From: Mark Steven Heyman (markheyman@infoproconsulting.com)
Date: Wed Jun 16 2004 - 18:43:42 BST
On 16 Jun 2004 at 15:12, Paul Vogel wrote:
msh:
Now, here's the
>definition of "Racism" from the Merriam-Webster Dictionary:
>
>Main Entry: rac·ism
>Pronunciation: 'rA-"si-z&m also -"shi-
>Function: noun
>1 : a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits
and
>capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent
>superiority of a particular race.
pv:
The first half of the definition given above is just a scientific
fact as "race" or "genetic stock" is the actual primary determinant
of both Human and of non-Human life's traits and capacities.
msh:
You are apparently unable to understand a simple dictionary
definition. SCIENCE does not support the idea that race is the
primary determinant of human capacity, RACISTS do. Your equating
"race" with "genetic stock" is simply, scientifically, wrong. What
we normally think of as racial features, dark skin, blond hair, blue
eyes, are determined by a miniscule portion of the human genome. So
when you and your cosmotheistic brethren claim that such features are
indications of a person's "inherent potential to serve as being the
actual means of the COSMOS own SELF-ACTUALIZATION in GODHOOD,"
(whatever THAT means), you are being racist.
There is SO MUCH evidence against your racist views, it would be
impossible to provide all of it in a reasonable frame of time. I've
already wasted enough of mine, but I'll leave you with the American
Anthropological Association's Statement on "Race" (May 17, 1998).
In the United States both scholars and the general public have been
conditioned to viewing human races as natural and separate divisions
within the human species based on visible physical differences. With
the vast expansion of scientific knowledge in this century, however,
it has become clear that human populations are not unambiguous,
clearly demarcated, biologically distinct groups. Evidence from the
analysis of genetics (e.g., DNA) indicates that most physical
variation, about 94%, lies within so-called racial groups.
Conventional geographic "racial" groupings differ from one another
only in about 6% of their genes. This means that there is greater
variation within "racial" groups than between them. In neighboring
populations there is much overlapping of genes and their phenotypic
(physical) expressions.
Physical variations in any given trait tend to occur gradually rather
than abruptly over geographic areas. And because physical traits are
inherited independently of one another, knowing the range of one
trait does not predict the presence of others. For example, skin
color varies largely from light in the temperate areas in the north
to dark in the tropical areas in the south; its intensity is not
related to nose shape or hair texture. Dark skin may be associated
with frizzy or kinky hair or curly or wavy or straight hair, all of
which are found among different indigenous peoples in tropical
regions. These facts render any attempt to establish lines of
division among biological populations both arbitrary and subjective.
Historical research has shown that the idea of "race" has always
carried more meanings than mere physical differences; indeed,
physical variations in the human species have no meaning except the
social ones that humans put on them. Today scholars in many fields
argue that "race" as it is understood in the United States of America
was a social mechanism invented during the 18th century to refer to
those populations brought together in colonial America: the English
and other European settlers, the conquered Indian peoples, and those
peoples of Africa brought in to provide slave labor.
From its inception, this modern concept of "race" was modeled after
an ancient theorem of the Great Chain of Being, which posited natural
categories on a hierarchy established by God or nature. Thus "race"
was a mode of classification linked specifically to peoples in the
colonial situation. It subsumed a growing ideology of inequality
devised to rationalize European attitudes and treatment of the
conquered and enslaved peoples. Proponents of slavery in particular
during the 19th century used "race" to justify the retention of
slavery. The ideology magnified the differences among Europeans,
Africans, and Indians, established a rigid hierarchy of socially
exclusive categories underscored and bolstered unequal rank and
status differences, and provided the rationalization that the
inequality was natural or God-given. The different physical traits of
African-Americans and Indians became markers or symbols of their
status differences.
As they were constructing US society, leaders among European-
Americans fabricated the cultural/behavioral characteristics
associated with each "race," linking superior traits with Europeans
and negative and inferior ones to blacks and Indians. Numerous
arbitrary and fictitious beliefs about the different peoples were
institutionalized and deeply embedded in American thought.
Early in the 19th century the growing fields of science began to
reflect the public consciousness about human differences. Differences
among the "racial" categories were projected to their greatest
extreme when the argument was posed that Africans, Indians, and
Europeans were separate species, with Africans the least human and
closer taxonomically to apes.
Ultimately "race" as an ideology about human differences was
subsequently spread to other areas of the world. It became a strategy
for dividing, ranking, and controlling colonized people used by
colonial powers everywhere. But it was not limited to the colonial
situation. In the latter part of the 19th century it was employed by
Europeans to rank one another and to justify social, economic, and
political inequalities among their peoples. During World War II, the
Nazis under Adolf Hitler enjoined the expanded ideology of "race" and
"racial" differences and took them to a logical end: the
extermination of 11 million people of "inferior races" (e.g., Jews,
Gypsies, Africans, homosexuals, and so forth) and other unspeakable
brutalities of the Holocaust.
"Race" thus evolved as a worldview, a body of prejudgments that
distorts our ideas about human differences and group behavior. Racial
beliefs constitute myths about the diversity in the human species and
about the abilities and behavior of people homogenized into "racial"
categories. The myths fused behavior and physical features together
in the public mind, impeding our comprehension of both biological
variations and cultural behavior, implying that both are genetically
determined. Racial myths bear no relationship to the reality of human
capabilities or behavior. Scientists today find that reliance on such
folk beliefs about human differences in research has led to countless
errors.
At the end of the 20th century, we now understand that human cultural
behavior is learned, conditioned into infants beginning at birth, and
always subject to modification. No human is born with a built-in
culture or language. Our temperaments, dispositions, and
personalities, regardless of genetic propensities, are developed
within sets of meanings and values that we call "culture." Studies of
infant and early childhood learning and behavior attest to the
reality of our cultures in forming who we are.
It is a basic tenet of anthropological knowledge that all normal
human beings have the capacity to learn any cultural behavior. The
American experience with immigrants from hundreds of different
language and cultural backgrounds who have acquired some version of
American culture traits and behavior is the clearest evidence of this
fact. Moreover, people of all physical variations have learned
different cultural behaviors and continue to do so as modern
transportation moves millions of immigrants around the world.
How people have been accepted and treated within the context of a
given society or culture has a direct impact on how they perform in
that society. The "racial" worldview was invented to assign some
groups to perpetual low status, while others were permitted access to
privilege, power, and wealth. The tragedy in the United States has
been that the policies and practices stemming from this worldview
succeeded all too well in constructing unequal populations among
Europeans, Native Americans, and peoples of African descent. Given
what we know about the capacity of normal humans to achieve and
function within any culture, we conclude that present-day
inequalities between so-called "racial" groups are not consequences
of their biological inheritance but products of historical and
contemporary social, economic, educational, and political
circumstances.
Mark Steven Heyman (msh)
--
InfoPro Consulting - The Professional Information Processors
Custom Software Solutions for Windows, PDAs, and the Web Since 1983
Web Site: http://www.infoproconsulting.com
"Thought is only a flash between two long nights, but this flash is
everything." -- Henri Poincare'
MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archives:
Aug '98 - Oct '02 - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
Nov '02 Onward - http://www.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/summary.html
MD Queries - horse@darkstar.uk.net
To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at:
http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Wed Jun 16 2004 - 18:39:52 BST