Robert Wald Sussman - The Myth of Race

Cambridge, Massachusetts

London, England

2014

Copyright 2014 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College

All rights reserved

Jacket art: Types of Races, English School, (19th century)/Private Collection/(c) Look and Learn/The Bridgeman Art Library

Jacket design: Jill Breitbarth

The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:

Sussman, Robert W., 1941

The myth of race : the troubling persistence of an unscientific idea / Robert Wald Sussman.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-674-41731-1 (hardcover : alk. paper)

1. Race. 2. Racism. I. Title.

HT1521.S83 2014

305.8dc23 2014011078

I dedicate this book to my wife, Linda;
my two daughters, Katya and Diana;
and my students

AA	American Anthropologist
AAA	American Anthropological Association
AAAS	American Association for the Advancement of Science
AAPA	American Association of Physical Anthropologists
ABA	American Breeders Association
AES	American Eugenics Society
AICF	American Immigration Control Foundation
AR	American Renaissance
CIW	Carnegie Institution of Washington, D.C.
ECUSA	Eugenics Committee of the United States of America
EN	Eugenical News
ERA	Eugenics Research Association
ERO	Eugenics Record Office
FAIR	Federation for American Immigration Reform
IAAEE	International Association for Advancement of Ethnology and Eugenics
IFEO	International Federation of Eugenics Organizations
ISM	Institute for the Study of Man
JAMA	Journal of the American Medical Association
KWIA	Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology
MQ	Mankind Quarterly
MTFS	Minnesota Twin Family Study
NAACP	National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
NAS	National Academy of Sciences
NRC	National Research Council
NSDAP	National Socialist German Workers Party
UNESCO	United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization
USM	University of Southern Mississippi

In 1950, UNESCO issued a statement asserting that all humans belong to the same species and that race is not a biological reality but a myth. This was a summary of the findings of an international panel of anthropologists, geneticists, sociologists, and psychologists. A great deal of evidence had accumulated by that time to support this conclusion, and the scientists involved were those who were conducting research and were most knowledgeable about the topic of human variation. Since that time similar statements have been published by the American Anthropological Association and the American Association of Physical Anthropologists, and an enormous amount of modern scientific data has been gathered to justify this conclusion. Today the vast majority of those involved in research on human variation would agree that biological races do not exist among humans. Among those who study the subject, who use and accept modern scientific techniques and logic, this scientific fact is as valid and true as the fact that the earth is round and revolves around the sun.

Yet as recently as 2010, highly acclaimed journalist Guy Harrison (2010) wrote:

One day in the 1980s, I sat in the front row in my first undergraduate anthropology class, eager to learn more about this bizarre and fascinating species I was born into. But I got more than I expected that day as I heard for the first time that biological races are not real. After hearing several perfectly sensible reasons why vast biological categories dont work very well, I started to feel betrayed by my society. Why am I just hearing this now? Why didnt somebody tell me this in elementary school? I never should have made it through twelve years of schooling before entering a university, without ever hearing the important news that most anthropologists reject the concept of biological races. (27, 30)

Unfortunately, along with the belief in the reality of biologically based human races, racism still abounds in the United States and Western Europe. How can this be when there is so much scientific evidence against it? Most educated people would accept the facts that the earth is not flat and that it revolves around the sun. However, it is much more difficult for them to accept modern science concerning human variation. Why is this so? It seems that the belief in human races, carrying along with it the prejudice and hatred of racism, is so embedded in our culture and has been an integral part of our worldview for so long that many of us assume that it just must be true.

Racism is a part of our everyday lives. Where you live, where you go to school, your job, your profession, who you interact with, how people interact with you, your treatment in the healthcare and justice systems are all affected by your race. For the past 500 years people have been taught how to interpret and understand racism. We have been told that there are very specific things that relate to race, such as intelligence, sexual behavior, birth rates, infant care, work ethics and abilities, personal restraint, life span, law-abidingness, aggression, altruism, economic and business practices, family cohesion, and even brain size. We have learned that races are structured in a hierarchical order and that some races are better than others. Even if you are not a racist, your life is affected by this ordered structure. We are born into a racist society.

What many people do not realize is that this racial structure is not based on reality. Anthropologists have shown for many years now that there is no biological reality to human race. There are no major complex behaviors that directly correlate with what might be considered human racial characteristics. There is no inherent relationship between intelligence, law-abidingness, or economic practices and race, just as there is no relationship between nose size, height, blood group, or skin color and any set of complex human behaviors. However, over the past 500 years, we have been taught by an informal, mutually reinforcing consortium of intellectuals, politicians, statesmen, business and economic leaders, and their books that human racial biology is real and that certain races are biologically better than others. These teachings have led to major injustices to Jews and non-Christians during the Spanish Inquisition; to blacks, Native Americans, and others during colonial times; to African Americans during slavery and reconstruction; to Jews and other Europeans during the reign of the Nazis in Germany; and to groups from Latin America and the Middle East, among others, during modern political times.