultures? History may move in other directions over time.
Antipathies, likes or dislikes between peoples, are also social phenomena or learned behavior. Race, therefore, has more to do with social stratification and social status than intrinsic biological differences. Boas' work as the pioneer American Anthropologist was thus a direct challenge to the 19th century worldview. Boas' approach was less didactic, and more inductive and "empirical" in procedure. Differences, he wrote, were more traceable to social position and power relationships in society. Biological science that advocated white supremacy was understood as mere justification for a caste system that discriminated against black people supping white privileges as a divine right.
A sociologist who shared the views of DuBois and Boas was the University of Chicago scholar, Robert Ezra Park (1864-1944). For Park, race was a problem of social status. 29 Park believed that racism was a consequence of social change and a threat to the social status of the dominant group. As a functionalist, Park did not think that racism was an attitude intrinsic to dominant groups, but more an activity of response to minority ascendancy. Racism thus emerged as a conflict between groups over status or territory. It is "an elementary expression of conservatism and reaction to a perceived threat to social position." 30 For Park, racism and racial tension are not primarily biological, but political, a conflict between the dominant "we-group" and the subordinate "they-group" in society. It is a response to the challenge of caste position by the subordinate group. 31
In the South, for Park, racial prejudices emerge when black people move out of their presumed subordinate place. In the North, contrariwise, it is more of a question of territoriality. Writing in 1940, Park concluded that "when the Negro invades a new region . . . race riots occur, it is when he seeks a new place in a new occupation or a new profession that he meets his most vigorous opposition." 32 Thus, for Park, racial consciousness is a social construct, an acquired or learned perspective. The stories or perceptions of the other reflect class position. Thus…
While whites experience black mobility as a threat to social organization, blacks experience their mobility as opportunity. Yet, black mobility was only possible inside the black community, resulting in separate societies with separate institutions and separate social stratification, each with professional, middle and working class strata. 34 The color line that DuBois talked about remained visible and obvious by 1940, but a shift in the social arrangements emerged along horizontal lines. That is, the earlier version of vertical hierarchy (white over black) was replaced by a newer version of segregation (white separated from black) with differing corresponding social stratifications. For both white and black societies separate communities developed with separate classes in each.
More obvious in the North, it was nevertheless true also in the South. Social mobility was occurring on a limited basis, though not on the scale of what was occurring in the white community. Social mobility among blacks was occurring from within the black community. However, even if the social condition of blacks was slowly changing, the racial attitudes of whites were changing ever so slowly. If in the South blacks got in trouble if they were out of place, in the North there was little place for them at all. Still, the growth of the black belts in northern cities grew and was accompanied by white flight and the competition over territory. For Park, blacks, at least in Northern cities, were no longer a separate caste, but were becoming a separate cultural and racial minority like Jews, Japanese, Indians or Muslims. However, the legacy of the Civil Rights Movement and the impatience of Black Power leaders would later challenge Park's analysis. The caste system remained in America because institutional racism still excluded blacks from housing, jobs, and political representation. The Movement in the 1960s would attempt to resolve these issues, but not completely.
Dusk of Dawn
In 1940, another great book on race was written, again by W.E.B. Dubois, now 72 years of age. This book was called Dusk of Dawn, a cynical analysis of the progress with respect to the color line. For DuBois, the slowness of the black society to develop was due to its social condition. 35 Yet, for DuBois, the "Negro" was to be respected as a full "member of the human race, and as one who, in the light of history and experience, is capable to a degree of improvement and culture, is entitled to have his interests considered according to his numbers in all conclusion as to the common weal." 36
Like Park, Boas and others, DuBois believed that racism was a "social construct," 37 an excuse to subjugate a people, historically, politically, culturally and economically. For DuBois, if given the opportunity, black people could learn and develop their own culture in freedom. However, the fight for freedom and dignity was not just a fight for scientific views. Rather, it was a fight for political status and representation.
Historically, DuBois disagreed with Booker T. Washington's view of separate economic development and subordinate status given blacks by the white power structure. For DuBois, blacks should strive for the ballot, for the right to vote and to have political voice. 38 Also, black people had to use whatever was available to them, including the strike, the boycott, and even propaganda to reverse negative attitudes and stereotypes portrayed by the white power structure. For DuBois, it was not enough to learn job skills to exist in one's own community, blacks must be able to compete with white people if they were to maximize their capacities. To have equal respect in America meant the importance of having the vote, access to political institutions and political power.
Yet, such political mobilization could be done, not by all blacks, but had to be nurtured by a talented tenth. For DuBois, many blacks were destined to be blacksmiths or skilled artisans, but only few were destined to be leaders, professors and political leaders. It was the latter group that was needed to lift up the conditions of the whole race. 39 DuBois believed that an educated elite was needed to extend the fight for freedom and dignity for blacks in America and worldwide. As a Harvard Ph.D., DuBois knew that the struggle was also a struggle for ideas. To that end, DuBois recommended that a "high class journal" was needed "to circulate among the intelligent [learned] Negroes," to "tell them of the deeds of themselves and their neighbors, interpret the news to them and inspire them toward definite ideals." 40 To this end, DuBois edited several papers in his career including the Guardian, the Moon, the Horizon, and with the NAACP, the Crisis.
DuBois also believed that cooperation with progressive leaders in the white community might be advantageous. In 1906, he founded the Niagara Movement as a movement among blacks to articulate a political vision and to develop a strategic plan of attack. Some of the principles of the Niagara Movement, ahead of its time, included the following:
- Freedom of speech and criticism
- Unfettered and unsubsidized press
- Manhood suffrage Abolition of caste distinctions based on race and color
- Recognition of human brotherhood
- Recognition of the highest and best human training as the monopoly of no class or race
- A belief in the dignity of labor
- United effort to realize these ideals under wise and courageous leadership. 41
In 1909, the Niagara Movement merged with the NAACP (National Society for Advancement of Colored People). He split with William Monroe Trotter over the issue of a black led organization. The NAACP was interracial. DuBois was interested in forming a collegial organization with white progressives such as Mary White Orrington. He thought that progress for blacks would be assisted if whites were also at work on the issue. The NAACP fought mostly on the legal front to win court battles that might open up civil rights for blacks. As a scholar, he was also devoted to research and writing about black culture, and he commissioned several studies of black communities while on staff at the Atlanta University. DuBois saw these efforts as contributing to the war over the ideas and assumptions about the black community held by the larger society.
Due to frustration on most fronts, DuBois moved steadily to the Left, eventually joining the Communist Party and renouncing his American citizenship. He knew, as early as 1910, that racism was a tool of imperialism. He wrote:
DuBois was moving toward the view of Karl Marx, that race/racism was really about power and economic control.
Race was therefore but a concept, an idea. The tragedy, of course, was that large numbers of people held these ideas, and that the powerful were able to exploit the idea for gain and for the solidification of social status. DuBois rejected the ideas of the social Darwinists and the pseudo science of the time. Race was, rather, a matter of culture and of socio-historical condition. 43 In criticism of cephalic measurements done by early scientists such as Samuel George Morton, DuBois wrote that "I was skeptical about brain weight; surely much depended upon what brains were weighed." 44 Rejecting 19th century science and race caricatures, DuBois knew that "all members of the Negro race were not black, and that the pictures of my race which were current were not authentic nor fair portraits." 45 Like Boas and others, DuBois observed that "race lines were not fixed and fast. Within the Negro group especially, there were people of all colors." 46 DuBois, after all, knew that his own ancestry rendered him a mulatto, a light-skinned black man of mixed racial heritage.
For DuBois, the real problem was not genetics, but the social condition of black people as a consequence of a lack of economic resources and political power. The history of slavery and racial subjugation and exclusion resulted in poverty and cultural retardation.
He wrote:
Conclusion
For DuBois, the problem of the color line was the problem of caste segregation, a situation virtually the same in 1940 as it was in 1903 when he first wrote The Soul of Black Folks. For early 20th century sociologists such as Dubois, Franz Boas and Robert Ezra Park, race was a social construct, a matter closely connected with social status. These scientists refuted the psuedo-science of the previous century as based mostly on presumption and prevailing cultural ideas. Race as a problem of cranial capacity and physiological difference was supplanted by views that took seriously the social condition and economic status of African-Americans.
The problem of the color line was not a genetic or biological construct. The new, and most would concur, better science, would emphasize a more objective standard by which to measure human difference. The rich diversity of the human species and the connection of human culture with political and economic realities provided a more comprehensive picture of the experience of black people in this country. For DuBois, black people are human beings, many of whom had the ready capacity to compete with the white world on equal footing. For other blacks, DuBois acknowledged that the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow meant that competition with whites that had the resources and beneficial social position was not possible.
The biggest problem for DuBois was that blacks were not able to compete politically. Differing with Booker T. Washington, DuBois argued that the future of black people was connected to a role in the shaping of ideas and the political culture of America, and elsewhere. Power was needed through the ballot, not solely through economic self-reliance. Yet, for DuBois, and despite his criticism of genetic theories of race, the "color line" was all too evident. Despite progress, whites continued to accept tacitly theories of racial superiority. They continued to accept stereotypes that limited the capacities and potential of black people. These assumptions and institutional arrangements continued to segregate, isolate and marginalize a race of people. Yet, the new social science gave critical tools for sociologists like DuBois to take another look at society. Thanks to improvements in social science, partly due to his own work, DuBois was better able to analyze the color line. But to his dismay, he was not able to absolve it.
For Claude Levi-Strauss, the problem of the color line is not a biological problem, and certainly not a problem for genetics. Rather, it is a problem of how we as a society confront issues of diversity and inequality. "We cannot therefore claim to have formulated a convincing denial of the inequality of the human races, so long as we fail to consider the problem of inequality-or diversity-of human cultures, which is in fact-however unjustifiably-closely associated with it in the public mind." 48
It is hard to escape the conclusion, that race is not a biological category, but a cultural one. It is socially-constructed, and determined in large part by differing historical and cultural experiences. As Levi-Strauss notes, even the remarks by Gobineau, a leading proponent of Anglo race supremacy, are qualitative and cultural in nature. There is little scientific evidence to support the notion of intrinsic racial superiority on the basis of physiological characteristics. For Levi-Strauss, the concept of a diversity of cultures is not only apparent, but it is also dynamic and not static. Cultures and the physical appearance of those people who carry it are always changing and developing. Neither have cultures developed exclusively in isolation from others, there is clearly observable overlap in the development of human cultures. 49 Hence, the existence of cultural difference is not outrageous, but predictable, and may even be seen as a benefit to the human species as a whole.
Like Montaigne in a bygone age, Levi-Strauss argues that European, and for that matter North American cultures as well, have had a hard time accepting cultural diversity because "anything which does not conform to the standard of the society in which the individual lives is denied the name of culture and relegated to the realm of nature." 50 Like James Blaut, Levi-Strauss argues that western civilization has "proved itself to be more 'cumulative' than other civilizations." In other words, the advantages and wealth compiled by Western nations is due to the good fortune of having intense interactions with other cultures, and due to being able to seize the opportunities to extract resources from less powerful neighbors due to its military might and advanced technology.
Levi-Strauss makes the argument that diversity must be respected, and he argues that collaboration must be sought among the diversity of cultures if global problems are to be addressed in their totality.
He wrote: "We can see the diversity of human cultures behind us, around us and before us. The only demand that we can justly make … is that all the forms of this diversity may take may be so many contributions to the fullness of others." 51
Bibliography
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1 Ernst Mayr, "The Biology of Race and the Concept of Equality," Daedalus (Winter 2002): 89 ff.
2 Hewson Smith, chart presentation, "Cell Biology, Genetics and Evolution," MLA Class, May 18, 2002.
3 William F. Allman, "Eve Explained: How Ancient Humans Spread Across the Earth," Discovery Channel, April 27, 2002.
4 Ibid.
5 Ibid.
6 Mayr, "Biology of Race," 90.
7 Ibid.
8 James M. Blaut, A Colonizers Model of the World: Geographic Diffusionism and Eurocentric History (New York: Guilford Press, 1993).
9 Mayr, "Biology of Race," 91.
10 Ibid., 92.
11 Ibid., 93-94.
12 Audrey Smedley, "Science and the Idea of Race," in, Race and Intelligence: Separating Science from Myth, edited by Jefferson M. Fish (London: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers, 2002): 145.
13 Ibid., 147.
14 Cited in Smedley, op cit.,149.
15 Ibid., 155 ff.
16 Richard Jensen, "Biology and Race," (October 2000). From: http://saintmarys.edu/~rjensen/race.html.
17 Smedley, "Science and the Idea of Race," 156.
18 Stephen Jay Gould, The Mismeasure of Man (New York: W.W. Norton, 1996): 82 ff.
19 Cited by Gould, op cit., 77.
20 Cited by Gould, op cit., 420.
21
22 Stephen Steinberg, The Ethnic Myth: Race, Ethnicity and Class in America (Boston: Beacon, 2001).
23 See DuBois classic text, The Souls of Black Folks (1903).
24 Franz Boas, "Race and Progress (1931)," In Race, Language and Culture (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1982), 7.
25 A.L. Kroeber, "Living Races," in Anthropology, Biology and Race. (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1923), 78.
26 Ibid., 80.
27 In the 1990s, for every 100 babies born in the world, 49 are Asian, only 11 are white, and the rest are black and brown. Of those who are "white" many are Alpine, Mediterranean, Middle-Eastern or Asian Indian, leaving very few babies born to those of white Northern European stock.
28 Cited in Roger Sanjek, "The Enduring Inequalities of Race," in Race, edited by Steven Gregory and Roger Sanjek (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1992), 6.
29 Robert Ezra Park, "The Bases of Race Prejudice," in Robert Ezra Park, Race and Culture (London: The Free Press, 1964), 232.
30 Ibid., 233.
31 Ibid., 235.
32 Ibid., 236.
33 Ibid., 242.
34 See St. Claire Drake and Horace Cayton, Black Metropolis: A Study of Negro Life in a Northern City. (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1945) for a development of this process in Chicago. The book was dedicated to Robert Ezra Park and introduced by Richard Wright.
35 W.E.B. DuBois, Dusk to Dawn, in W.E.B DuBois: Writings, edited by Nathan I. Huggins (New York: Library of America, 1986), 537.
36 Ibid., 598.
37 This position has become a dominant one in contemporary times. See Michael Omi and Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the United States (New York: Kegan Paul, 1986); and James Blaut, "The Theory of Cultural Racism," Antipode 24 (1992): 289-299; and Peter Jackson, editor, Race and Racism: Essays in Social Geography (London: Allyn and Unwin, 1987).
38 Not formally granted for all blacks until the Voting Rights Act of 1964.
39 See DuBois discussion of the "talented tenth" in Writings, 842-861.
40 Ibid., 614.
41 Ibid., 618.
42 Ibid., 624.
43 Ibid., 626.
44
Ibid.
45 Ibid., 627.
46 Ibid., 628.
47 Ibid., 649.
48 Claude Levi-Strauss, Race and History: The Race Question in Modern Science (New York: UNESCO, 1967): 9.
49 Ibid., 11.
50 Ibid., 12; and Michel de Montaigne, "On the Cannibals," in Montaigne's Essays, edited by M.A. Screech (New York: Penguin, 1993): 84-87.
51 Levi-Strauss, Race and History., 47.