RACE WITHOUT COLOR
Jared Diamond
In Applying Anthropology, 9 th Edition
(162-167)
RACE
 Anthropology born during European colonialism
 How do we explain difference? Are other people
equally human?
 Ideas of racial determinism justifies conquest and
subordination
 Racial classification schemes, mostly developed in
the 1500s-1800s, continue with us
 From the 1860s, ideas of evolution harnessed to
justify inequality = “scientific racism”
©2011 Jason Antrosio,
www.livinganthropologically.com
Drastically oversimplified view
of Western
thoughts about
others, circa
19th century
THEM
US
Drastically oversimplified view
of thoughts
about evolution,
circa 19th
century
Animals
Man
Us: Civilized Man
“Scientific
Racism”
Toxic combination
of incorrect
evolutionary ideas
with incorrect
ethnocentric
hierarchies
Them: Primitive Man
Man
Animals
ANTHROPOLOGY ARGUES
Race does not determine behavior
not determining of language or culture
Race is not a good way to describe
cultural difference
Racial classifications are not a good
way to describe biological difference
©2011 Jason Antrosio,
www.livinganthropologically.com
SPECIES AND SUBSPECIES
Species fact: humans can all interbreed, and
produce viable interbreeding offspring
We do it whenever we come in contact
Race is a designation at the subspecies level
 Is there enough biological difference to make
classifications?
 YES
 Do these classifications represent consistencies,
patterns and concordances equivalent to traditional
race ideas?
 NO
©2011 Jason Antrosio,
www.livinganthropologically.com
HUMAN BIOLOGICAL
VARIATION
Visible
Invisible (from Diamond)
 Skin color
 Build, body type
 Height
 Hair
 Malaria resistance
 Lactose tolerance
 Fingerprints
 Genetic distinctiveness
 Blood types
 Color
 texture or form
 Nose
 Eyes
 Color, form
 Lips
 Ears
©2011 Jason Antrosio,
www.livinganthropologically.com
CONCORDANCE OR CO-VARIATION
VERSUS
CLINAL OR INDEPENDENT VARIATION
Clinal: most features, like skin color
change gradually
Features vary independently of each
other
As Diamond shows, classifications
by different criteria produce
different groupings
©2011 Jason Antrosio,
www.livinganthropologically.com
RACE WITHOUT COLOR
©2011 Jason Antrosio,
www.livinganthropologically.com
HOW CAN WE EXPLAIN
BIOLOGICAL DIFFERENCE?
Natural Selection
Explains sickle cell patterns (Diamond:164)
Sickle-cell also good example of adaptive and
maladaptive nondirectionality
Sexual Selection
May help to explain certain traits considered
“beautiful”
Random
Fingerprints
©2011 Jason Antrosio,
www.livinganthropologically.com
WHAT ABOUT SKIN COLOR?
 Demonstrates clinal variation
 Most explanations stress natural selection and
Vitamin D
 Diamond questions natural selection and instead
posits sexual selection
 Although sexual selection is an important
evolutionary mechanism—and surely implicated in
skin color—recent research seems to confirm natural
selection
 Chaplin, G., and N. G. Jablonski, 2009. Vitamin D and the
evolution of human depigmentation. American Journal of
Physical Anthropology 139(4):451-61.
©2011 Jason Antrosio,
www.livinganthropologically.com
RACE AS BIOLOGY?
 Humans do vary biologically
 with potential health effects
 and even for abilities like “intelligence”
 Diamond, race is an “arbitrary system” (167)
 Race is a “culturally constructed label that crudely
and imprecisely describes real variation”
 John H. Relethford, Race and global patterns of phenotypic
variation 2009:20
 But crude labels are socially real, influencing access,
opportunities, and outcomes
 with even greater health effects than ancestry
 and with even greater effects for abilities like “intelligence”
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