Is the concept of race illegitimate?

• Author: Hocutt, Max
• Position: Reflections

Americans are obsessed with race--or, at any rate, academic Americans are. Is disproportionate representation evidence of discrimination by race, or is it evidence of natural differences between the races? Should we abandon standardized tests, such as the SAT and ACT, on which some races do poorly? Why, despite nearly four decades of racial integration, do some races continue to lag behind others? Is the lag owing to the inherent racism of our institutions--our schools, courts, unions, and businesses? Are even the most enlightened and liberal Americans unconscious bigots? Is the United States the most racist country in the world? Should we have preferential admissions and hiring to correct the evils produced by racial discrimination? Such questions preoccupy us, absorb our energies, and disturb our equanimity. Try as we might to avoid the topic of race, it confronts us everywhere. Race talk is ubiquitous.

Remarkably, however, many behavioral and biological scientists assure us that races do not exist. If these scientists are right, the concept of race is a mental construct without a counterpart in reality; races are as fictitious as unicorns. Contrary to popular presumption, we have made up, not discovered, the distinctions that figure so prominently in thinking about race and bolster the myth of racial superiority. Because this myth is evil, it ought to be stamped out and, with it, the very idea of race. Eliminate this idea, it is said, and we will eliminate the belief in racial superiority, thereby solving the problems and dissolving the injustices caused by racial discrimination.

Early expressions of this view came from leading physical anthropologists, three of whom are considered in this article, and were endorsed recently by important population geneticists, two of whom are considered here. All five scientists agree that, as one puts it, "the idea of race in the human species serves no purpose" except that of fostering an unfounded belief in racial superiority (Cavalli-Sforza and Cavalli-Sforza 1995, 237). The arguments our scientists advance, however, do not justify their claim. If race is a myth, they have failed to prove that it is. Furthermore, the claim is not true. Races are as real as nations and social classes.

To allay misunderstanding of my arguments in this article, some caveats are in order. To say that racial differences are real is not to say either that they are important or that they should determine public policy. Whether races are real is a question of objective fact to which, presumably, we can give a single determinate answer. In fact, the skins of blacks are usually more darkly pigmented than the skins of whites, and, in this regard, personal preference and opinion are irrelevant. Whether such differences should be considered important is, however, a question regarding the purposes for which racial distinctions are to be used, and those purposes will depend on personal preferences. That A's spouse or employee be of the same race will matter to A but not to B, just as it will matter to A but not to B that her spouse or employee be of the same religion, political persuasion, or social standing.

When individual preferences do not harm others, they should not be matters of general, much less political interest. You should be allowed to marry or to hire whomever you wish. Governmentally sanctioned preferences, however, concern everybody because they affect everybody. Thus, the worst excesses of racism--for example, the Nazi crimes against Jews, the South African apartheid system, and the Jim Crow regime in the U.S. South--were all government policies that left individuals no choice in the matter. Harsh penalties might be imposed on people who married outside their race or hired a person of a disapproved race.

Despite this experience, people on the political left have for four decades now tried to justify government preferences on the grounds that because racial distinctions are artificial, disparities in achievement must be the result of unjust discrimination. To correct this injustice, they have urged, government must both forbid individuals to discriminate by race and itself do what it forbids others to do. As even some federal courts have belatedly begun to recognize, however, official discrimination in favor of a particular race is as un-American as official discrimination against it.

Furthermore, as those on the other side of the political divide have recently noticed, the premise of the argument does not support--indeed, it undermines--the conclusion. You contradict yourself if you say both that racial distinctions have no validity and that government should favor some races over others. If races cannot be distinguished, then governments cannot distinguish them. At least one opponent of racial preferences has welcomed arguments for the unreality of races (Wood 2001). Unfortunately, no such argument is likely to persuade Jesse Jackson to refrain from demanding special favors for his Rainbow Coalition.

Nor should it. Although the logic of the argument is impeccable and its conclusion is true as well, Its premise is too outlandish to be believed. If official preferences are wrong, the reason is not that races are figments of our imagination.

Montagu

Consider first anthropologist Ashley Montagu's classic critique of the concept of race. Unlike the other four writers I consider here, Montagu does not deny the reality of race. On the contrary, he affirms it in the following plain words: "At the outset it should perhaps be made clear that I believe, with most biologists, that evolutionary factors, similar to those that have been operative in producing raciation in other animal species, have also been operative in the human species" ([1962] 1982, 58). Why, then, does Montagu object to the concept of race? Because

the layman's conception of race is so confused and emotionally muddled that any attempt to modify it would seem to be met by the greatest obstacle of all--the term "race" itself. It is a trigger word. Utter it, and a whole series of emotionally conditioned responses follow. If we are to clarify the minds of those who think in terms of "race" we must cease to use the word, because by continuing to use it we sanction whatever meaning anyone chooses to bestow upon it, and because in the layman's mind the term refers to conditions which do not apply. (59) In short, although it has a denotation, the word race ought to be rejected because it has irrelevant or false connotations.

This argument is less than convincing. To see why, consider an analogy. The ancient Pythagoreans, who believed that all things have numbers, preferred even to odd numbers. Hence, in Pythagorean cosmology, the word even connoted good and the word odd connoted bad. Thus, the sane were even, the insane odd; men were even, women odd; and so forth. We now regard this view as an odd way of thinking. It would, however, be even more odd--indeed, it would be wrong--to conclude that we therefore should give up arithmetic. The right conclusion to draw is that the connotations of a word are irrelevant. The serious question is whether the word has a denotation.

This principle holds no matter what the topic. Grant that no clear meaning can be given to the belief that one race is superior to another. It does not follow that there are no differences of race. Apples differ from oranges, and men differ from women, even if it makes no sense to declare one of them better than the other. Cannot races differ from one another even if there is no saying which is superior? Recognition of difference does not necessarily entail invidious comparison.

Anxious to avoid both irrelevant connotations and invidious comparisons, Montagu proposes to replace race with the terms ethnic group and breeding population. Apparently, he has forgotten Shakespeare's famous line, "A rose by any other name would smell as sweet." Someone who hates the Irish will continue to hate them even if he must quit calling them a race and start thinking of them as an ethnic group or a breeding population. The sting of the old label may not attach to the new one at once, but it will do so eventually. If racial consciousness is rooted in reality, it will not be stamped out by a mere change in labels.

That difficulty no doubt explains why our remaining four authors go further than Montagu, questioning not just the word race but also the reality it is supposed...