Is the Concept of Race Illegitimate?

I'm posting a few excerpts from an article authored by Max Hocutt. The excerpts pertain to two recent writers on race issues (Cavalli-Sforza and Sykes). What follows is some mild criticism and commentary on the abovementioned conventional and peecee researchers. All academics live in a state of intellectual terrorism when it comes to conducting race-related studies, they must couch their findings in acceptable peecee language (notice the nonsensical double-talk emanating from Cavalli-Sforza, see below) if they want to keep getting funded by their respective institutions of higher learning; hence, they instinctively know that they're treading on very thin ice, an area where a false move could cost them their careers (see Rushton and Brand, for e.g.).

Is the Concept of Race Illegitimate?

MAX HOCUTT

(Max Hocutt is professor of philosophy emeritus at the University of Alabama.)

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Cavalli-Sforza

Nearly a quarter century passed between the publication of the three essays in physical anthropology that I have just criticized and the publication of The Great Human Diasporas
by the population biologist Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza and his son Francesco (1995). Yet this recent book offers few new arguments. Instead, it repeats the old ones.

The authors begin the chapter “Race and Racism” by mentioning the evil of racism and by condemning research that they regard as racist.6 (6. Characteristically, Cavalli-Sforza uses the term loosely, describing as racist all research that draws attention to racial differences, even if its authors endorse no declaration of superiority and inferiority. Thus, Arthur Jensen’s work on IQ counts as racist by Cavalli-Sforza’s tendentious definition—a slick but not an admirable way to poison the wells of scientific research and to beg the question of whether its conclusions are sound.) They observe that race is often confused with nation or culture and complain that, given the looseness of the concept, no one can say how many races exist. They attribute the difficulty of making a count to the fact that many genetically related features of human beings vary continuously, leaving no breaks that provide clear demarcations between races.

After making these now familiar points, the Cavalli-Sforzas dilate on the difficulties that confront attempts to distinguish one race from another. They illustrate these difficulties by explaining, with a map, how interbreeding has obliterated once-obvious differences between the Etruscans who settled northern Italy and the Greek peoples who colonized the southern half of the boot. This blending of two formerly distinguishable races into one, the authors claim, shows that it never makes sense to talk of distinguishable races. Yet they also note that various European “peoples,” such as the
Basques of Spain and the Celts from Breton, differ not only culturally but also genetically (like races!). In this same “I can’t say ‘breakfast’” fashion, the Cavalli-Sforzas go on to aver that because Jews are a “heterogeneous people” from many parts of the world, there is no Jewish race. They admit, however, that “endogamy (marriage between individuals from the same group) was sufficiently widespread among the forebears of today’s Jews for them to continue to have a not insignificant level of genes in common and a certain resemblance” (236) (like members of the same race!).

Showing no awareness that they are giving back with one hand what they took with the other, the Cavalli-Sforzas go on to conclude, “The idea of race in the human species serves no purpose” (237). With the usual reflex, they attribute belief in race to the Nazi myth of racial purity and to an irrational but innate tribalism.7 (With consummate wit, a friend of mine calls this pseudoreasoning the argumentum ad nazium.) They then cite the mistreatment of Pygmies by their larger and more aggressive neighbors as a
regrettable example of our human tendency to divide the world up into them and us. Clearly, there is nothing new here, just the now-familiar arguments: that a belief in racial distinctions is wrong because it encourages racism; that no distinctions exist between races because the distinctions that do exist are not sharp and clear; that although racial differences may be real, it would be better to describe them as differences between “peoples”; that there are no races because there are no pure races; and so on. Having already refuted these arguments—or, rather, having shown how they refute themselves—I will not go over them again.

Instead, I will examine the only new argument to be found in the Cavalli-Sforza book. In the preface, the authors casually remark that racial distinctions are unimportant because they are limited to such trivial matters as skin color and bodily conformation. They return to this theme in chapter 8, claiming that although physical differences can be explained in genetic terms, no mental differences can be explained in this way. They declare, “The biological differences [between Pygmies and other groups] are obviously striking, and equally obviously superficial. . . . [T]he explanation [of the Pygmy economy] must lie in a radically different cultural legacy” (204); “[n]othing, however, is truly or solely innate in child or adult intelligence. On the contrary, intelligence is the product of personal experience, which is complex and differs from person to person” (219). Here we have one more example of faulty reasoning. Reduced to its essence, the argument is: racial distinctions are unreal because they are unimportant.8 For the sake of discussion, let us grant for the moment the premise that racial differences are superficial
and inconsequential because they are physical. Still, the conclusion—that racial differences are fictitious, imaginary, or mythical—does not follow. On the contrary, what follows is that racial differences must be real, for how else can they be trivial or superficial? The Cavalli-Sforzas have shot themselves in the foot.

Nor is that the worst of it: the gun was illegally obtained. That a certain difference between persons is unimportant is not a scientific judgment; it is an evaluation. The Cavalli-Sforzas are speaking here as moralists who seek cover for their egalitarian political views by presenting them as well-established science. Furthermore, whether any differences of temperament and intellect are related to genes cannot be settled a priori. The question is an empirical one still very much in dispute (Herrnstein and Murray 1994; Levin 1997; Rushton 1995). Hence, as the Cavalli-Sforzas are forced
to admit when they get down to particulars, “We cannot exclude the possibility that there is a genetic component to behavioral characteristics” (1995, 205), and “[t]his [environmental influence on IQ] does not mean that heredity has no bearing on intelligence quotient” (221). Here, at last, they speak in the voice of science. As moralists, the Cavalli-Sforzas have no authority. It is as scientists that they must appeal to us, but when we examine their science, we find little support for their unguarded dicta about race. On the contrary, we find evidence to refute those dicta.
The first chapter of The Great Human Diasporas has to do with Pygmies. This material is significant because it seems beyond dispute that the Pygmies constitute a distinctive race that differs from others in both genotype and phenotype. If you were looking for a prototype of the sort of breeding group that is meant by the word race, it would be difficult to find a better one than the Pygmies. How can a man who has spent much of his life studying this unique group of people, as the elder Cavalli- Sforza has, deny the reality of racial distinctions? Only, I suspect, by letting his feelings color his scientific judgment.

Sykes

Finally, we come to the arguments made by Bryan Sykes, the population geneticist who appears to have displaced Luca Cavalli-Sforza as the dominant figure in the field (Sykes 2001, 42). In a pleasantly written book called The Seven Daughters of Eve that is part science, part self-congratulation, and part fiction, Sykes tells us how he compared
the mitochondrial DNA of ancient skeletons with modern subjects to discover that 95 percent of the present European population of 650 million have descended from just seven prehistoric women, 45 percent from just one.9 Occasionally, Sykes pauses in this fascinating tale to express his belief that “objectively defined races simply
do not exist” (46).

It is instructive to see why he thinks so. Taking Japan and Tibet as examples, Sykes states that although there are certainly people in Japan and Tibet, “there is no genetic meaning to the population of Japan or Tibet” (46, emphasis in original). Why not? Because only individuals, not populations, have genes and because the attempt to find genetic markers for groups perpetuates racial classifications. On this basis, Sykes condemns as regrettable the efforts made earlier by Cavalli-Sforza and others to determine gene frequencies. Ironically, given Cavalli-Sforza’s own frequently expressed antipathy to the concept of race, Sykes complains that Cavalli-Sforza’s efforts reinforced racial distinctions. One does not need to be a geneticist to see the many errors in Sykes’s argument.

The first mistake is an instance of what we logicians call a fallacy of composition—confusion of wholes with parts. Unless I misunderstand him utterly, Sykes is saying that you cannot distinguish races using gene frequencies because you cannot distinguish individual human beings in that way. To see the error in this claim, suppose someone were to argue that a quantity of water cannot be described as cool or wet because it
makes no sense to say that individual molecules of water are cool or wet. That argument would be just as good. Sykes’s second error is equally crude. It begs the question to argue that the evidence for gene-frequency differences between the races is no good because it encourages belief in the wicked idea of race. One might as well deny the value of fossil evidence for evolution on the grounds that it encourages people to believe in the pernicious theory of evolution. The evidence shows what it shows, even
if you do not like it.

The faulty argumentation just scouted occurs near the beginning of Sykes’s book. Near the end, he offers another defective argument. Having shown that signature patterns of mitochondrial DNA occur with greater frequency in some regions of the world than others, he denies that this difference gives aid and comfort to believers in distinguishable races. Why not? Because mitochondrial DNA often can be found where you might least expect it. Thus, Korean DNA has been discovered in a Norwegian fisherman. Also, modern Japanese are the result of blending two groups, the Jomon and the Yayoi, which shows “that there is no such thing as a genetically pure classification into different races”(284). But doesn’t the existence of watered whisky prove the reality of whiskey? And doesn’t the existence of blended scotch prove the reality of the single malts that go into the blend?

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[Some footnotes omitted]

http://www.independent.org/tii/medi...tir71hocutt.pdf

Originally Posted by Doppelhaken

I agree this research doesn't seem very scientific. Do these guys ever acknowledge phenotype vs. genotype? I wonder how much invaluable genoptypal data will be supressed with the genome project et al--because it will be discovered, it's just a question of publicizing it--because of the environmentalist, i.e, egalitarian house of cards that today's scientific research perchs on.

race is real if it wasn't then these peecee scientists wouldn't be trying to shut out all kinds of opposing views.