race

the use of this word "to refer to a group of persons who share common physical characteristics and form a discrete and separable population unit has no scientific validity, since evolutionary theory and physical anthropology have long since demonstrated that there are no fixed or discrete groups in human populations.... However as a folk concept in Western and non-Western societies the concept of race is a powerful and important one, which is employed in order to classify and systematically exclude members of given groups from fully participating in the social system controlled by the dominant group" (Macmillan Dictionary of Anthropology). "There are no pure races in any meaningful sense, only large geographical groupings whose genetic histories can never be fully known.... The terminology of race has shifted in recent years from anthropological classifications toward a more flexible language of geography, culture, and color" (American Heritage Book of English Usage). Amoja Three Rivers (Cultural Etiquette) says, "If there ever was any such thing as race (which there isn't), there has been so much constant cross-crossing of genes for the last 500,000 years, that it would have lost all meaning." Clyde W. Ford (We Can All Get Along) suggests discarding "this outmoded term" and replacing it "with another term like ethnic group, ethnicity, cultural background, nationality, or human variation when speaking about differences among human beings. The term race is loaded with a history of fiction, conflict, violence, and racism." In The Concept of Race, anthropologist Ashley Montagu says, "The idea of 'race' as a widespread secular belief is, in fact, no older than the 19th century.... In part because of that phrase, 'All men are created equal,' and, of course, because of all those other conditions that bound them to support the institution, the defenders of slavery felt it necessary to show that the Negro was biologically unequal to the white man, both in his physical traits and in his mental capacities.... it was in this way that the doctrine of racism was born." As long ago as 1936, biologist Julian Huxley and anthropologist Alfred Cort Haddon found the biological concept of race wanting: "It is very desirable that the term race as applied to human groups should be dropped from the vocabulary of science" (We Europeans: A Survey of 'Racial' Problems). Although the term "racism" is necessary to a discussion of these issues and to denote the entrenched bias that the false concept of race has underwritten, the word "race" itself is best avoided as being devoid of meaning in itself. See also interracial, multiracial, racism, ethnicity.