{"id":55872,"date":"2018-03-13T18:09:42","date_gmt":"2018-03-13T18:09:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=55872"},"modified":"2018-03-14T23:32:05","modified_gmt":"2018-03-14T23:32:05","slug":"theres-no-scientific-basis-for-race-its-a-made-up-label","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=55872","title":{"rendered":"There\u2019s No Scientific Basis for Race\u2014It’s a Made-Up Label"},"content":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s No Scientific Basis for Race\u2014It’s a Made-Up Label<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

National Geographic<\/a>
\nApril 2018<\/a> (The Race Issue)<\/p>\n

By Elizabeth Kolbert<\/strong><\/a>
\nPhotographs by Robin Hammond<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/a>
\nThe four letters of the genetic code \u2014A, C, G, and T<\/a>\u2014are projected onto Ryan Lingarmillar, a Ugandan. DNA<\/a> reveals what skin color obscures: We all have African ancestors.<\/small><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

It’s been used to define and separate people for millennia. But the concept of race is not grounded in genetics.<\/em><\/p>\n

In the first half of the 19th century, one of America\u2019s most prominent scientists was a doctor named Samuel Morton<\/a>. Morton lived in Philadelphia<\/a>, and he collected skulls.<\/p>\n

He wasn\u2019t choosy about his suppliers. He accepted skulls scavenged from battlefields and snatched from catacombs<\/a>. One of his most famous craniums belonged to an Irishman who\u2019d been sent as a convict to Tasmania<\/a> (and ultimately hanged for killing and eating other convicts). With each skull Morton performed the same procedure: He stuffed it with pepper seeds\u2014later he switched to lead shot\u2014which he then decanted to ascertain the volume of the braincase<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Morton believed that people could be divided into five races and that these represented separate acts of creation. The races had distinct characters, which corresponded to their place in a divinely determined hierarchy. Morton\u2019s \u201ccraniometry<\/a>\u201d showed, he claimed, that whites, or \u201cCaucasians,\u201d were the most intelligent of the races. East Asians\u2014Morton used the term \u201cMongolian\u201d\u2014though \u201cingenious\u201d and \u201csusceptible of cultivation,\u201d were one step down. Next came Southeast Asians, followed by Native Americans. Blacks, or \u201cEthiopians,\u201d were at the bottom. In the decades before the Civil War<\/a>, Morton\u2019s ideas were quickly taken up by the defenders of slavery…<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/a>
\nSkulls from the collection of Samuel Morton<\/a>, the father of scientific racism, illustrate his classification of people into five races\u2014which arose, he claimed, from separate acts of creation. From left to right: a black woman and a white man, both American; an indigenous man from Mexico<\/a>; a Chinese woman; and a Malaysian man.
\nPhotograph by Robert Clark
\nPHOTOGRAPHED AT PENN MUSEUM<\/em><\/small><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

…By analyzing the genes of present-day Africans, researchers have concluded that the Khoe-San<\/a>, who now live in southern Africa<\/a>, represent one of the oldest branches of the human family tree. The Pygmies<\/a> of central Africa<\/a> also have a very long history as a distinct group. What this means is that the deepest splits in the human family aren\u2019t between what are usually thought of as different races\u2014whites, say, or blacks or Asians or Native Americans. They\u2019re between African populations such as the Khoe-San and the Pygmies, who spent tens of thousands of years separated from one another even before humans left Africa<\/a>…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s been used to define and separate people for millennia. But the concept of race is not grounded in genetics.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1295,12,2039,459,8],"tags":[26883,10659,18810,28132,15710,28145,15901,28143,28139,28140,28141,22898,28142,28144],"class_list":["post-55872","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-africa","category-articles","category-health-medicine","category-history","category-media-archive","tag-anita-foeman","tag-craig-venter","tag-david-reich","tag-elizabeth-kolbert","tag-heather-norton","tag-keith-cheng","tag-national-geographic","tag-paul-wolff","tag-robin-hammond","tag-ryan-lingarmillar","tag-samuel-morton","tag-sarah-tishkoff","tag-scientific-racism","tag-yana-kamberov"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55872","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=55872"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55872\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55893,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55872\/revisions\/55893"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=55872"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=55872"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=55872"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}