Race

B

4

African Peoples South of the Sahara

The peoples of much of Africa and the descendants of slaves captured in these regions have usually been called Negroes. Like many other terms used to designate people who have been assigned inferior social status, “Negro” (from the Spanish word meaning “black”) has come to have a pejorative meaning, and in most parts of the world such people today prefer to be called black.

No one is actually black (any more than others are actually “white”), and among the dark-skinned peoples of Africa, both regional and individual differences can be found. In West Africa, deeply pigmented skin, hair, and eyes; coarse, tightly curled hair; broad noses; prominent front teeth; and full lips are usual. Some groups are markedly different. In southern Africa remnants, often mixed, survive of the San (Bushman) hunters and gatherers; these people are short and not very dark. The Mbuti or Bambuti (see Pygmy) form the shortest population both in Africa and the world. The Tutsi, on the other hand, are unusually tall and slender. Several genetic characteristics have a special distribution in Africa. For example, haemoglobins S (sickle-cell haemoglobin) and C, and the malaria-resistant red blood enzyme deficiency are frequent where that disease is widespread.

Blacks of the United States and elsewhere in the New World are mixed (about four-fifths are of African origin and the rest are usually mostly European, but often partly Native American). Some changes have occurred that are not related to the mixing of races. For instance, the extent of the sickle-cell trait among American blacks seems less than would be expected on the basis of origins. American blacks are greatly varied, but no adverse or advantageous biological effects of race mixtures are known.

B

5

South Asian, Australian,and Oceanian Peoples

Many peoples of the world cannot be classified either as members or as mixtures of the above major races. The people of the Indian subcontinent fit most closely with those of Europe and the Mediterranean Basin, but many of them are dark skinned and also distinct in other ways.

The Aborigines of Australia are another dark-skinned group not closely related to the peoples of Africa. Although at least some of them have been described as similar to the Vedda of Sri Lanka, and other populations, no satisfactory evidence exists for these relationships, and the Aboriginal population must have evolved in situ over hundreds of centuries.

The islands of the Pacific have a wide variety of peoples: Melanesians on and near New Guinea: Micronesians to the north; and Polynesians in the outer reaches. The origins of all these peoples remain in some doubt, again largely because the populations have presumably evolved in one place. The racial situation of many islands is exemplified by the population of the Hawaiian Islands (now consisting largely of native Polynesians, Chinese, Japanese, Filipinos, Americans of European descent, recent immigrants from Samoa, and others of mixed race) and by the changes in racial inheritance that may be taking place there. Such changes are representative of the evolutionary processes constantly reforming the racial composition of the whole species.

IV

Genetic Determinants

Because, in scientific terms, race only refers to the genetic composition of human populations, racial classification may be better attempted through genetic studies than through traits, such as height and skin colour, that are modifiable by the environment. The first genetic traits useful in racial classification were the human blood groups. At first the resulting classifications were not too different from the earlier ones of Blumenbach and his successors. Then other genetic traits were added: red blood cell enzymes, blood-serum proteins, and, more recently, the highly variable histocompatibility antigens (HLA) that affect individuals' resistance to organ transplants.

The entire genetic make-up of every individual is represented in the DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) in that person's chromosomes. The sequence of bases in DNA can now be determined chemically, and many genetically determined differences in human populations have already been studied.

Even if the sequence analyses of the DNA of all human populations were completely known, however, the classification of races would remain a minor aspect of the study of human variation. Too little can be learned of the genetic traits of past generations. Moreover, it is difficult to assess the relative roles of diverse geographical origins, past interbreeding, and evolutionary changes in genetic constitution.

V

Problems and Controversies

Many individuals can be classified into more than one race or into none. Races are defined in terms of membership of populations; they represent people with the same pool of ancestors. Except for brothers and sisters, however, virtually no individuals have precisely the same ancestors. It is impossible to divide all human beings into a small number of discrete social, biological, or geographical groups in such a way that everybody belongs to one and only one.

The concept of race is of limited usefulness in explaining resistance to disease or other biological traits. Sometimes race membership is used to try to trace the origins of ethnic groups. Racial characteristics, however, are inherited biologically, whereas ethnicity—seen in divergent languages and cultures—is transmitted through learning. Racial, linguistic,and cultural origins are therefore always more or less independent of one another. In addition, the genetic constitution of a group changes over time, both through mating between groups and through response to the environment, which is itself always changing. Purely random factors contribute to the fluidity of races, making them simply incidents in the long history of human existence.

The concept of race has often been misapplied, most tellingly where people in various cultures have acted as if one race were superior to another. Although, with social disadvantages eliminated, it is possible that one human group or another might have some genetic advantages in response to such factors as climate, altitude, and food availability, these differences are small. There are no differences in native intelligence or mental capacity that cannot be explained by environmental circumstances. Rather than using racial classifications to study human variability, anthropologists today define geographical or social groups by geographical or social criteria. They then study the nature of the genetic attributes of these groups and seek to understand the causes of changes in their genetic make-up.