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July 19 - July 28, 2021
The visible differences that are the roots of racism are encoded in our DNA. Therefore, science and racism are inherently entwined. Racism is an expression of prejudice, whereas science, in principle, is free from subjectivity and judgement.
The nineteenth-century abolitionist preacher Theodore Parker said that the moral arc of the world tends towards justice, and while this may be true it does not mean that bigotry evaporates.
Concepts of race
have always been associated with attempts to categorise humans, sometimes to simply describe them, often to create pseudo-scientific delineations, with the intention of subjugation and exploitation.
Attempts to justify racism have always been rooted in science – or more specifically in misunderstood, misrepresented or just plain specious science.
Most (though not absolutely all) contemporary geneticists disagree with the idea that genetic variations between traditional racial groupings of people are meaningful in terms of behaviour or innate abilities.
Since the seventeenth century, attempts to categorise people into racial types has resulted in the number of races being anywhere between one and sixty-three. We talk casually of black people, or East Asians, or other categorisations of billions of people that primarily refer either to geographical landmasses or a handful of physical characteristics – none more so than pigmentation.
We are a rich symphony of nature and nurture – of DNA and environment – stuff we are born with and stuff that happens within us and to us. Our fundamental biology is encoded in our genes, which are inherited from our parents – and therefore ancestors – in a combination that is unique to each one of us.
We now know Homo sapiens to be an African species in origin, probably pan-African, with roots certainly from the Rift Valley in the east, but also in northern Africa, where the oldest remains of our species have been found, dating to around 300,000 years ago. We know that pale skin is an adaptation via the process of natural selection to exposure to a weaker sun in cloudier northern climates.
the oldest members of our species (albeit more archaic forms) resided in what is now Morocco, not in the east of Africa, and all the evidence firmly points to there being an Out of Africa dispersal some 70,000 years before today.
Of all the attempts over the centuries to place humans in distinct races, none succeeds. Genetics refuses to comply with these artificial and superficial categories.
It is never clear what is being threatened when, for example, white supremacists express fear of the demise of Western culture. I don’t know what Western culture is, because it’s very clear to me that my culture is not the same as the culture of other people in my street, postcode, city, country or continent.
When all you’ve ever known is privilege, equality feels like oppression.
Racial purity is a pure fantasy. For humans, there are no purebloods, only mongrels enriched by the blood of multitudes.
if you are a British citizen, you are entitled to a British passport, which legally, technically and actually makes you British. This is a non-negotiable fact. The presentation of arguments based on who are ‘real Britons’, or the ‘indigenous people of Britain’ is an ahistorical, non-scientific smokescreen to hide racism.
you cannot reason someone out of a position they did not reason themselves into.
It seems absurd to say it, but the pivotal element in being able to swim is learning to swim, rather than contesting some imaginary biological sinking factor.
As well as entertainment, sport is a celebration of the extremes of human capabilities. To reduce it to mere unearned biology is racism, whether conscious or not. In return for their pursuit of greatness, we owe elite athletes more deserving praise than auspicious ancestry.
People fixated on finding biological bases for racial differences appear more interested in the racism than the science. Arguments in online social media seem to involve people for whom demonstrations of genetic or behavioural differences being evidence for racial categories are the absorbing passion of their lives; these are people who are invigorated by animosity.
Prejudices are a natural part of the human condition, and much of the science that undermines the biology of race may run counter to your experience, which sits alongside all those historical biases that are baked into our culture.
The academic and political activist Angela Davis said that ‘in a racist society it is not enough to be non-racist, we must be anti-racist.’
Of course, racism is not simply wrong because it is based on scientifically specious ideas. Racism is wrong because it is an affront to human dignity.
