Greg Krehbiel
Race, racism and evolution
by Greg Krehbiel on 17 September 2004
La Shawn Barber defines a racist as follows: Racist — One who holds the belief that race accounts for differences in human character or ability and that a particular race is superior to others.
Hmm. What if somebody says that Chinese people are better at math. Is that racist? I don’t know. I think it depends on whether you’re speaking of individuals or populations. For example, to assume that a specific Chinese person is going to be better at math than a specific Causasian person would be racist, but I don’t think it’s racist to say that Chinese people, on average, are better at math than Causacians.
Leaving that aside, our recent discussion about Neanderthals reminds me of a problem for evolutionists. If evolution is true, isn’t it not only possible but even likely that one race is better than the others? In another post La Shawn says Margaret Sanger ‘considered “all non-Aryan people†unfit to breed.’ Sanger may have calculated incorrectly. Perhaps Jews are the master race. Or Eskimos. I don’t know. But from an evolutionary perspective, who can quibble with the underlying idea?
I suppose some evolutionists can respond to this by pointing out that all modern humans have enough in common to make it silly to speak of one race as having a noteworthy advantage over any other race. Racial differences simply aren’t that great. The differences among the races are greater than the differences between the races.
Okay, so let’s give them that. Let’s say that the selective factors that brought about our current crop of humans hasn’t made races that are all that different. But what about the future? Wouldn’t evolutionary theory fit right in with Aldous Huxley’s idea of breeding people for specific jobs? E.g., people who actually enjoy doing menial labor?
They’re happier, we’re happier. What’s the problem?
The problem is based on an essentially religious idea that all of humanity is and ought to be one family.
So then — when are the “separation of church and state” folks going to sue the government for basing all these non-discrimination laws on religious doctrines?
2004-09-17 » Greg Krehbiel
17 September 2004 @ 11:05 am
To respond to your initial question about LaShawn’s definition:
someone (Greg) is clearly not from a race that is “better at math.”
In math and logic, the “and” in her sentence means that for the definition, both conditions must apply. In order to be a racist, someone must believe in innate race-based differences AND THAT a particular race is superior.
As to the Neanderthal thing, it’s possible to believe that Neanderthals were less developed, but not inherently inferior. ISTM that’s what a Christian anthropology (at least one that assumes that Neanderthals are human, imago Dei) requires.
But as to your main point — I agree, it’s a problem for secularist evolutionists.
17 September 2004 @ 11:44 am
Jane — I realize you’re just being a wise-acre, but I don’t quite understand your comment re: the “and.” My example of “Chinese people are better at math” says that (1) there are racial differences and (2) those differences constitute a difference in quality. IOW, there are innate racial difference (Chinese are different than others in math) and Chinese are superior (they are better).
17 September 2004 @ 12:02 pm
Greg,
But can you point to any facts/data points that show that chinese people are:
A race, rather than a culture?
That they are demonstratably (sp) superior in mathematics?
And that the superiority is a result of nature, rather than nurture?
17 September 2004 @ 12:13 pm
SCSIwuzzy — No. I was proposing that for the sake of argument to illustrate the issues about racism. I have no idea if Chinese people are better or worse at math. But thanks for asking. I was afraid I might have left the wrong impression.
17 September 2004 @ 1:32 pm
As SCSIwuzzy aluded to, I think it has to do with a definition of terms. When you say “race”, judging from your response, you mean the culture of the Chinese people. What, IMO,LaShawn is referring to is the quality of the people.
This is often an issue that needs to be resolved when discussing race issues. Sometimes, when you see two people dialoging about “black issues”, like Bill Cosby, they are referring to the ‘black culture’. While the person on the receiving end is referring to the ‘black race’. One means actions and traditions, the other means physical make up of the person.
Both speaking past each other.
17 September 2004 @ 2:43 pm
I think that Jane’s point was that according to the definition, you’d have to say that “Chinese people are better at math AND the Chinese race is superior to other races” — that is, superior overall, not just in the area of math. The other points raised about defining math ability and defining the Chinese race and distinguishing nature from nurture are also all excellent points. As it happens, the “Chinese” (=Han) “race” really comprises two groups (northern and southern) which, it is claimed, are about as similar to each other as they are to Europeans (can’t remember the exact claim). And then there are all the Chinese minorities. As for their math ability, the sample you get in America is highly highly skewed because of brain drain. I know this has little to do with the point of your post but I just thought I’d point that out.
17 September 2004 @ 2:53 pm
David has it right. I think LaShawn is referring to overall superiority in the second clause. Not merely that Chinese people are both better in math and therefore superior in math, but that Chinese people are not merely better in math, but that this demonstrates an overall superiority race as compared to other races.
The reason I’m inclined to think that is that this is the way I’ve always defined racism for myself — a belief that innate abilities are not merely unevenly distributed among the races, but that some races are overall superior. I might take it a step further and say that the true racist also believes that superior races are higher on the human scale than inferior races, and therefore entitled to priority when issues of justice or scarcity are in play.
17 September 2004 @ 2:54 pm
Thanks David. From what I hear from people who claim to know, the differences between the so-called races are so small that they don’t make any sense biologically speaking.
I think it’s unquestionably true that different groups of people have, on average, different characteristics than other groups of people. As a silly example, the Irish handle whiskey a lot better than Native Americans. Any meaningful definition of “racism,” ISTM, would have to allow for this. So if La Shawn means overall superiority and not just “better in this isolated thing” — and, BTW, I’m sure that is what she means — then I have no trouble with her definition. I might just clarify that point by saying something like “generally superior.”
My first point was that saying one race is, on average, better than another race in some particular thing isn’t “racist.” My second point was that evolutionary theory provides no philosophical basis for objecting to racism.
17 September 2004 @ 2:55 pm
Forgive the editing errors in the above. I post way too fast.
17 September 2004 @ 3:02 pm
Greg,
That is a pretty goofy comment, silly example or not. Some groups of american indians have a condidtion that makes their livers process alchohol slowly/poorly. Some asians do as well. Other american indians are just fine with the hooch. Much of the perception that indians are drunks or can’t hold their liqour is from the reservation/welfare posistion many are in.
A better example might be to compare the sunburn rates among scandanavians to equatorial africans, or the bone/muscle structure of aleuts to australian aboriginals.
17 September 2004 @ 3:09 pm
SCSI — Whatever.
I don’t care if it’s alcohol absorption or getting a good tan or the ability to eat worms very quickly. The point is that some of the groups we call races will do better at some things than others. And we have such a ridiculous sensitivity about “race” that some folks aren’t willing to admit even that much.
17 September 2004 @ 3:26 pm
I posted my thoughts on this at my blog
http://jeffblanco.blogdrive.com/archive/cm-09_cy-2004_m-09_d-12_y-2004_o-0.html
19 September 2004 @ 4:56 am
I think the definition is sufficiently problematic that it obligates any reasonably open-minded person to be “racist” at one level or another. If “ability” could be qualified to include only mental, ethical, or spiritual traits, it might be true. But it seems trivial to observe that people of a certain body type are going to be better at certain physical activities. This is only true in the average sense, but that doesn’t make it any less true. A few Asians are tall– but on balance, there will always be proportionally more ethnic Africans in the NBA than there are Koreans. And being able to play basketball really well is certainly an “ability” (and one sometimes rewarded with large salaries in our society).
Nor I do see anything inherently racist about suggesting that the same thing could be true with respect to mental capacity, although it does appear that any such effect is small enough as to be essentially unmeasurable by the conventional metrics in contemporary use. (Unlike, say, gender differences, which are almost certainly real and detectably large.) But even suggesting this possibility is probably too inflammatory in the current political climate for it to be worthy of discussion. Maybe in a few hundred years, when (if?) race violence has become a safely distant historical problem. There is something comforting, I admit, in the idea that ethnic groups that have inferior genes from the standpoint of certain physical tasks are compensated by better intelligence. But again, this would only be true in a statistical sense. Clearly God permits some people to be born who have incredible gifts across the board, and others who ended up on the short of every stick– so at some point biology is just inherently “unfair”. What we should say is that, of those whom much has been given, much will be demanded.